Dusch Jr., Charles D. Balloon Ace

The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary

When aviator Charles A. Lindbergh made his famous round-the-country flight in his monoplane in 1927, the Spirit of St. Louis landed in Wheeling, West Virginia, to visit Linsly School. There, Lindbergh laid a wreath at the foot of the aviator statue erected by Sallie Maxwell Bennett in honour of her son Louis Bennett Jr., West Virginia's only flying ace in World War I. Although largely unknown today, Bennett was an Air Force pioneer whose tragically short career as a fighter pilot had a lasting impact on American aviation and on war memorials at home and abroad. In Balloon Ace: The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary, historian Charles Dusch reconstructs the lost legacy of Louis Bennett Jr. Bennett advocated for a national air force years before the writings of Billy Mitchell and founded a state air militia in 1917 with associated air bases and an aircraft factory. When the US Army rejected his unit, the frustrated Bennett joined the Royal Air Force to fight on the Western Front, where he destroyed nine German balloons and three aircraft within a few days before being shot down himself. In the second part of Bennett's story, Dusch traces Sallie Bennett's search for her son's body. Disguised as a journalist, Sallie travelled to Europe to search the cemeteries on the Western Front and later commissioned twelve memorials for Bennett, including a chapel in France, the RAF window in Westminster Abbey and the Aviator in Linsly. Moved by the enormous destruction of the continent, she eventually crossed political boundaries to give much-needed publicity to other mothers' demands that the US government repatriate their fallen relatives.