<text id=00he0312><title>The Death of Luke</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>The Death of Luke</hdr><body>
<p>On the evening of 29 September, the irrepressible Frank Luke, the Arizona balloon-buster, was killed, following an epic battle he waged alone against German aircraft balloons and ground troops. He is credited with bringing down three balloons and two airplanes, and with dropping bombs that killed 11 Germans before being forced to land. In the tradition of the gunslinger of the wild West, Luke faced the Germans with his .45-caliber pistol until rifle fire dropped him.
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<p>During October and November, until the Armistice, the First Pursuit Group alone claimed 101 German aircraft destroyed at a cost of 15 American casualties. The Second and Third Groups, being newer, were less successful.
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<p>And that was the end of it. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive sped ahead, the Germans retreated, and finally the years of blood-letting came to an end in the fields of France and Belgium, just where the war had started.
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<p>Air power had played an important part in the three campaigns, but not nearly as important a part as its proponents have contended since then. When the Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918, American air units had 740 planes assigned to 45 squadrons. That was less than 10 per cent of the Allied air strength, still less if one considers that the planes in commission were considerably fewer, perhaps as few as 450.
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<p>American fliers claimed a total of 781 enemy aircraft and 73 balloons shot down or destroyed. There were 71 officially recognized American aces, each credited with five or more enemy aircraft or balloons, but fewer than 100 of these victories were confirmed by either capture or inspection of the wreckage. The AEF lost a verifiable 289 aircraft and 48 balloons; the Germans probably lost a similar number to the Americans. US pilots and observers killed or missing in action totalled 237. Many might have been saved, had they worn available parachutes. The Germans used them, as did balloon observers on both sides, but Allied airmen rejected the chute, in retrospect on the flimsiest of grounds: it would have been, they believed, an insult to their bravery, their skill and their faith in of their own abilities to rely on a means of escape from a burning or bullet-ridden aircraft. It almost smacked of cowardice, or fleeing in the face of the enemy. So they died instead.
