Capt. Frederick Libby When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, Capt. Frederick Libby of Sterling, Colo., was a member of the British Royal Flying Corps. To celebrate American entry into the war, he cut two streamers from a U.S. flag, tied them to the struts of his airplane, and flew them across enemy lines. After the U.S. entered the war, Libby transferred to the U.S. Army Air Service. In October 1918 he returned to the U.S. and auctioned the two streamers at Carnegie Hall in an event that raised $3.25 million in Liberty War Bond subscriptions. The New York Tribune reported, "A timid young officer with a tattered thing in his hand mounted the Liberty Theater platform yesterday, and while he stood there, cheeks burning with embarrassed red ... a crowd that the moment before had gaped and grinned and jostled, after one slow stare with a sudden passion, stormed toward him ...The first American flag to fly over the German lines, in the hands of the aviator who carried it there, had come back to New York to be baptized with the tears and kisses of a motley New York throng. Those hundreds sought to grasp the precious stripes of red and white and to shake the hand of Capt. Frederick Libby." Libby later wrote about the streamers: "They had become part of me. They were with me in many a battle, some of which we lost, some of which we won, but we always came back together." Click here to return to the American Air Combat Stories Overview.