|
|
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.
If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.
Site Home
Help & FAQs
Features
Submissions
Information
Advertisements
World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Capt. Hobart Amory Hare Baker Croix de Guerre
United States Army 103d Aero Squadron Lafayette Escadrille
from:Phildadelphia, PA
(d.22nd Dec 1918)
Hobey Baker entered the U.S. Army in May 1917, just after the United States declared war on Germany. Three months later, he was sent to France, where, after superb marks in aerial gunnery training, he was accepted into the fabled Lafayette Escadrille, a combat pilot unit that later became the 103rd Aero Squadron (8th Feb. 1918). With an insatiable spirit for adventure, he was a natural at flying planes, maneuvering them as athletically as he did his body when dodging tacklers on the football field at Princeton. As a combat pilot, he had scraps in the sky with enemy gunners that resulted in three kills. After each one, he observed the code by which combat pilots lived: He honored his fallen foes with a toast of cognac. Baker was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for gallantry and was cited by Gen. John Pershing, the American Expeditionary Force commander, for distinguished service. At home, newspapers heralded him as a war hero.
When the war ended, in November 1918, he felt a sense of loss. He loved being a pilot and simply had not had his fill of flying and fighting. On Dec. 21, the day he was scheduled to leave Toul for Paris and then return to civilian life in the United States, he told his airmates he was going to go for "one last flight." Capt. Baker took off during a heavy rain. At 600 feet, the engine quit. Instead of trying to crash-land, Baker, with his typical I-can-get-through-this mind-set, tried to bring the plane back to base. But he didn't have enough altitude to regain flying speed and pull the nose of the plane back up. He crashed, nose down, near the air-base hangar. His air mates freed him from the wreckage. Minutes later, he died in an ambulance.
Related Content:
Can you help us to add to our records?
The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them
Did your relative live through the Great War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial?
If so please let us know.
Do you know the location of a Great War "Roll of Honour?"We are very keen to track down these often forgotten documents and obtain photographs and transcriptions of the names recorded so that they will be available for all to remember.
Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice.
Celebrate your own Family History
Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Great War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc.
Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.
The free section of The Wartime Memories Project is run by volunteers.
This website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.
If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.
Hosted by:
The Wartime Memories Project Website
is archived for preservation by the British Library
Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
- All Rights Reserved -We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.
