The Death of Hobey Baker

The 1918 winter solstice in western France was wet and gray, six weeks after the World War I Armistice. Persistent rain fell rain fell like a thick mist on Toul’s Gengoult Air Field, used exclusively by the U.S. Army’s 141^st Aero Squadron. Air traffic had been light since November 11. Nearly all of the squadron remained at the base following the end of fighting, each man waiting for the call to return home from this dreadful war. The past few years had not only cost the lives of so many fellow pursuit pilots, but also a generation of young men, slaughtered in the trenches below.

The dirt runways of the Aerodrome were starting to mud up. All but one of the squadron officers were huddled in the single-story bungalow that served as their base. The scent of roasting chestnuts enveloped the men in the semi-circle around the wood stove; they sipped cognac and Benedictine despite the fact it was not yet lunch hour. Lethargy reigned.

The arrival of a loud internal combustion engine intruded into the malaise. The men turned towards the windows and opened the door. Their commanding officer, Captain Hobey Baker, was returning from Paris with his chauffeur in a combination motorcycle. Typical of Baker’s altruistic sense of humor, the designated driver Howard Nieland was in the sidecar, boots up, smoking a fat cigar. Both men were beaming smiles and laughing hard, bringing light and energy into an otherwise dreary day.

Baker burst into the officer’s quarters in a manic rush, brandishing his orders home in front of his peers, all of them impatient to get off the continent. His subordinates had no choice but to allow Captain Baker his fun. His tenure as an officer had been colored by kindness: not only had he shared in all the risk while flying over German lines, but at every opportunity Baker singled out each deserving mate for bravery and honor. Despite royal status due to his Ivy League sports heroics, Hobey shared communal affection with all his men, regardless of rank.

All of a sudden, Baker’s gleeful reverie took an awful turn in the eyes of his troops. “I’m taking one last flight in the old Spad,” said Baker, intending to enjoy a final rush from being airborne in the wicker and canvas Spad aircraft, a machine that had become an extension of his body and spirit over the last year and a half. The room went deathly silent, the good-natured laughing quashed as the officers stared, jaws slack. Every man in that room considered himself a lucky survivor of this “Great” war; fliers entered WWI with but a two-week life expectancy. Considering how flimsy their planes were, and that there were not nearly enough mechanics to keep the machines properly maintained, the fact that these airmen were still alive and sipping Cognac was a near miracle, and they all knew it.

Donald Herring, Hobey’s academic advisor from Princeton, was in the room, and his blood went cold after Baker’s declaration. Through fate, Herring found himself a frequent participant in Hobey’s mythology. Herring kept showing up in critical junctures in his protégé’s life: he was Hobey’s first academic advisor and his assistant football coach for two years at Princeton, now he found himself face-to-face with Hobey at his life’s most crucial fork in the road. The headstrong Adonis prepared for his final flight off that muddy airfield in western France with only Herring standing between him and his plane.

Back at Princeton—what seemed like a lifetime ago—Herring held unquestioned authority over Baker, professor to pupil. But on this dark day in Toul, none of that held sway. Captain Baker was the commanding officer of this outfit, and the anxious protests by the men inside the officers’ quarters were ignored by the giddy Baker. All WWI dogfighters were a superstitious lot, they knew that whether they lived or died was dictated as much by luck as skill. Taking “one last flight” to a pilot often meant just that, and the men were horrified that their beloved leader was defying the deadliest of all of their unwritten rules—tempting the fates.

Herring cornered Baker, and made his most persuasive pitch, but failed to dissuade the captain. Hobey loved to take absurd chances in the air, so Herring at least convinced the 26-year-old daredevil to keep things simple. “He gave me his promise that he would fly straight out to Pont-A-Mousson and back, and land without acrobatics,” said Herring, who fought back tears in their final encounter.

            The scene took yet another morbid turn as Hobey strode into the squadron hangar moments later. As the captain approached his trusty Spad Number 2, a mechanic who will go down in infamy, took center stage for a single line. “Captain Baker, sir, Number 7 is ready for a flight test.”

Number 7 was a Spad with a wonky carburetor, the most unreliable piece of equipment in the combustion process for these archaic engines. The original Claudel carburetor had jammed in a recent flight, prompting a near-accident to Number 7. A young pilot then refused to fly it until the temperamental equipment was switched out. The mechanic replaced the Claudel with a Zenith, and presented the repaired plane to Baker.

Over howls of protest, Baker did not hesitate. “All right, I’ll take Number 7.” Now, even lowly enlisted men joined the officers in loud protest. “One sergeant in deliberate insubordination wheeled out Hobey’s own Number 2 from the hangar, but to no avail,” wrote biographer Davies.

In surreal succession, the Number 7 was rolled out through the steady rain, the sergeant spun the propeller, and the motor fired and caught. Herring was the last man to speak to Baker as the machine warmed up. Once again Hobey assured his concerned friend that there would be no shenanigans on this flight, a projected 40-mile round trip expecting to last about 15 minutes. Baker then climbed into the cockpit, made eye contact with his college mentor, and proceeded to shut himself into a craft he had never before flown.

Hobey took off towards the northwest corner of the airfield, directly into the wind. As was his norm, he lowered the nose of his machine immediately after becoming airborne and clearing the high trees. He gunned his V-8 Hispano-Suiza engine to 2200 RPM’s. Now fully powered, the plane became Baker’s own wings and ballast. In front of his stunned mates, he made his signature chandelle climb, a near vertical ascent with a slight corkscrew to the right. The most competent flyer in the squadron leveled off at just over 300 feet and surveyed the socked-in farmlands. He pointed the Spad east-northeast. A quarter mile into the journey, the Zenith carburetor cut out, and Hobey was now gliding with a dead engine. Herring looked up, and broke into a frantic run.
The new book, Hobey Baker Upon Further Review, is now available on Amazon