In 1914 "The Great War" - WWI - began in Europe. By 1917 the Allied powers of France; England, Italy, and others were on the ropes against the German juggernaut. Some altruistic young Americans disagreed with the war. They volunteered to fight alongside their counterparts in France; some in the infantry, some in the Ambulance Corps. A handful of others had a different idea: they decided to learn how to fly. The first of them - a squadron of only 38 - became known as the Lafayette Escadrille. This is their story.
Forced to abandon his family's ranch, Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) finds his future in a newsreel chronicling the adventures of young aviators in France. At a small train station in rural Nebraska, William Jensen promises to make his family proud. In New York spoiled Briggs Lowry embarks on a trans-Atlantic passage. Together these American boys arrive at an aerodrome in France, eager to learn how to fly. What they didn't realize was that they were about to embark on a great romantic adventure, becoming the world's first combat pilots.
The exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille are also captured in several works of historical fiction including: Falcons of France by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (1929) and To the Last Man by Jeffrey Shaara.
France
