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The Red Baron
Today most people are familiar with the Red Baron only through the Peanuts comic strip, where an imaginative Snoopy, wearing the goggles of a World War I aviator takes bullet hits from a machine gun while flying his dog house, shaking his fist and shouting, "Curse you, Red Baron!"
But during World War I, Manfried von Richthofen, the Red Baron was all too real to British, French and American fighter pilots.
Richthofen was born in Breslau, Germany (now a part of Poland) in 1892, the son of a Prussian nobleman, Maj. Albrecht Von Richthofen and his wife, Kunigunde.
The family was aristocratic to the extreme. Their name, Richthofen, means "Court of Judgment" and was bestowed on the family by Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I.
Manfried was enrolled in a military school at age 11, followed by his entrance into the Royal Military Academy. He excelled as an athlete and horseman, much more than as an academic scholar. He graduated as a Cavalry Lieutenant in 1911, but felt, as World War I approached that there was little chance for glory in the Cavalry in a modern war. When he petitioned for a transfer into the Air Service he was somehow relegated to the Quarter-master -- an assignment that displeased him immensely. He wrote to his superiors, "I do not wish to spend the war overseeing requisitions of meat and beans!"
By 1915, the second year of the war, he was able to bring about his transfer to the air service, where he served as an air observer. During this period he met Oswald Boecker, who was considered the "Father of the German Air Force."
Boecker was to become his mentor, his hero and idol. Through Boecker's intervention Richthofen was able to enter pilot training. After just one day of instruction he made his solo flight. The flight went well, but his landing was so bad that he wrecked the plane.
Flying, and the love of the hunt came naturally to Richthofen, and soon translated into air victories. He carried over his appreciation of victory trophies from his school days, and after his first air victory he ordered a silver cup, inscribed with the date and type of aircraft of his victim. This was a practice he followed through his 45th victory. By this time silver was in such short supply in Germany that this was no longer possible.
One of Richthofen's early victories, and one which gained him much notoriety, was the downing of the British Ace, Maj. Hawkins, referred to as "The British Boecker."
After his 16th victory he was awarded "The Ordin le Merite" (The Blue Max), Germany's highest military award.
In 1917 Richthofen was named commander of the Jasta 11, an air group of Albatros fighter planes. He inaugurated the policy of painting parts of their planes painted red, for identification purposes. Their headquarters were located in large tents, which could be moved on short notice. The colorful planes and tents led to the nickname of the group, "The Flying Circus."
Richthofen did not consider himself a very good pilot. He told of one instance, in which he had damaged an enemy plane in a dog-fight. The pilot of that plane was forced to make an emergency landing, which he did perfectly. When Richthofen followed him, he botched the landing so much that he damaged his landing gear.
On two other occasions, he was shot down, through pilot errors on his part. After the first he was back in the air the same day. In the second instance he suffered a bullet wound to the head. This incident kept him out of action for several weeks, and left him with severe headaches to the end of his life. It also altered his personality and his judgment, which probably led to his demise.
April, 1917 was known as "Bloody April." During that month 912 British pilots and observers were killed or wounded. Richthofen alone recorded 21 air victories, including four in one day.
Prior to that month the French and British had in-sisted that American involvement in the war to be strictly under the command of Gen. Foch. Urgency resulting from that tragic month softened the dictates of the European Allied command and hastened the full American involvement in the war.
Richthofen had been lobbying for an improved fighter plane since 1916, one that would be more maneuverable than the lumbering Albatros, which had been the mainstay of the German Air Force. His petitions finally bore fruit in September of 1917, when the Fokker Dr.I tri-plane made its debut to German units on the Western Front. This is the plane that is most commonly identified with the Red Baron, although most of his victories were achieved with the Albatros planes. The new Fokker was actually a bit slower than the Albatros, but it was so much more maneuverable that it immediately became the fighter plane of choice for the Central Powers.
Anton Fokker (1890-1939) was a Hollander, born in Java, who founded the German manufacturing plant that bears his name. (Before the war he offered his services to both the Germans and to the British.
The British turned him down, but the Germans liked some of his ideas.) Early in the war, he was credited with inventing the "interrupter gear," which allowed a machine gun to shoot through a spinning propeller.
This proved vastly superior to the French method of saving propellers, which called for covering the propeller blades with steel, to deflect machine gun bullets going through the spinning propeller (causing many of the bullets to miss).
Fokker worked closely with Richthofen on the design of his new fighter plane. He was very proud of the plane. In September of 1917 he insisted on delivering the first one to Richthofen personally. For a novice flier the Fokker I controls were extremely sensitive, making the machine difficult to fly, but the veteran fliers loved it.
Richthofen is quoted, "The plane climbs like a monkey, and maneuvers like the devil!" Immediately upon delivery Richthofen took the Fokker I aloft and shot down a British plane.
By 1918 Richthofen had achieved "Ace of Aces" in the air war, scoring more air victories than any other pilot, German or Allied. He had become a national hero in Germany -- so much so that the Kaiser felt that if The Red Baron were killed it would cause irreparable harm to German morale, and urged him to retire. He would have none of it, and insisted on maintaining his rigorous flying schedule.
His head injury the previous year had, however, a noticeable effect on Richt-hofen. He suffered from post-flight nausea and head-aches, a change in temperament, and he had developed an uncharacteristic single-mindedness in his pursuit of enemy planes.
On April 21, 1918, von Richthhofen engaged in an air battle near the Somme River with Canadian, Lt. Wilfrid May, a relatively green combat pilot. Ignoring his own message of "never venture too far into enemy territory," and "never become fixated on a single target to the exclusion of others," he chased Lt. May far behind the British lines, all the while being pursued by another Canadian, Capt. Roy Brown.
Capt. Brown is oft times credited with shooting down the Red Baron, but he always maintained that he had only fired at the front of Richthofen's plane, and saw the Baron turn to check for Brown's plane when he slumped forward. The Red Baron crashed north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, in a sector controlled by Australian troops. He had been killed by a single bullet through the chest -- perhaps fired by troops on the ground.
Richthofen was buried with full military honors. Six RAF pilots served as pall bearers, and an Australian honor guard fired a salute.
Allied air squadrons presented memorial wreaths. (After the war his remains were exhumed and reburied the family cemetery in Wiesbaden, Germany.)
Richthofen had achieved 80 air victories. He was 26 year old.