Talk:Eddie Rickenbacker

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according to: http://www.historynet.com/ahi/blcaptaineddie/ "Contrary to legend, he was not assigned to General John J. Pershing but did wangle an assignment driving Colonel William "Billy" Mitchell's flashy twin-six Packard" Pibwl 15:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] movie

he was played by Fred MacMurray in a move, any truth to the story of him almost running over fred as a kid?

[edit] Did Eddie run over Fred?

Unlikely. Rickenbacker grew up in Ohio; MacMurray was born in Illinois and apparently lived in Wisconsin as a youngster. Though EVR certainly got around as a race driver, when he joined the army in 1917 FM would've been 8 or 9 years old.

[edit] Eddie sold the Indy Speedway in '45, not '47

Rickenbacker sold the Speedway in 1945, not 1947. The first race under Tony Hulman and President Wilbur Shaw was in 1946 and was won by George Robeson.

Mark Dill

[edit] One reader's comments

I came to this article knowing nothing about Eddie Rickenbacker except that he was a pilot, and have these thoughts for the contributors: The article, while informative, seems to be based too much on Rickenbacker's autobiography; perhaps not coincidentally, it paints him as a virtual saint. I have no doubt that he did great things, but the article seems to go beyond encyclopedic (NPOV) retelling of his endeavors into outright praise of the man. Even the failure of his car company is passed off as being the fault of his competitors (which, I see on another site, was his version of the story).

Also, the article has too many subheadings. As one example, the section titled Historic view of armistice consists of a single sentence. Surely that one event could be integrated into another section. emw 05:37, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I've been trying to tone it down. --AW 08:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race Status?

What does that section mean? Rod, intake valve etc? It doesn't make any sense. --AW 08:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added a confusing tag to this section in hopes that a racing enthusiast can write an explanation of the included chart. Shsilver 16:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Those are the listed reasons for not finishing the race. Click one of the years and you'll see that on the finishing order, a status is given for each driver.--Senna27 (talk) 03:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. It's actually perfectly clear, if you read the table headings. Trekphiler (talk) 04:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Adrift At Sea section very one-sided

I thought that the Adrift At Sea section, like much of this article was very one-sided.

One book that may be another good source for this article is We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing by James C. Whittaker. It is a great book to get another perspective on his time in the raft, and how Rickenbacker was viewed by the others.

I am not going to add anything about it on Wikipedia as this is both my first post (read: I don't know what I am doing), and James Whittaker is a relative making me inherently biased, but it is definitely another place to look.

Several books came out of this incident, and I think it would greatly improve this article to add those accounts as well.

Tropicofwhitaker 17:28, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date of Death?

The page for July 23 says that he died on July 23, 1973, but this page says he died on July 27th.

[edit] In his sights

Can somebody clarify? Did he get 26 kills, or 9? Or what? Trekphiler (talk) 04:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)