Rural Missouri - February 2022 - 23

and dropped like a comet to the earth. "
The Journal-Gazette reported that
Stephen's hands were swollen to twice
their normal size due to exposure
to the extreme cold at the high
altitude.
Stephen was a student at
the University of Missouri
studying civil engineering
when the U.S. entered the
war. He left his studies
and enlisted, assured
that he would still graduate
with his class. After
basic training, he headed
to Fort Monroe in Virginia
where he learned
the strategies of coastal
defense artillery.
But the Army had different
plans for him when
he landed in France in the
summer of 1917. He would
train as an aerial observer,
fl ying in the back seat high
above the trenches and dropping
notes that would direct
artillery fi re.
After his historic fl ight he
joined an American unit, where
additional adventures - and
another aviation fi rst - awaited him.
The West Plains Quill told the story after
his parents shared a letter from him telling of
his latest exploits:
" Whether Lt. Stephen W. Thompson, former West Plains
high school boy with the 12th Aero Squadron, C.A.C. in
France, was too gallant to mention the fact that the German
aviator whom he killed in a recent air battle near
Sergy was a young woman masquerading as a man, or
that he is yet unaware of the fact, is a question which will
interest his many friends when they read his latest interesting
letter received here yesterday by his parents, " the
Quill reported.
A graves detail tasked with burying the bodies of the
downed fl yers discovered that a woman had piloted the
plane Stephen shot down. He was credited
with being the fi rst to shoot down a woman
aviator on a day that saw him add two planes
to his scorecard.
During this action Stephen was wounded
when a German machine gun bullet hit him in the
ankle. The pilot was also hit but still managed to
crash land the Salmson observation plane.
" I rattled around like a rock in a tin can and
broke nearly everything left in the ship by lunging
into it, " Stephen wrote in the letter to his parents. " As
we fell the remaining two enemy planes followed us down
shooting all the while. I saw two sticks in the framework
break as bullets went through, wires snapped and holes
appeared in the sheet metal in front of me, but none of the
bullets hit either the pilot or me. "
West Plains
A tree broke the plane's fall and
Stephen found himself still conscious
after the crash. He called out to the
pilot, who told him he had been hit.
Stephen pulled the pilot from the
cockpit, and with the help of
nearby doughboys, took him
to a hospital where the pilot
died the next day. Finding
the hospital busy, Stephen
removed the bullet from
his ankle himself, digging
it out with a pocketknife.
He kept the bullet as
a souvenir, and today it,
along with the bulletriddled
sock he was
wearing and his fl ight
uniform, are on display
at the National Museum
of the U.S. Air Force
at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base.
He would later learn
that the German fl yers
he tangled with were part
of the elite squadron put
together by Manfred von Richthofen,
better known as the
Red Baron. The action led to the
awarding of the French Croix de
Guerre with Palm Leaves along with a
citation from the French army's Chief of
Staff Marshall Philippe Petain.
It wasn't the fi rst time he made a hard
landing. On an earlier mission, Stephen and his pilot
crashed into a lake but crawled on top of the plane and
didn't even get wet after rescue by a motorboat. " I rather
enjoyed the excitement, " he told his parents in a characteristic
understatement.
When he returned home after the war, Stephen was dismayed
to learn the Army had bestowed the honor of shooting
down the fi rst plane to another man, Lt. Alan Winslow
of River Forest, Illinois, whose kill came two months after
Stephen's.
The War Department at the time had a rule against
establishing such fi rsts without positive proof from
eyewitnesses. Stephen's action took place deep into
Germany, while the offi cial kill happened over U.S.
lines where hundreds witnessed it.
He would spend many years fi ghting the red
tape that cost him offi cial recognition. After the
war, he located a war diary from the German
archives in Potsdam showing the location of
the plane he shot down and the name of the
pilot. He submitted that information, along with
copies of various U.S. newspaper stories, to prove
tape that cost him offi cial recognition. After the
his claim. But the stubborn military offi cials refused to
change the offi cial record.
In 1935, when Stephen had moved to Dayton, Ohio to
teach math and aeronautics, a push was made to change
the War Department's mind. U.S. Rep. Byron B. Harlan of
FEBRUARY 2022 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP 23
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