Lt. Frank Luke Jr: The 21-Year-Old WWI US Ace Who Had A US Air Force Base Named After Him

• 1st Lt. Frank Luke Jr. was a Medal of Honor recipient with an impressive but tragically short combat career.

• Luke was renowned for his aerial combat prowess, destroying 14 German balloons and 4 aircraft in just 17 days.

• Despite his young age, Luke’s legacy lives on with honors like Luke AFB in Arizona and displays at the USAF Museum.

Manfred von Richthofen AKA “The Red Baron.” Oswald Boelcke. Eddie Rickenbacker. Billy Bishop. When one thinks of flying aces of the First World War, chances are these are the names that come to mind.

But there’s another air ace of “The Great War” whose name isn’t quite as famous as the four aviators mentioned in the previous paragraph, yet he was a Medal of Honor recipient and has a US Air Force base named in his honor. Simple Flying now looks at the brief but noteworthy military aviation career of 1st Lt Frank Luke Jr., United States Army Air Service (USAAS).

Frank Luke’s early life

Frank Luke Jr. was born on May 19, 1897, in Phoenix. As per the Lt. Frank Luke Jr. Museum, his parents were Frank Luke Sr., who had emigrated from Germany in 1873 (rather ironic in light of the fact that Junior would end up going to war against Senior’s country of birth), and the former Ms. Tillie Lubenow (about whom I don’t have any additional information, except that she was also a German immigrant). Frank Jr. was the fifth child out of nine kids. He learned how to shoot and owned his first gun at age 12, thus honing at an early age the marksmanship skills that would later serve him so well in adulthood as a fighter pilot.

Frank excelled in sports at Phoenix Union High School, participating in basketball, track (he was captain of the track team), bare-knuckled boxing, and football; reportedly, he once suffered a broken collarbone during a particularly important football game, but refused to leave the field until the game was over.

He worked briefly in the copper mines, and it was whilst he was engaged in such work that he learned about America’s entry in WWI, receiving the news when he rode into the mining town of Globe. Frank spent the next several days contemplating enlistment.

Read the entire article on the Simple Flying website.
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