Documentary on American Renegade Pilot Moving Forward (VIDEO)

As a documentary producer, Salem-News.com's Tim King has followed the story of WW1 pilot Frank Luke across the world, literally.

American WW1 ace 2nd Lt. Frank Luke Jr.

(SALEM) - Frank Luke Jr.`s life was short; he was only 21 at the time of his death in 1918, shot down in a biplane over France in the last months of WW1. But in a very short period of time, this blonde-haired blue-eyed cowboy from Arizona had gone from being a young, brash pilot criticized by his peers for his attitude, to the leading ace of his nation¦ quite a feat in only three weeks.

I began researching Luke`s story in the late 1990`s and one of the initial things I learned then was that I wasn`t the first to do so; two other researchers had already followed Luke`s trail across the world as I did, visiting France and Arizona and the relative points in between. The first researcher worked in the 1930`s when most of the Germans who brought Luke down were still alive. The next worked in the early 1960`s and that was when many of the alleged witnesses of Luke`s death were still alive.

The work of those researchers has never been published. I decided to produce a television documentary on the life and death of this American hero and over the years a good deal of the work has been completed.

Luke`s death has swirled in controversy since that long ago day in 1918. Residents of the then German-occupied village of Murvaux, France signed an affidavit in 1919 stating that after shooting down three German balloons and two biplane fighters, Luke was shot down by a German anti-aircraft gun. They said he strafed a column of German soldiers in the town`s main street just before crash landing in a small farm field. Then, Luke is reported to have brandished his pistols and fought the approaching enemy soldiers until he fell in a hail of German gunfire.

The problem is, Luke only had one obvious bullet wound when the American War Graves Commission pulled him from a shallow grave in January 1919, four months later. That does not stand up to the `hail of German gunfire' idea. Then when the researcher in the 1930`s visited Murvaux and told the residents what the affidavit, printed in English only, said, they told him that none of them had actually seen that. Government embellishment? Hard to say, but that is certainly what many people conclude. It is not far fetched to think that a little fiction might have been added to the story of a hero to make him even bolder as a character in history. Depictions of Luke with his guns blazing at the Germans were common among artists.

Over time I visited numerous places associated with Frank Luke, learning more and more along the way. When I visited Murvaux, France, the place where Luke was shot down September 29th 1918, I learned that it was the first time an American TV crew had ever visited the place.

The late aviator`s family granted interviews to our team in the summer of 2000, and it was the first time TV cameras ever rolled on the Luke family when they discussed their late, famous relative. Sadly, none of them actually knew Frank Luke Jr., but two of his sister-in-laws, each 93-years old at the time, spoke in great detail about the immediate years after his death.

Even before his death, Frank Luke Jr. had become a super hero in the United States, France and Great Britain. Throughout the 1920`s and 1930`s Luke comic strips, trading cards, photos, toys, replica model planes and many other `Frank Luke" items were popular among America`s youth. WWII hadn`t happened yet, and WW1 was supposed to be the war to end all wars, so it didn`t diminish until the late 1930`s when the Second World War began.

Neil Armstrong is a good example of somebody who grew up thinking Luke was the first and last word in air combat and American heroism. Luke was the first American aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, but his commanding later said he was drawing up court martial papers when Luke took to the air for the last time.

Luke resented authority. There is little doubt about that, and he also liked to ditch the American formations after a flight and landed at a French field. Interestingly, the French seemed very fond of the young American cowboy who hailed from the old west. Luke`s dad was a saloon keep in the 1880`s, so he grew up literally steeped in old west culture. In this period, at least among the elite U.S. aviators he served with, Luke`s rough and ready type of personality was out of sync. These guys carried walking sticks and many went to Ivy League schools. Frank Luke on the other hand, never went to college. He had to lie about it just to go to officer`s training school.

Luke`s story quickly grew more compelling; I learned that on the day of his death, his mother had `a bad feeling." She instinctively walked out to her garden where Frank had planted lily bulbs on his last day of leave before shipping off to war. The lilies were blooming six months out of season in the form of a cross. This story was reported in Chicken Soup for the Gardener`s Soul and is just one small part to one of the saddest and most courageous aviator tale ever told. Luke was called a `maverick aviator" and it was for him the term was coined.

His specialty was shooting down hydrogen-filled German observation balloons. No other pilots wanted anything to do with it; it was more than risky work as the balloons were valuable information gathering platforms. Before it was over, Luke became known as `The Arizona Balloon Buster" and he remained America`s top ace until the last weeks of the war when the famous Captain Eddie Rickenbacker passed his score.

Over the past year, author Blaine Pardoe, researcher Jean Armstrong and I have been working together on the project and we all recently rendezvoused at a museum in Fort Upton, Colorado where invaluable artifacts and documents relating to the story are housed. It led to several breakthroughs in the story and elements like Luke`s romance with a girl in San Diego that he planned to marry, and his relationships with two wingmen who died flying at his side, took huge leaps forward.

The video posted below was created five years ago and is only now showing publicly. It was produced to show to potential investors. It just barely scratches the surface of Luke`s story, but shows the relative places like Murvaux, France and some interviews with the family members. Special thanks to Co-Producer Bonnie King for her endless contributions to Frank Luke`s story, Director of Photography Dave Pastor of Cannon Beach for his amazing photographic contributions, and to Roger Robertson of KBCH Radio in Lincoln City, the person who gave me my first break in TV news back in March of `88, who lent his voice to the project.

Please, tell people about this project. A small investment is still needed to complete the documentary and release it at the same time Blaine Pardoe releases his book on Luke. Nobody has done an in-depth project on Luke for television and the amount of material that will go into it, all a product of hard work and diligent research, will tell an incredible biographical tale of a real American hero who`s story nearly became lost.

As we celebrate another Memorial Day, those who think American military history is important should please consider helping us complete the documentary on Luke. After you watch the video, visit www.frankluke.com to learn more about the documentary and the people who will bring it forward if we have to fund entirely ourselves.

WATCH THE VIDEO ON PILOT FRANK LUKE JR. BELOW
Video

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With almost 25 years of experience on the west coast and worldwide as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor, Tim King is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine who follows stories of Marines and Marine Veterans; he's covered British Royal Marines and in Iraq, Tim embedded with the same unit he served with in the 1980's.

Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing from traditional mainstream news agencies like The Associated Press and Electronic Media Association; he also holds awards from the National Coalition of Motorcyclists, the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs; and was presented with a 'Good Neighbor Award' for his reporting, by the The Red Cross.

Tim King reporting from the war in Iraq

Tim's years as a Human Rights reporter have taken on many dimensions; he has rallied for a long list of cultures and populations and continues to every day, with a strong and direct concentration on the 2009 Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka. As a result of his long list of reports exposing war crimes against Tamil people, Tim was invited to be the keynote speaker at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) Conference in Baltimore, in July 2012. This is the largest annual gathering of North American Tamils; Tim addressed more than 3000 people and was presented with a traditional Sri Lanka ‘blessed garland’ and a shawl as per the tradition and custom of Tamil Nadu

In a personal capacity, Tim has written 2,026 articles as of March 2012 for Salem-News.com since the new format designed by Matt Lintz was launched in December, 2005. Serving readers with news from all over the globe, Tim's life is literally encircled by the endless news flow published by Salem-News.com, where more than 100 writers contribute stories from 23+ countries and regions.

Tim specializes in writing about political and military developments worldwide; and maintains that the label 'terrorist' is ill placed in many cases; specifically with the LTTE Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, where it was used as an excuse to slaughter people by the tens of thousands; and in Gaza, where a trapped population lives at the mercy of Israel's destructive military war crime grinder. At the center of all of this, Tim pays extremely close attention to the safety and welfare of journalists worldwide.