There are few episodes in American history to match the daring and reckless courage that characterized the young Americans who flew for France in World War I and were known as the LaFayette Escadrille.

With the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, hundreds of young Americans volunteered to fight for the French cause Some arrived to take part in an epoch-making event; others went for adventure; but for many there was a genuine love of France and its culture, an appreciation of the democratic traditions which the German onslaught seemed to threaten. Most volunteers served as ambulance drivers or fought with the French Foreign Legion. But by 1915 a number of Americans had made their way into the French Flying Corps -- the Service Aeronautique.

In 1915 Norman Prince of Massachusetts and William Thaw of Pennsylvania petitioned the French government to form a squadron composed entirely of American volunteers. The idea went nowhere until early 1916, when French officials saw it as a way to encourage American support for the Allied cause. The German government protested that the newly formed Escadrille Americaine was a violation of American neutrality. To defuse the issue, the name of the squadron was changed to the Escadrille LaFayette.

In many ways the LaFayette Escadrille was typically American, exuberant, democratic, spoiled, reckless and fully convinced of the rightness of their cause. Though the Escadrille started out in relative comfort at the Luxueil Spa, far from the war’s main action, they soon found themselves in the war’s epicenter at Verdun, where they would spend 113 days fighting the best pilots Germany had to offer. Escadrille pilots quickly won a reputation for bold attacks on enemy observation planes, often against overwhelming odds.

Their German adversaries were better trained and in most cases better armed. Like other pilots in this first aerial war, they flew primitive airplanes to altitudes as high as 20,000 feet, all without a parachute. If their plane caught fire -- and the planes were extremely flammable -- there were two options: either be roasted alive or jump to their death a mile or more below.

Lafayette Escadrille will tell the story of the thirty eight Americans from radically different backgrounds who created a legend in the skies over France. In the end, almost a third of the Escadrille pilots would be killed in the war. For the survivors, nothing could ever equal the thrill of aerial combat that had so severely tested the limits of their endurance.