Though his kill count of 44 fell short of many of his countrymen, flying ace Albert Ball was arguably the British Empire’s most beloved fighter pilot during World War I. Renowned for his quiet demeanor—he supposedly loved gardening and lived alone in a small shack adjacent to his airplane hangar—Ball also had a ferocious fighting spirit. He often fought until his machine was riddled with enemy gunfire, and his do-or-die attitude established him as a wartime celebrity in the United Kingdom.
Ball usually took to the skies on solo patrol, stalking German reconnaissance planes and engaging fighter squadrons even when severely outnumbered. One of his favorite maneuvers involved slotting in beneath his enemy and using the tilting machine gun on his French-made Nieuport fighter to fire on them from below. Despite his gallant reputation, Ball was deeply troubled by the violence of combat and often wrestled with depression. The stress of war may have played a role in his demise in May 1917, when he mysteriously crashed while tangling with planes from the Red Baron’s “Flying Circus.” At the time of his death, he was only 20 years old.
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