Frank Leaman Baylies

Early life and ground service Baylies was the son of Lydia Terry Paige and Charles S. Baylies. He was born on 23 September 1895 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was educated in Providence, Rhode Island, first at Jerih Swift High School, then at Moses Brown School.

Ground service

Baylies volunteered for the Ambulance Corps in May 1916 and originally saw service on the Western Front and in Serbia and Salonika.

What price champagne?

Then came a spectacular performance on 9 May. It was sparked by a disagreement between René Fonck on one hand, and Baylies and his friend Edwin C. Parsons on the other. Although Fonck's three dozen victories spoke for themselves, the American duo believed that his attitudes in his actual speech was atrocious. Perturbed by Fonck's highhanded lectures on aerial success, the two Americans bet Fonck a bottle of champagne that one of them would shoot down an enemy plane before Fonck. Baylies took off despite hazy weather and shot down a Halberstadt CL.II. Back at the airfield, rather than pay off the bet, a sulky Fonck badgered the Americans to change the terms of the bet to whoever shot down the most Germans that day would win. Lingering fog kept Fonck grounded most of the day. It was well into the afternoon before it cleared enough for him to take off at 1500 hours. Between 1600 and 1605 hours, he shot down three enemy two-seater reconnaissance planes. A couple of hours later, he repeated the feat. Understanding the importance of reconnaissance planes, with their potential to direct intensive artillery fire onto French troops, Fonck concentrated his attentions upon them; six shot down within a three-hour span proved it.