Relationships between Aces and their planes

How truely deep was the love? Give me the most
extreme example. I know alot of pilots hated
their crates. I want to know about the pilots
who adored their aircraft.

I bet Barker liked his Camel.

MDD

The pilots of the Black Flight were the only aviators who gave names to their machines, I think. That was no real love, but the best thing which could happen to a plane. Even the red Fokker
Dr.1 of Richthofen stayed nameless.
Matthias

[Vigilant]

Guynemer called every plane he flew "Le Vieux Charles". (Info from the PeterL Stork Website ™).

Actually, rather a lot of WWI aviators named their aircraft. Even in the RFC, which officially forbade that kind of personal decoration (though it did allow such names as "Presented by His Majesty the Maharajah of Jamjarh No. 2").

All,
I remember seeing a filmed interview with EVR when I was in high school (1971). He spoke very highly of his SPAD XIII so I'd have to say he loved his plane.
VBR,
Jim

[Barrett]

Most of the combat aviators I've known were pretty fond of their machines, as long as the birds brought 'em back. No doubt you could conduct a Psych 101 study on the subject, but airplanes almost as much as ships lend themselves to personal attachment. The difference is, of course (especially in WW I) that hardly anybody flew just one airplane--Barker being the notable exception. One sentiment specifically expressed was Hamilton Coolidge of the 94th Aero who wrote his family, "My faithful old SPAD has to be replaced and I shall receive a horrid new one."
As for names, the practice was widespread. Ray Brooks' famous "Smith IV" is perhaps the best known example in the US. (Michael's right about the often lengthy official names of some British presentation machines!)
Related subject: nose art, which rose to grand heights (no pun intended) in WW II now is almost gone. A few years ago a B-1 pilot told me that the wing nose art committee consisted of the wing commander, his wife, and the base chaplain. You may imagine the constraints on a fine old tradition...

[Amy]

In a letter home to his parents, Boelcke referred to his planes as his "children".

Taken from the (Ghostwritten?) memoir 'Fighting The Flying Circus';

Captain Eddie upon his semi official requisition of his SPAD at the American Experimental Aerodrome at Orly on 4 July 1918:

'Inside ten minutes I was strapped in the seat of
the finest little SPAD that ever flew French skies. I have it to this day and would not part with it for all the possessions in the world.'

So Rickenbacker kept his #1 SPAD at least until 1919?

[stephen]

Perhaps the most bizarre cases of pilots truly loving their machines was when the machine was an obsolete pile of doopy. A G Lee spoke at length of an occasion where he and his fellow Pup pilots (an aircraft that was outdated by mid-1917) were dining with pilots from a Nieuport 17-equipped outfit. Their Nieups were even more outdated than 46's Pups, yet their pilots praised them to high heaven. 46's pilots defended their Pups as the greatest things that ever flew, then went home scratching their heads as to why any 17 pilot would love his mount.

Similar stories can be found among pilots of such unspectacular planes as the FE 2b, RE 8 (which did in fact have a few redeeming qualities), and DH 5. Some have concluded that the life and death experience of combat, combined with the fact that this particular plane did manage to bring them home, was responsible for the strange bond between good pilot and bad airplane. Makes sense to me.