Great Britain's Royal Air Force will present an official flag to the National Churchill Museum on Aug. 14.
The presentation will reaffirm the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain and commemorate the American airmen and women who volunteered to fight the Nazis over London before the United States entered World War II, according to a news release.
The public is invited to attend this presentation at 11 a.m. in the museum's historic Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury in Fulton.
The three Eagle Squadrons were formed in late 1940 when Americans traveled to England from Canada to volunteer to become fighter pilots in the RAF as Great Britain - under the leadership of Prime Minister Winston Churchill - defended itself against Adolf Hitler's German Luftwaffe.
"At the time, the U.S. was not at war, and these young pilots - many of them roguish adventurous types - took great personal and legal risks to travel to England to fight with the RAF to save Britain and defeat tyranny," said Timothy Riley, chief curator of the museum. "Churchill held these brave Americans in the highest regard and considered their help as an essential building block to the 'special relationship' he often referred to in describing the connection between the U.S. and UK."
At first, to skirt American laws that prohibited them from fighting for a foreign entity, the volunteers were listed as Canadian or South African. But in September 1940, Churchill intervened, and the Air Ministry officially organized the 71st, 121st and 133rd American Eagle Squadrons as a branch of the RAF.
They fought to save London in the Battle of Britain and in other air wars across Europe at the start of WWII. Once the United States entered the war in 1942, the 8th U.S. Air Force was formed in England and the three Eagle Squadrons became part of the "Mighty Eighth" U.S. Air Force as the 4th Fighter Group.
Despite their flying prowess, nearly 100 of the 244 highly decorated members of the Eagle Squadrons never made it home.
One of those airmen was Fulton's own First Lt. John F. Lutz, an alumnus of Westminster College. He joined the 71st Eagle Squadron in 1941 at age 23. On May 4, 1943, Lutz's plane was hit by enemy fighters over the English Channel, and he was forced to bail out. His body was never recovered.
America's National Churchill Museum has a permanent exhibit honoring Lutz.
Commodore James Linter OBE, the RAF's Air Attaché in Washington, will present the flag (often called an ensign) to the museum in honor of the legendary Eagle Squadrons.
The RAF flag will be on display in the church - the official chapel of the Eagle Squadrons. The Eagle Squadrons still exist and are now assigned to the U.S. Air Force's 4th Fighter Group at Seymour Johnson Air Base in North Carolina.
Executives from Boeing, which acquired St. Louis-based McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft in 1997, also will be saluted for the Boeing and Douglas fighter planes used by the U.S. and British air forces in World War II.
They included Boeing's B-17 (The Flying Fortress) and B-29 (The Liberator), and Douglas's A-20 (Havoc), A-26 (Invader), C-47 (the U.S.'s Skytrain/Britain's Dakota), C-54 (The Skymaster), and the SBD Dauntless, the primary carrier-based dive bomber in WWII.
Also participating in the ceremony will be Westminster College President Fletcher Lamkin; Gen. Richard Harding, (Ret.) USAF; Gary D. Joiner, professor of history at Louisiana State University; and Riley, the Sandra L. and Monroe E. Trout director and chief curator of the museum.
The ceremony also will mark the opening of new exhibit "The Few: Winston Churchill and the Royal Air Force." It will display rarely seen items from the museum's collection and archives related to the Eagle Squadrons and the Battle of Britain.