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| Lieutenant Stephen W. Thompson |
On February 5, 1918, Lieutenant Stephen Wilkins Thompson of
West Plains, Missouri, became the first flyer in an American Uniform to shoot down a German plane, not because he was trained for it, but because he was in the right place at the right time. He was in Neufchateau, France just as the Breguet Day Bombardment Group No. 5 was departing for Saarbrucken, Germany to conduct a daylight air raid. Although trained to be an observer, that day, Thompson became a gunner.
Background
At the end of 1917 the First Corps, First American Army, was being organized near Gondrecourt, France. The First Corp's Air School was established at the nearby town of Amanty. The officers who trained at the school became members of various Observation Squadrons that participated in the Battle of the Marne. The observers were trained by officers from a French squadron and were instructed in radiotelegraphy, photography, and were given two or three hours of flight training. According to Thompson, in an article he wrote for the U.S. Air Services Magazine, “Bringing Down the First German Airplane” in December 1936, “This was not enough to make it safe for us to take an airplane off the ground alone, but some of our pilots had not had much more when they first arrived at the school.”
After graduating from the Air School, the observers and
gunners were assigned to active duty and sent to the front lines with only 12
hours of air training.
The FlightWhile in training, some of the student officers began to go on bombing raids with the French Breguet Day Bombardment Group No. 5 which was located in Neufchateau, France. Thompson was able to participate in one of these bombing raids, on February 5, 1918. He and several other students accompanied Lt. Richard Whitner to Neufchateau as observers. However, things quickly changed when it was time for the raid to begin. Thompson explains the events that led to his participation in the air raid in the following excerpt from the previously mentioned article:
Lieutenant Whitner climbed into his
machine, which was loaded with 28 small bombs. I shook hands with him and said,
“Well, goodbye Dick, I’ll see you again in about three hours.” At this moment a
French officer rushed up and asked if I wanted to take the place of one of
their bombers who was sick. I said “Yes.” He asked me about three times if I
were a gunner, before he would let me go. Although I had never fired a machine
gun, I assured him that I was a gunner.
There were some thirty machines lined up ready to go and it looked as
though it would be fairly safe to go along even if we met a whole squadron of
German airplanes. The thrill of a daylight bombing raid over Germany, thus
suddenly offered to me, was an opportunity I intended to grab before they could
change their minds.
Thompson was cleared to participate in the raid by his Commanding Officer of the Air School, Major Ralph Royce. The target of the raid was the industrial
sector of Saarbucken which was a large German City. He described his flight experience. Thompson discussed his heated flight suit, his difficulty breathing, and the fantastic aerial views including "No Man's Land" in great detail in the article. Thompson's enjoyment was quickly interrupted because several
miles before they reached Saarbucken, the Germans started to shell the French planes. Thompson
described this encounter in vivid detail in the excerpt below :
We were still several miles from
the place when they started shelling us.
The first salvo of shells burst far below us. We were more than three miles high 5200 meters,
and I thought at first that they couldn’t reach us. There must have been several batteries firing
because they literally speckled the sky with bursting shells. We spread out in in order to scatter the fire. My doubts concerning the range of German
anti-aircraft artillery were quickly dispelled by a salvo of shells which burst
above us. One shell from this salvo burst on our level, off to one side and
between us and another machine. It was a
high explosive shell and the puff of black smoke boiled out like smoke from a
smokestack. The gruff bark of the
explosion could be heard above the explosions of the other shells, and drowned
out the roar of our own unmuffled engine. The concussion gave us a bounce, like
riding over the curb on an automobile.
The shelling didn’t last long as the Germans didn’t want to
shoot down their own Albatross pursuit planes which were
quickly approaching the French planes. The French dropped their
bombs on the targets but the German squadron had not given up their pursuit. In fact, the attack on the plane that Thompson was in resulted in his shooting down a German plane. Thompson described this experience in the excerpt below:
We were directly in the line of
fire from the enemy plane, and it was not possible to swing my guns down over the
side of our plane far enough to bring him in line with my sights. [the Pilot] gave the rudder a kick skidding the
plane to one side. This took us out of his line of fire and put him directly
off the right side of our machine. I
gave him both barrels, I could see by tracer bullets where the shots were
going. He turned sharply and went into a
nose dive. I watched him drop about 1,000 feet and then turned my attention to
the others. There was such confusion
that it was impossible to pick out an enemy plane and shoot at it without
shooting one of your own... The fight didn’t last long. Having already dropped our bombs we easily out
climbed them and headed back to France.
Although there is documentation that proves his story, Thompson
was never officially recognized as the first American in a United States uniform to
shoot down a German plane. However, he did receive official credit for shooting down two German planes during the Second Battle of
the Marne in July 1918.
The Aftermath
In the 1930s, a campaign led by the American Legion's Dayton Post Five was started to get Thompson’s accomplishments acknowledged. They contacted the War Department, The Military Attache in Berlin, and Major Royce, Thompson's Commanding Officer at the Air School, for statements to the authenticity of Thompson's claim. The American Legion was actually able to get a Congressman to sponsor a Bill in reference to the case. Unfortunately, the bill died in committee because of the statements made by the War Department (see War Department letter below). There are conflicting stories as to why the War Department never acknowledge Thompson’s success, some sources say it was due to red tape or a fluke while others argue that it was because there were no witnesses. According to the Army Corps News Letter, dated November 14, 1930, “Due to earlier abuses on confirmations on ‘counting coup’ it became the custom not to confirm victories unless they had been witnessed by someone from an organization other than that of the victor.”
At any rate, in September 1935, when the American Legion contacted the Missouri Historical Society and provided them with documentary evidence of Thompson’s achievement, the organization acknowledged his accomplishments. They displayed the documents provided (see below) in their War Exhibition. These documents are now located in the Museum’s Library and Research Center in the World War I collection.
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| Letter from Assistant Secretary of War to Senator Bennett Clark in which the War Department does not question the authenticity of Thompson's claims, but cannot recognize them officially. |
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| Letter from Jacob W.S. Wuest, Military Attache to the Charge d'Affaires as interim, American Embassy in Berlin. In reference to the German plane that Thompson shot down. |
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| Thompson's completed Medal Application and Biography and Service Record form |
Thompson settled in Dayton, Ohio after the war where he retired as a teacher from Patterson Co-operative High School. A member of the American Legion and the V.F.W., he died in Dayton on October 9, 1977.
Sources:
WWI Collection, Missouri History Museum, Library and Research CenterThe Journal Herald (Dayton, Ohio), October 11, 1977.
