Edited April 21, 20224 yr by Fielder

Great Movie, "The Blue Max"

 

Moviemaker Peter Jackson is a WWI fan, and has a fleet of totally authentic aircraft from that period.
When they are not flying, some are displayed at the Aviation Heritage Museum in Omaka, New Zealand. 

I visited there recently and took some pictures.
Included is a fleet of Fokker triplanes:

But many of the displays more resemble a movie set than a museum. One of the life-size installations reflects the final moments of the Red Baron, based on meticulous research of records of the time. 

The plane came down near an Australian gunnery unit. At the time there was intense controversy about who shot him down - Captain Brown flying a Camel was credited with a "kill". However forensic investigations later showed the fatal bullet was fired by a single Australian, Sergeant Cedric Popkin. 

The cross being cut from the fuselage shown above, has been tracked down and hangs on the wall of the exhibit.

Von Richthofen was buried with military honours near Amiens, and later reinterred at Wiesbaden in Germany.

Edited April 22, 20224 yr by WingZ

6 hours ago, WingZ said:

The plane came down near an Australian gunnery unit. At the time there was intense controversy about who shot him down - Captain Brown flying a Camel was credited with a "kill". However forensic investigations later showed the fatal bullet was fired by a single Australian, Sergeant Cedric Popkin.

Still a lot of debate about this. The truth is we'll never know for sure who fired the shot which killed Richthofen. It's quite likely that it was one of the gunners in either the 24th Machine Gun Company, or the 53rd Battery of the 14th Field Artillery Brigade (both Australian units) who were positioned in the Somme Valley across which Richthofen was flying at low level in pursuit of fairly inexperienced Sopwith Camel pilot Wilfred Reid May, with his friend and C.O. Roy Brown, attempting to clear the Triplane off his tail. But since there were plenty of soldiers from other units around, many of whom were taking potshots at the red Triplane, it's possible that any of these guys could have hit Richthofen with a chance shot. Much is made of the angle of the fatal shot, which went under his armpit and exited his chest, damaging his heart and lungs, but when turning in the aeroplane's seat to look behind, and the gyrations of something as maneuverable as a Fokker Dr.1 are factored in, there is no way this bullet trajectory can be regarded as anything absolutely conclusive in terms of which angle the shot came from for sure, and so it is possible - albeit fairly unlikely - that it may have been a round from Brown's Camel which hit him, although it is true that Richthofen would likely have died fairly quickly from such a shot, so this does tend to point to it not being from Brown's Camel.

As noted, at the time of this final combat, Richthofen was being pursued by Camel pilot, Roy Brown. Brown was May's C.O. and was on that day, looking out for his friend. He had cautioned May about not tangling with the Germans and told him to get out of there if this looked likely. Richthofen was under no illusions of chivalry during the war, he knew his job was to shoot down enemy aeroplanes and so he never had any qualms about going for pilots at a disadvantage, because this is what a fighter pilot should do. Thus he had singled out May and was going for another kill when Brown spotted his friend in trouble and raced to assist him, putting him above and behind Richthofen's Dr.1, and he did get some shots off but these were more in the nature of letting the German pilot know someone was on his tail in the hopes that he would break off his pursuit of May, which he did briefly, but then re-engaged him. Following the instructions Brown had given him concerning getting out of there, May had dived to gain speed and was racing for his own lines, which is why he was crossing the Somme Valley at low level. Generally speaking German pilots would not pursue Allied aeroplanes over the lines and certainly not at low level most of the time, however, there was a strong (and unusual) prevailing wind that day in the Allied pilot's favour, which had driven the pursuit over Allied territory and it is certainly possible that Richthofen may have not been fully aware of that since the typical prevailing winds tended to favour the Germans, and Richthofen usually liked to visit the wrecks of his victories and take a souvenir, which was usually possible because of this and does to some extent, account for the high confirmation rates of German pilot victories compared to those of Allied pilots..

It's worth noting that by this stage in the war, Richthofen had already been shot down on two previous occasions, once in March 1917 when flying a Halberstadt D.II (he was temporarily flying this owing to a design flaw in the then-new Albatros D.III), which was hit in the fuel system, forcing him to make a dead-stick landing, and again on a second more serious incident in July 1917. He was on this occasion flying an Albatros D.V against a flight of FE2Ds; he was quite seriously wounded by the gunner in an FE2D, a bullet striking him in the head, causing him to lose consciousness and be partially blinded, his aeroplane went into a spin but he regained some of his sight and his consciousness and was able to make a forced landing in spite of the wound.

What is notable about this and relevant to his final fight, is that whilst convalescing from this injury, he was able to dictate his autobiographical book - Der Rote Kampfflieger - to a female secretary which the publishers had provided for the task. Prior to this time, Richthofen had been somewhat 'Prussian' and 'Aristocratic' in his attitudes, but the injury, what we would now recognise as PTSD, and a somewhat rude realisation that war was not the sport he had first thought it was had changed him quite considerably. He became very aware of his mortality and like many flyers, being witness to the suffering of the troops below him on a daily basis and the carnage they were part of, he became resigned to the fact that as a national hero, he would have to keep on flying, but that flyers had a duty to try to assist the troops on the ground, and this meant they had to keep on putting themselves in the firing line in order to try to prevent the artillery spotter planes from directing murderous shellfire on the ground troops. In spite of the inevitable censorship and occasionally fanciful claims in his book (most of which were probably forced upon him for propaganda purposes), if you read between the lines, his likeable and somewhat playful personality can not be fully suppressed by that heavy-handedness and I strongly recommend reading it. But what also comes through, is the changing and more pacifist attitude he had developed as a result of his recent brush with the reaper. He was on record as saying that he wasn't really that happy with the book, stating that he felt it was 'too insolent and that he was no longer that kind of person'. Later edits of the book do somewhat amend this and paint him in a much more reasonable and accurate light.

As a result of all these feelings and his desire to help the ground troops and a sense of duty to do so, Richthofen went back to combat far too early. There were some official attempts to ground him, fearing that his death would be a blow to national morale, but he flatly refused to accept a desk job, saying 'every poor fellow in the trenches must do his duty, and therefore I too, must do mine'. In spite of being warned by doctors that he needed much more time to recover, it was a mere nineteen days before he tried to go back to active duty, but owing to the need for several splinters to be removed from the wound, and frequent bouts of nausea and blinding headaches, he went on convalescence leave again in early September for an additional period of around a month and it was during this time he was able to dictate most of his book.

Back in action by late October, again the German high command attempted to steer him away from combat by involving him in the testing and development of the Fokker D.VII, which is one of the reasons why it was almost certainly the best fighter aeroplanes of WW1. But Richthofen's sense of duty prevented him from staying away from the conflict indefinitely in spite of his continuing health problems as a result of the head wound, and it's quite likely that this meant he was not at his best in terms of judgement on the day he was shot down and killed.

This is a common theme amongst many of the famous WW1 fighter pilots; if you read their writings and those of fellow pilots who served with them, it's readily apparent that pretty much all of them were suffering from serious PTSD and battle fatigue, not to mention a lot of them - quite understandably given the circumstances - resorting to alcohol and drug abuse too.

The RAF and indeed the British Government, were keen to promote the notion that a regular fighter pilot, just doing his duty, had been responsible for downing Richthofen, so it is understandable that they credited Brown with the feat, but as noted, it's more likely that it was an unknown Aussie gunner who got him. In a sense it doesn't really matter, because it's kind of fitting that such a legendary flyer's demise has an element of the unknown to it, the important thing we should really take away from it all, is that as with everyone killed in that war, it was the sad and senseless death of a young man among many young men, who were thrown into the maelstrom of a terrible period in history.

 

What I have read is that the Baron had a newly formed grudge against May. Which is why he chased May over enemy lines even though it was dangerous. May was a rookie did not know that his old school chum Brown was flight leader of his first assigned squadron. As leader, Brown took special care in tutoring his old childhood friend May and protecting him. He told May not to shoot at anybody on that fateful day, just to stay high and observe.

But May spotted a reluctant straggler who was not fighting and May did not resist diving in after him. Several German pilots thought this was not very sporting. The straggler was Wolfram von Richthofen according to some German accounts. The Red Baron's cousin. Next Wolfram dived to the ground to escape, May perused him. Several German scouts broke off to intervene.

The inexperienced May was now surrounded. He later said he decided he had no choice but to go into a vertical spin and spray bullets constantly in several directions. He ran out of ammo, and therefore fled to friendly lines. Perused by a now quite possibly angry Manfred. In other words what I read was that normally Manfred would surely not have pursued across enemy lines.

15 hours ago, Fielder said:

May spotted a reluctant straggler who was not fighting and May did not resist diving in after him. Several German pilots thought this was not very sporting.

This again comes back to Manfred Von Richthofen's attitude toward fighter combat; being well aware of what war was about, he would quite often look for an isolated enemy aeroplane on the edge of the fight which appeared at a disadvantage, which he would then engage. Some might regard this as 'not sporting', but frankly this is what a fighter pilot is supposed to do; i.e. not give the other guy a chance and preferably shoot them from behind before they even know you are there.

The truth is, you don't rack up at least 80 victories in aerial combat by giving the other guy a sporting chance. As Douglas Bader said on the matter: 'war is not a game of cricket', and as many other fighter aces have also commented over the years: 'the best fighter pilots were bushwackers'.

Notwithstanding the official confirmation records, the guy who probably was in actuality the highest-scoring fighter pilot of WW1 - Edward 'Mick' Mannock - started out by holding back at the edge of the fight until he felt more confident about engaging in combat. This actually led to some of the less savvy but more 'gung-ho' pilots accusing him of being a coward, but Mannock knew that throwing his life away whilst inexperienced would be far less effective than giving himself time to learn what it was all about. Because of this, he did actually get singled out by some savvy German pilots quite a few times in the manner which Richthofen and other savvy aces would sometimes use for selecting a target to go for, but he was fortunate in getting away with it and living long enough to make use of what he had learned. When he felt he was ready, he threw himself into matters, now with the skills necessary to be successful, and he was viciously effective as a result of his study period.

Pretty soon, pilots who had accused him of cowardice were enviously watching his efforts and requesting to fly with him, since they knew he would get them in a position where they too would be able to score victories. Like Richthofen, the authorities made efforts to keep Mannock alive and out of combat when they could see his loss would be a blow to morale, but Mannock would sneakily fly patrols without logging the time and of course to maintain the subterfuge, never bother to report victories he had achieved on these flights, which is why his 'official victory' tally of 61 confirmed, is probably vastly less than the true number.

Mannock would often take a fledgling pilot out with him to teach them stuff, then if he got in combat with an artillery spotter, he would mercilessly shoot up the two seater aeroplane, killing the rear gunner with some accurate shots from his Aldis sight, rendering it comparatively defenceless, then he'd fire all over the place whilst up behind the enemy aeroplane to get its pilot in a panic, at which point he would swing aside and wave the accompanying new pilot on to have a crack at it when it was pretty much already finished and being flown by a pilot who was in no position to offer any real resistance or even much in the way of evasive action. Back at base upon their return, he would then claim that he'd missed and credit the inexperienced pilot with the victory to give them a confidence boost and help them get over the fear of combat and get used to the fact that they were going to have to get up close and machine gun someone to kill them, which is not a pleasant thing to have to do of course. Clearly this was a pretty brutal school in which to learn one's craft, but it's what the best fighter pilots understood was necessary. It was in no way an arena for offering sporting chances if one hoped to survive.

In spite of this reality, the notion of air combat being some kind of chivalrous contest between champions was promoted by both sides to quite some degree, and there was a good reason for this: The horrendous death tolls of what was the first mechanised, hugely industrially supported war, were not something which were great for morale when reporting such matters to people on the home front. However, the notion of an ace, bravely fighting the enemy and repeatedly proving successful in lots of battles, is a story which would never involve having to report the death of anyone other than an enemy and even this in what was portrayed as a situation where - being one versus one -  they'd supposedly been given a sporting chance. So it was pretty much the ideal thing for propaganda purposes. Occasionally there have been indeed genuine acts of chivalry between enemy flyers - here is one of the most amazing and famous ones - but sadly, it's far more often a myth than a reality.

Edited April 23, 20224 yr by Chock

I based my message on exactly one source only:

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/insight/the-red-baron-chased-edmonton-pilot-just-before-being-shot-down

 

I had for years wondered what in the world was Manfred doing flying low over enemy guns. It was no accident he was over that danger. He was down low and could see where he has been flying.

When I read the above then I had a clue at last. He could well have been angry about what happened to his cousin. And this anger drove him on, devil take the consequences.

 

59 minutes ago, Fielder said:

I based my message on exactly one source only:

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/insight/the-red-baron-chased-edmonton-pilot-just-before-being-shot-down

From the article;

“The guys who were really good at it and ran up the big scores — like (Billy) Bishop and Richthofen — they were killers.”

Hmmm....well Richthofen was certainly a killer, although it's quite likely he had a hand in killing more Belgian civilians when he was a cavalryman than allied airmen when he was a pilot.

Billy Bishop?  Not so easy to be a killer when you shoot down imaginary airplanes.....

8 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

Billy Bishop?  Not so easy to be a killer when you shoot down imaginary airplanes.....

Yup. Not convinced with a lot of his claims. He had some friends in high places, and I think a lot of his dubious claims (especially his 'airfield attack' which the Germans had no record of) were granted to curry favour with Canada in order to encourage recruitment.

Edited April 24, 20224 yr by Chock