Aviation history: The Red Baron

“Curse you Red Baron!” Snoopy exclaims, shaking his fist at the invisible German fighter pilot who just put imaginary bullet holes in the Peanuts character’s dog-house-turned-biplane.  Snoopy pretending to be a WWI fighter pilot is a lovable cartoon drawn by Charles Schulz.  Most of us are familiar with this relationship, that is, the relationship between Snoopy in the guise as a WWI flying ace and his cursed adversary, the “bloody Red Baron”. 

Why, there were even several songs recorded, according to Wikipedia, the most popular being “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”…“many men tried (to shoot down the Red Baron) and many men died”…written by Phil Gernhard and Dick Holler and recorded in 1966 by the Florida-based pop group The Royal Guardsmen. The Guardsmen went on to record two follow-ups to “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” – “The Return of the Red Baron” and “Snoopy’s Christmas”, a heart-warming song where the two advisories share some Christmas cheer and as they fly off the Red Baron warmly wishes Snoopy, “Merry Christmas, my friend”.

Baron von Richthofen. Courtesy Wikipedia.

While there may have been, in fact, some chivalry and mutual respect between enemies during WWI, including between the Red Baron and his adversaries, there was little imaginary, lovable, cute, warm, or heart-warming about Richthofen despite the attempts by Charles Schulz and The Royal Guardsmen to rewrite history and make him appear this way.

According to History.com, “In the well-trafficked skies above the Somme River in France, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious German flying ace known as the ‘Red Baron’, was killed by Allied fire on April 21, 1918. The son of a Prussian nobleman, Richthofen had switched from the German army to the Imperial Air Service in 1915. By 1916, he was terrorizing the skies over the Western Front in an Albatross biplane, downing 15 enemy planes by the end of the year, including one piloted by British flying ace Major Lanoe Hawker. In 1917, Richthofen surpassed all flying-ace records on both sides of the Western Front and began using a Fokker triplane, painted entirely red in tribute to his old cavalry regiment. Although only used during the last eight months of his career, it was this aircraft with which Richthofen was most commonly associated and that led to an enduring English nickname for the German pilot—the Red Baron.

The Red Baron.  Ullstein Bild via Getty Images

“On April 21, 1918, with 80 victories under his belt, Richthofen led his squadron of triplanes deep into Allied territory in France on a search for British observation aircraft. The flight drew the attention of an Allied squadron led by Canadian Air Force pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown. As Richthofen pursued a plane piloted by Brown’s compatriot, Wilfred R. May, the Red Baron ventured too far into enemy territory and too low to the ground. Two miles behind the Allied lines, just as Brown caught up with Richthofen and fired on him, the chase passed over an Australian machine-gun battery, whose riflemen opened fire. Richthofen was hit in the torso; though he managed to land his plane alongside the road from Corbie to Bray, near Sailley-le-Sac, he was dead by the time Australian troops reached him. Brown is often given credit for downing Richthofen from the air, though some claimed it was actually an Australian gunner on the ground who fired the fatal shot; debate continues to this day.

Richthofen with his Fokker Tri-plane.  Courtesy “The Mirror”.

“Manfred von Richthofen was buried by the Allies in a small military cemetery in Bertangles, France, with full military honors. He was 25 years old at the time of his death. His body was later moved to a larger cemetery at Fricourt. In 1925, it was moved again, at the behest of his brother, Karl Bolko, this time to Berlin, where he was buried at Invaliden Cemetery in a large state funeral. In a time of wooden and fabric aircraft, when 20 air victories ensured a pilot legendary status, the Red Baron downed 80 enemy aircraft and went down in history as one of the greatest heroes to emerge from World War I on either side of the conflict.