[Ennath]

April 21, 1918
Death of the Red Baron

When World War I began, 22-year old Manfred von Richthofen served as a cavalry reconnaissance officer, seeing action in Russia, France, and Belgium; with the advent of trench warfare making traditional cavalry operations impossible, Richthofen’s regiment was dismounted, serving as dispatch runners and field telephone operators. Disappointed and bored, the last straw for Richthofen was a transfer to the supply branch. He applied for a transfer to the Army Air Service (later known as the Luftstreitkräfte) and joined the flying service at the end of May 1915.

From June 1915, Richthofen served as an observer on reconnaissance missions over the Eastern and Champagne fronts. After a chance meeting with the fighter ace Oswald Boelcke, Richthofen entered training as a pilot in October. In February 1916 Manfred “rescued” his brother Lothar from the boredom of training new troops and encouraged him to also transfer to the Air Service. The following month, Manfred joined Bomber Squadron 2, flying a 2-seater Albatros CIII. Initially he appeared to be a below average pilot: he struggled to control his aircraft, and crashed during his first flight at the controls. Despite this poor start, he rapidly became attuned to his aircraft. Over Verdun on April 26, he fired on a French Nieuport, downing it over Fort Douaumont, although he received no official credit. After another spell flying 2-seaters on the Eastern Front, he met Boelcke again in August 1916. Boelcke, visiting the east in search of candidates for his newly formed fighter unit, selected Richthofen to join one of the first squadrons, Jagdstaffel 2.

Richthofen scored his first confirmed victory over Cambrai, France on September 17, 1916. He contacted a jeweler in Berlin and ordered a silver cup engraved with the date and the type of enemy aircraft. He continued to celebrate each of his victories in the same manner, until he had 60 cups, by which time the dwindling supply of silver in blockaded Germany meant that cups like this could no longer be supplied. Richthofen discontinued his orders at this stage, rather than accept cups made from base metal.

Instead of using risky, aggressive tactics like his brother Lothar (40 victories), Manfred observed a set of maxims (known as the Dicta Boelcke) to assure success for both the squadron and its pilots. He was not a spectacular or aerobatic pilot, like his brother, but he was a noted tactician and squadron leader and a fine marksman. Typically, he would dive from above to attack with the advantage of the sun behind him, with other pilots of his jasta covering his rear and flanks.

On November 23, 1916, Richthofen downed his most famous adversary, British ace Major Lanoe Hawker VC (9 victories), described by Richthofen himself as “the British Boelcke”. The victory came in an Albatros DII; Hawker was flying the older DH2. After a long dogfight, Hawker was shot in the back of the head as he attempted to escape back to his own lines. Richthofen switched to the Albatros DIII in January 1917, but suffered an in-flight crack in the spar of the aircraft and reverted to the DII or Halberstadt DII for the next 5 weeks. He returned to his DIII on April 2 and scored 22 victories in it before switching to the Albatros DV in late June. From late July, Richthofen flew the celebrated Fokker DrI triplane, with which he is most commonly associated, although he did not use the type exclusively until after it was reissued with strengthened wings in November. Despite the popular link between Richthofen and the Fokker Dr. I, only 19 of his 80 kills were made in this design.

In January 1917, Richthofen received the Pour le Mérite (informally known as the Blue Max), the highest military honor in Germany at the time. That same month, he assumed command of Jasta 11, which ultimately included some of the elite German pilots, many of whom he trained himself. Several later became leaders of their own squadrons. When Lothar joined, the German high command appreciated the propaganda value of two Richthofens fighting together to defeat the enemy in the air.

At the time he became a squadron commander, Richthofen took the flamboyant step of having his Albatros painted red. Other members of Jasta 11 soon took to painting parts of their aircraft red, officially to make their leader less conspicuous in a fight. In practice, red coloration became a unit identification. In spite of obvious drawbacks from the point of view of intelligence, the German high command permitted this practice, and German propaganda made much of it, Richthofen being identified as Der Rote Kampfflieger - the Red Fighter Pilot.

By June he had become the commander of the first of the new larger “fighter wing” formations: these were combined tactical units that could move at short notice to different parts of the front as required. Jagdgeschwader 1, the new command, was composed of Jastas 4, 6, 10 and 11, and became widely known as “The Flying Circus” this coming both from the unit's mobility (including, where appropriate, the use of tents, trains and caravans) and its brightly colored aircraft.

On July 6, 1917, during combat with a formation of FE2d two seat fighters near Wervicq, Richthofen sustained a serious head wound, causing disorientation and temporary partial blindness. He regained his vision in time to ease the aircraft out of a spin and executed a forced landing in friendly territory. The injury required multiple operations to remove bone splinters from the impact area. The Red Baron returned to active service (against doctor’s orders) on July 25, but went on convalescent leave in September and October. His wound is thought to have caused lasting damage (he later often suffered from post-flight nausea and headaches) as well as a change in temperament.

By 1918, Richthofen had become such a legend that it was feared that his death would be a blow to the morale of the German people, but he refused to accept a ground job after his wound. Certainly he had become part of a cult of officially encouraged hero-worship. German propaganda circulated various false rumors, including that the British had raised squadrons specially to hunt Richthofen and had offered large rewards and an automatic Victoria Cross to any Allied pilot who shot him down. Passages from his correspondence indicate he may have at least half-believed some of these stories himself.

Richthofen received a fatal wound just after 11:00 AM on April 21, 1918, while flying over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme River. At the time, he had been pursuing (at very low altitude) a Sopwith Camel piloted by a novice Canadian, Lt. Wilfrid "Wop" May. In turn, the Baron was spotted and briefly attacked by a Camel piloted by Canadian Captain Arthur “Roy” Brown, who had to dive steeply at very high speed to intervene, and then had to climb steeply to avoid hitting the ground. Richthofen turned to avoid this attack, and then resumed his pursuit of May. It was almost certainly during this final stage in his pursuit that a single .303 bullet hit Richthofen, damaging his heart and lungs so severely that it must have caused a quick death. In his last seconds, he managed to retain sufficient control to make a rough landing in a just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, in a sector controlled by Australian troops. His plane was not badly damaged by the landing, but it was soon taken apart by souvenir hunters.

Controversy continues to swirl over who fired the shot that actually killed Richthofen. The RAF credited Brown with the victory, but it is now generally agreed that the bullet that hit Richthofen was fired from the ground. He died following an inevitably fatal chest wound from a single bullet, penetrating from the right armpit and resurfacing next to the left nipple. Brown’s attack was from behind and above, and from Richthofen's left. Further, Richthofen could not have continued his pursuit of May for as long as he did (up to 2 minutes) had this wound come from Brown’s guns. Brown himself never spoke much about what happened that day, claiming, “[t]here is no point in me commenting, as the evidence is already out there.” Many modern hypotheses credit the kill to Sgt. Cedric Popkin, an AA machine gunner with the Australian 24th Machine Gun Company, firing a Vickers gun. Popkin was in a position to fire the fatal shot, when the pilot passed him for a second time, on the right.

The body was buried with full honors by the personnel of No. 3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, in the cemetery at the village of Bertangles, near Amiens, the next day. Allied squadrons stationed nearby presented memorial wreaths, one of which was inscribed with the words, “To Our Gallant and Worthy Foe”.

For decades after World War I, some authors questioned whether Richthofen had achieved 80 victories, insisting that his record was exaggerated for propaganda purposes. Some claimed that he took credit for aircraft downed by his squadron or wing. In fact, Richthofen's victories are unusually well documented. There were also unconfirmed victories that would put his actual total as high as 100 or more. (Lothar survived war , only to die in a barnstorming accident in 1922.)