The first character to use the name was teenaged Mickey Malone, a young aviator who appeared in the 1940s in Fawcett Comics publications depicting contemporaneous World War II adventures.

The second and better-known character, created in the 1960s by Marvel Comics, was Karl Kaufmann, the American son of German parents, who became a masked World War I ace.

[2] The Phantom Eagle was teenager Mickey Malone, who, though forbidden by superior officer Sergeant Flog at his military airbase in Great Britain, was determined to fight the World War II Axis powers.

[4] The second Phantom Eagle was an unrelated World War I hero created by writer Gary Friedrich and artist Herb Trimpe in Marvel Super-Heroes #16 (September 1968).

Concealing his identity so as not to risk reprisals against his parents, he devised a stylized aviator uniform with darkened goggles and a cape, and joined the European conflict to become an ace on the side of the Allies as a U.S. Army Air Corps test pilot.

In his first mission as Phantom Eagle, he successfully led a U.S. fighter squadron against an experimental dirigible aircraft carrier with which German forces attempted to invade New York; however, he witnessed the death of his best friend, Rex Griffin, as a result.

[10] At one point the time-traveling dictator Kang the Conqueror sent the simpleminded brute the Hulk back to 1917 in an effort to secure a victory for Germany, by preventing the Phantom Eagle from destroying a key German super-weapon.

[12] The Phantom Eagle went on to join the team of costumed adventurers known as Freedom's Five, consisting of himself (the sole American), the Crimson Cavalier, the Silver Squire, Sir Steel, and Union Jack.

[13] Kaufmann and his parents were later killed together near the end of the war by German pilot Hermann von Reitberger, who strafed both the Phantom Eagle and the two civilians with his machine guns as they fled from Germany into Alsace, France.

Swearing vengeance, the Phantom Eagle's spirit haunted and hunted von Reitberger through the years until, after a chance, modern-day encounter with the original Ghost Rider, he battled the aged German in aerial combat.

[5] This version of the Phantom Eagle reappears in a tie-in to Marvel's 2015 Secret Wars event, starring in Where Monsters Dwell, a miniseries by Garth Ennis and Russell Braun.