The Aug. 16 shoot-down is a controversial and confusing moment of American history. Descriptions of the combat are flawed and wildly contradictory, setting up two tracks of thought: 1. Frank Luke lied and spent the rest of his life trying to redeem himself; 2. Frank Luke told the truth - as best he could remember and describe it - and his comrades-in-arms were a pack of boorish, pig-headed jerks.

The 27th's mission on Aug. 16 was to protect two photo-recon Salmsons on multiple trips over the lines.

First, the divergent accounts, staring with Luke's own combat report:

"My machine was not ready so left an hour after formation, expecting to pick them up on the lines, but could not find formation. Saw Hun formation and followed, getting above into the sun. The formation was strung out, leaving one machine way into the rear.

"Being way above the formation I cut my motor and dove down on the rear man, keeping the sun directly behind. Opened fire at about 100 feet, keeping both guns on him until within a few feet of them, then zoomed away. When I next saw him he was on his back, but looked as if he was going to come out of it, so I dove again holding both guns on him. Instead of coming out of it, he sideslipped off the opposite side much like a falling lead and went down on his back.

"My last dive carried me out of reach of the other machine that had turned about. They gave chase for about five minutes and then turned back for I was leading them. My last look at the plane shot down convinced me that he struck the ground for he was still on his back about 1500 meters below.

"On coming home about our lines saw four E.A. Started to get into the sun and above but they saw me and dove towards me. I peaked for home. Three turned back and the other came on. I kept out of range by peaking slightly, and he followed nearly to Coincy where he saw one of the 95th boys and turned about. The 95th man could have brought down this EA if had realized quick enough that it was an EA.

"The machine was brought down North East of Soissons in the vacinity of Joui and Vailly. Do not know the exact locations as this being my first combat did not notice closely but know that it was some distance within German territory, for archies followed me for about 10 minutes on my way back.

"My motor was fixed at Coincy and filled with gas and oil. Also found out that our formation had been held up by the Salmson that it was to escort and had just started. So left the ground to find them. Flew at about 5000 meters from Soissons past Fismes, but did not see the formation. Saw one Salmson but no enemy E.A. Returned home."

In other words, Luke says his plane was delayed by engine trouble, that he headed out alone, crossed German lines, silently jumped an undescribed formation of unidentified aircraft, turned again and finished it off, then headed for home with a small formation on his tail. Never in Luke's account does he mention sighting the 27th's formation.

The informal history of the 27th credits Luke with the kill, describing it as a Fokker.

Hartney gives a slightly different account: "Several days later, Aug. 16, to be exact, I had my first real feel of Frank Luke's dependability in the air. Our advance airdrome at Coincy was ready for us, camouflaged gas trucks and everything, and we got orders to use that as the starting point for a protection patrol. We were having great trouble with the new Spads and the boys of the 27th and 147th had no confidence in them. A poorly housed reduction gear which would get our of line with the slightest nick in the propeller was constatnly causing us mechanical difficulties. It would vibrate and soon the various pieces of plumbing would start to ease loose and the engine would begin to miss or quit completely.

"At 5:05 p.m. I led a gang of 12 of our planes and three from the 94th out at 9000 feet to protect one of Ken Littauer's photographic Salmsons from the 88th squadron. We soared up in perfect formation. From Fere-en-Tardenois to Fismes, however, our boys began dropping out with engine trouble. Finally there was only one plane left besides mine. By now we were at 18,000 feet and had had several minor brushes with the enemy.

"It was one of those grim, heat-hazy days when it was particularly difficult to spot enemy ships...as I pulled in (at Coincy) there were 13 of our ships sitting on the ground. When I had taxied to a stop a lot of the pilots came running over to tell me they thought I had been lost and to utter loud and violent blashemies concerning the Spads and the French...I am told no man ever cursed as loud and as vehemently as I did...

"I was still ranting...when a lone Spad came in with the pilot goosing his engine and causing a terrific racket.

"'Here comes your boyfriend now,' said one man from the 27th. 'He said he was going to get his first Boche today or never come back. Let's see what the blowhard's got to say for himself. Bet he claims one.'

"Some of the others beat me getting over to find out what had happened to Luke. One came running back to me.

"'What did I tell you? He says he shot one off your tail.'

"...Frank Luke was a lonesome and despised man from that day until he brought down his first balloon near Marieulles on the St. Mihiel front on Sept. 12. In the whole group he found only three men who believed in him - Joe Wehner and Ivan Roberts in the 27th and Norman Archibald in the 95th. A few days later, just as we shifted to St. Mihiel, Archibald, a green but gallant pilot, was captured by the Germans. Luke spent most of his spare time on the machine gun range perfecting his already excellent marksmanship.

According to Luke's biographer, James Hall, Hartney believed his renegade pilot.

"I am firmly convinced the boy got the plane. His verbal account of the battle contained those little differences that give such a report the touch of verisimilitude. But the squadron didn't believe him, and that made Luke bitter," Hall quotes Hartney as saying.

"As a result Luke regarded his brother officers contemptuously, taunted them with their own shortcomings, dared them to fight, and when they declined, avoided them.

"All but one - Joe Wehner."

Other reports say Frank's kill went unconfirmed because Frank left a formation. Decisive Air Battles of the First World War says Luke deserted his formation and shot down an Albatros. Fighter Pilots of World War I says he decided to set off on his own and fly to a German airfield looking for a fight. "After flying for some minutes, he spotted an airfield on the horizon - and a second or two later he saw something even more inviting, six Albatros fighters, flying in formation towards the very field he had picked out."

Arch Whitehouse, who seems to have a real dislike for Frank, gives this account:

"Two days later (ed. note: Whitehouse, inaccurate as usual, means two days after Luke arrived at the 27th) Luke was again assigned to a familiarizing patrol under another leader and again he disappeared the minute the front line was reached, but this time he had peeled off into trouble. He was attacked by a Hun he had not seen. There was a jangle of metal, the scream of torn plating, and the clatter of engine parts. He was lucky to get back to his own field, but when he arrived and pointed out the damage he stoutly declared he had shot down an enemy aircraft.

"'What kind?'

"Frank Luke did not know.

"'Where?"

"He had no idea. Only Maj. Hartney and Joe Wehner believed him, but, unfortunately for Luke, Hartney was promoted the next day (editor's note: he's wrong. It was Aug. 22) and given command of the new First Pursuit Group. Capt. Alfred Grant, a keen disciplinarian, took over Number 27 Squadron. The squadron moved up to the Verdun front (when?) and settled in at Rembercourt where Luke was appointed an engineering officer and ordered to make the new camp shipshape. The records disclose that following his patrol on Aug. 16 when he claimed to have destroyed some kind of enemy plane, he did not fly again until Sept. 12 (ed. note: this, of course, is blatantly, stupidly wrong.).

Quentin Reynolds tells it this way:

"There was one thing the kid could do - he could shoot.

One day Hartney led a flight of 12 planes across the line to protect Maj. Littauer and six of his photographic machines from the 88th. Some Spads had arrived and the men had been having a great deal of trouble with them; a poorly housed reduction gear which would get out of line with the slightest nick in the propeller was causing servere mechanical difficulties. When the engine began to miss, pilots had orders to hurry home before it quit altogether. On this afternoon one engine after another showed signs of packing up, and plane after plane headed for home. Finally, Hartney was alone at 18,000 feet with one other Spad following him. It was a grim, heat-hazy day, and it was difficult to spot an enemy plane. When tracer bullets began to streak by, Hartney himself decided it was time to return and he headed for his field at Coincy. The other pilots had returned and were swearing loudly at the French who had wished these broken-down crocks on them. Hartney joined them wholeheartedly and then a single plane came in to land.

"'That's your friend Luke,' one of the men said to the C.O. 'He said he was going to get his first Boche today or not come back. Let's see what the blowhard has to say for himself. I bet he claims one.'

Sure enough, he did. He said excitedly that he had shot a plane down that was on Hartney's tail. "I never opened up until I had my gun right in that baby's cockpit," he said. "And I didn't leave him until he hit the ground with me not more than 200 feet behind him."

What really happened? Something like this: Frank hated formation flying and squadron discipline and wanted to get out on his own. He either faked a mechanical malfunction, allowed a mechanical malfunction to delay him or lucked into a fixable mechanical problem on Aug. 16, using the late start as an excuse to go prowling. Whatever the mechanical condition of his aircraft, Frank was looking for a fight.

Frank would have had a plan in mind. He went hunting, probably in an area where he had either noticed or heard about E.A. activity. Perhaps he even half-heartedly flew in search of his own patrol.

Then he got a break, spotting a formation. He stalked it as Hartney had taught him, climbing, keeping himself between the formation and the sun. Meanwhile, the fighters below have lost the cohesion of their formation, with a lone straggler hanging exposed on the ass-end.

Frank singled it out, cut his engine and pushed the stubby nose of the Spad into a dive, descending silently on the unsuspecting German airman below. At a range of only 100 feet Luke reignited his Hispano Suiza and opened up with both his Vickers, closing to point-blank range in a matter of seconds and saturating his victim's plane with lead. He zoomed off the target, pulling up and banking into a turn that let him look back at the floundering Albatros, on its back and falling.

A second Albatros, alerted to the surprise attack, wheeled around on Luke now. But the Arizonian remained focused on securing his first kill. Concerned that the pilot might yet right the doomed plane, Luke brought his fighter around and dove a second time, again closing to point-blank with a series of sharp bursts that sent the German into a sideslip spin on its back. It went down behind German lines near the French town of Soissons.

The dive carried him out of reach of the second Albatros, but the formation gave chase. It was pointless. Frank could now put the Spad's dubious attributes to their best use: its dive had carried it out of range, and its 130 mph speed meant it could outrun anything the Germans could put in the air. The formation chased him for five minutes, then gave up and returned home, its loss unavenged.

Isn't it interesting that in this, his first engagement, Frank has the good sense to hit and run? In future battles he wades into the midst of bad odds. But this first time around he has the good sense - could it be fear? - to run like hell.

On the way home, Luke ran into four more fighters, and again attempted to gain an advantage - Hartney would be proud - by climbing into their sun blind-spot. It didn't work The Germans sighted him and attacked, and again Luke ran for home. Three broke off almost immediately, but one stayed on his tail. Having just killed his first German in an ambusche, Luke apparently was in no mood for a fair fight. The lone German finally broke off near Coincy when a Kicking Mule Spad of the 95th appeared. Luke later offered advice to the 95th Squadron in his combat report: "The 95th man could have brought down this EA if he had realized quick enough that it was an EA." Ever the diplomat.

Luke probably expected some affirmation when he landed. Instead, he drew skepticism and bitterness. He comrades - who had just witnessed Nevius' grusome death - didn't celebrate his victory. They spurned it.

I imagine he took it harder than most. Frank Luke was a frontier original - the best and brightest boy in all of old Phoenix. Sometimes he went a bit overboard, but his was a charmed life. He naturally stood out from the crowd, and if people didn't take to him at first, well, they warmed to him over time. But here, on his first trip east (all the way east to France, in this case) he was running into something new.

Frank just didn't know the social order. He didn't defer to the veterans, didn't mix in the officers' mess, didn't staunch the flow of fear with clumbsy school-boy pranks and over-weaning comradery. Put simply, Frank didn't need his squadron for his emotional survival. And his squadron could never forgive him that separation.

It's clear in most accounts of squadron life that one is reading the propaganda of painfully young men whose previous horizon of experience consisted of frat parties and dining societies. Not everyone went to college in those days, and those who did typically viewed themselves as something of a breed apart. They drank liquor instead of beer, affected burnished walking sticks and eccentric personalities and palled around with a breezy, tepid indifference that barely masked their inner terrors.

To Frank, their clubby hostility would have looked more like the attitude of seniors to freshmen; a barrier to be broken down by skill, not schmoozing. He had always won the respect of his peers before and expected he would do so here, too.

At Saints, the opposite was true. Shunned by the cadre, the brash kid from Arizona only made things worse when he backed up his words with deeds. His achievements diminished them. And so they banded together against him, led by such pilots as Ack Grant (3 kills) and Gonny Clapp (2), Leo Dawson (4) and newcomer Tommy Lennon (2).

But Frank didn't know better. To him - a desert kid whose college experience consisted of convincing someone in Austin that he was a college boy - the solution to the hostility was simply to prove himself.

True, Frank didn't understand the importance of staying in formation and following orders. He just wanted to get in a dogfight and get it over with. So he fudges a late start on Aug. 16. Wanders a bit out of sector in search of trouble. Bounces a helpless Albatros and - excited and suddenly unsure of himself - dives wildly out of harm's way. He returns home exuberent...only to find the skeptics lying in wait for him. Even before he speaks, the boys of the 27th have declared him a liar.

Said nephew John Luke: "When he shot down his first plane, a bunch of the guys didn't believe him. The suggestion that he was a liar would have rankled him. It would have created an 'I'll prove it to you' sort of attitude."

Meanwhile, back at the front
Luke's claim made the mood in the officers' mess tense on the night of the 16th. The action in the Saints sector was essentially over - there wouldn't be another aerial victory for the 27th until Sept. 12 and the opening drive on St. Mihiel.

Frank would have sat quietly and sullenly. Clapp or Grant would have challenged him, perhaps. Joe would have observed it quietly with that cocked-head, under-the-brow expression of his. My best guess is that Frank on that night would have wanted to fight his accusers. And maybe he did. And maybe he won. And maybe all that did was make matters worse.

The next day, Frank took his usual approach to solving his problems. He did something. He went into the squadron office and commandeered the typewriter in the corner, pecking out confirmation blanks letter by letter. And he worked the hangars, fine- tuning his Spad. He concentrated more of his time on his gunnery, practicing whenever and wherever possible. For recreation he would take a squadron motorcycle out and race it up and down the airfield, a Colt .45-automatic in each hand. As he neared a tree- mounted target, Luke would raise both simultaneously and fire, practicing his concentration on the move.

Luke spent long hours going over his plane, taking up a half-turn on this turnbuckle, easing off a quarter of an inch on that wire. From other hangars and other planes he purloined sundry attachments, small parts and gadgets he believed would add to the fighting and manoeuvering ability of his Spad...In this respect he became a squadron pest. As one pilot complained to Grant: "It's got so you have to sleep in your ship if you want to keep the damn thing in one piece!"

Action around the 27th slowed to a crawl after Luke's first kill. Despite good weather on the 17th, the squadron put up only one eight-plane patrol all day. Luke wasn't on it. Same thing on the 18th - no patrols, only seven sorties, and Luke stayed on the ground. The slow pace continued through the first week in September, when the squadron made its stealthy move to Rembercourt. Frank Jr. didn't fly until the 22nd, but neither did most of the squadron. Frank and Joe flew on the 23rd, and Joe made a forced landing on the 25th. Both flew trial flights and target practice each day from Aug. 27-31, sometimes on days when no other pilot took off.

Things may have been quiet in the air, but events on the ground moved quickly. On Aug. 21, orders arrived promoting Hartney to Group commander. The suprise was his replacement: 1st Lt. Alfred "Ack" Grant. Headquarters could not have picked a more ironic successor to the quirky, easy-going Hartney.

Hartney was a wiry little Canadian with plenty of air combat experience and little formal military training, Grant was a serious, big-boned, over-bearing Texan who led the corps of cadets at Kansas State Agricultural College before dropping out as a junior to train as a pilot. Hartney believed that pilots were a special kind of soldier, and required freedom so that the spirit of enterprise - which Hartney deemed a pilot's most valuable attribute - could flourish.

Grant, a Toronto-trained pilot, "had always more or less had the West Point attitude," believing in soldierly discipline, chain of command, and the trappings of tradition.

The morning after taking command Grant set the tone for his tenure by rousting the 27th at reveille. He put the squadron in formation - mechanics and ground crews in their platoons, pilots arrayed in ranks and files by flight section.The sun rose slowly as Grant surveyed his new kingdom.

He needed to separate himself from his peers, the pilots he had flown with since Kelly Field in November. He introduced roll calls at night, at-arms drill for the enlisted men, and "many other small procedures so dear to the martinet."

Frank, of course, was not pleased with these developments. He hated his new commander, and the feeling was mutual. The one person is a position of authority who had believed in Frank's ability and character had moved on, leaving him in an extremely awkward position: there were German enemies to the east, and American enemies all around the officers' mess. Frank and Ack had already tangled, and now Ack was in a position to make Frank's life miserable. He started by naming Frank the engineering officer - a glorified name for the officer in charge of work details.

The 27th would spend another nine days tooling around skies of Saints, running into nothing. The sector had gone silent. On the 29th the squadron received orders to move, and on Sunday, Sept. 1, the 27th hit the road for a tiny grass field ringed by trees and not far from banks of the Marne, about 18 kilometers north of Bar le Duc. The maps called it Rembercourt.