Yale’s World War I flying ace

National Museum of the US Air Force

World War I fighter pilot William Thaw, Class of 1915, with the two lions—Whiskey and Soda—he bought as mascots for the Lafayette Escadrille. Behind Thaw is a plane decorated with the insignia of the Lafayette. It had been designed by another Yale member of the squadron, Edward Foote Hinkle ’99. View full image

“I found myself all alone against four Germans with only one motor,” wrote pilot William Thaw, Class of 1915, in a 1915 letter to his brother from France, “but the Boches [Germans] had grown cautious by this time.… One, however, got up nerve enough to try to cut off my retreat, but… I was able to give him a couple of dozen bullets from our trusty gun (made in U.S.A.) and he fell en masse just behind the German lines.”

Thaw was the first US pilot to volunteer for France in World War I and one of the original nine members of the Lafayette Escadrille, a famous squadron of US volunteer pilots flying for France. He was an expert pilot—the first to take a plane up New York City’s East River and fly underneath all four bridges. In the summer of 1914, Thaw, who had left Yale for a career as an aviator, was in Paris, along with his personal Curtiss Hydro flying boat. When the war started, he donated his plane to the French and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. 

In December 1914, following basic training, Thaw qualified for service in a French escadrille (squadron). In April 1916, he joined the newly formed Escadrille Américaine—later called the Lafayette Escadrille, in honor of France’s role in the American Revolution. Thaw must have appreciated the name; he had enlisted on August 21, 1914, to commemorate Lafayette’s visit to Yale College on August 21, 1824. After America declared war in April 1917, the squadron would be transferred to the American Air Service. At least four other Yale alumni would serve in the squadron: Edward Foote Hinkle ’99, Ray Claffin Bridgman ’17, Julian Cornell Biddle ’12, and Dumarque Spencer ’17. The last two died in service and are remembered in Yale’s Memorial Hall.

Thaw had a lighthearted side. On a trip to Paris in fall 1916, he bought a lion cub and named it “Whiskey.” For his journey back to the base, he got a ticket that would let him bring a dog onto the train. As a friend of Thaw’s told it, the conductor asked, “What is that animal?” and Thaw answered, “An African dog.” Then Whiskey roared and showed his claws, “women jumped out of the carriage in terror,” and Thaw and Whiskey were banished to the baggage car. But the Escadrille pilots welcomed Whiskey as their new mascot; with some training he “soon became the best behaved of lions.” Thaw later bought a mate for Whiskey that he named Soda.

Thaw was perhaps the most celebrated pilot in the squadron. He is believed to have been the first American to take part in WWI aerial combat, winning his first air battle at Verdun in May 1916. Although a bullet broke his arm that year, he stayed in the service a long time: by the spring of 1918, he was the only one of the original nine members of the Lafayette still at the front. He also became one of the elite “flying aces”—pilots who had shot down at least five enemy aircraft. Many of his letters home were published in the Yale Daily News and the Yale Alumni Weekly, and accounts of his exploits appeared in the national press. Among his numerous decorations were a Croix de Guerre, the Légion d’Honneur, and a Distinguished Service Cross—which he received for leading a patrol of three planes that attacked eight enemy aircraft, downing three and dispersing the rest. By the end of the war he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and made commander of the Lafayette.

When Thaw died of pneumonia at 40, his New York Times obituary praised the Lafayette Escadrille for writing “blazing chapters in the history of wartime aviation.” Thaw himself, it said, had been known to the French as “the American Eagle.”