The Aviator

Jim McConnell was one of the first Americans to serve with the French during WWI, first as an ambulance driver and then as a pilot. On the University of Virginia campus, one can find a winged, twelve-foot-tall bronze statue titled The Aviator. Curiously, The Aviator is a memorial to a UVA dropout, James Rogers McConnell. McConnell was a fighter pilot in the famous squadron of American volunteers who fought for the French prior to US entry into World War I, the Lafayette Escad