Billy Fiske was "the first U.S. citizen to join the Royal Air Force and the first American pilot killed in action during the war in Europe" in World War II. He was a New Yorker who had lived some years in Europe and who had won Olympic gold medals in the sport of bobsledding. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, and he told his British friends in the 1930s as they all could see the storm gathering in Europe, that if war came, "I want to be in it with you–from the start."