On a June morning in 1918, a brightly colored Fokker D.VII swept down on the tail of a disabled American-flown Breguet. It looked as if the German had made another kill, but the Breguet had only feinted. When the Fokker came within 20 yards, the American observer popped back into position and sprayed the startled German with twin Lewis guns. The crippled D.VII circled briefly, then stood on its nose. Its pilot jumped, but the windblast slammed him into the rudder. There—his parachute harness hooked to the falling Fokker—was the German ace Ernst Udet! Struggling furiously, he freed himself, his parachute opening only 250 feet from the ground. He landed amid constant shelling and sporadic gassing. Painfully wounded in the head and lightly gassed, Udet escaped to his lines.

The next day, he climbed into a new Fokker and shot down a SPAD for his 36th kill.

Udet emerged from the war as Germany's greatest living ace, with 62 victories. Always an outstanding aerobatic artist, he revolutionized stunt flying and became a public idol as "The Flying Fool" in the 1920s. In the next decade, he helped develop the dive-bombers and fighters that were to terrorize the world, becoming a colonel, general, and then chief of the technical department of Hitler's Air Ministry.

Udet, however, became a victim of Nazi intrigue. On November 18, 1941, it was announced he suffered fatal injuries while testing a new weapon. But for the man who maintained that “only death flies faster,” it was a single bullet in the brain that brought about his end. Ernst Udet had killed himself.