Like most great heroes, Frank Luke was a man of awesome contradictions. He was a tremendous brawler and knew a hundred different ways to kill a man with his bare hands, yet sometimes he liked to masquerade as a girl. He was arrogant, swaggering and brutal. Yet once he spent his last quarter so a crippled friend could eat.

Regarded as one of the greatest aviators the world has ever known, Frank Luke was one of four American combat flyers in the First World War to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Yet he was so insubordinate that, had he lived, he would been recommended for a general court martial from the U.S. Army Air Service.