Knight, Clayton, 1891-1969

Clayton Knight was an author and illustrator of children's and young adult literature. He died in 1969.

The Clayton Knight Committee, established by Clayton Knight and Billy Bishop, was a covert and illegal recruitment agency established in 1940 to transport Americans to Canada to train and fight for the allies before the United States joined the war effort. Knight and Bishop were World War I pilots whose efforts with the Committee saw the enlistment of more than 10,000 American volunteers in the RCAF prior to 1941. Bishop spent much of 1940 in London and Knight remained in the United States creating recruitment offices throughout major cities. The Clayton Knight Committee ended up recruiting 92 percent of the American pilots in the three Eagle Squadrons of the RAF. The Clayton Knight Committee closed its operations in 1942.

Born in New York in 1891, Clayton Knight attended the Chicago Institute where he started his career as an oil painter. He joined the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps in 1917 and was one of the original American pilots sent to England for advanced pilot training in World War I. In 1918, the plane which Clayton was flying was shot down and he spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war in a German hospital. After World War I, Knight returned to his aviation art and then in 1939 he became a correspondent for the Associated Press, which ended up being a front for his main job, that of working on the Clayton Knight Committee. When the Committee ceased functioning, Knight became the official historian and artist for the U. S. Air Force in Alaska, the Aleutians and Central Pacific from 1943-1945. He then continued his career and a writer and illustrator until his death in 1969.