Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (16 page)

This leaves us with ground fire as the only alternative—but which ground fire? The entire area was occupied by the 3rd Australian Division, specifically the high ground of Morlancourt Ridge running north of the Somme to the Ancre River. When the two aircraft—and all the witnesses say there were only two—came down the river, the red triplane was about 20 yards behind the Camel and firing controlled, short bursts. Hardly the action of a man with a mortal wound.

May was flying around the curve in the Somme near Corbie, and Richthofen cut the corner by hopping the ridge. It was here that two machine gun posts of the 53rd Battery opened fire. Gunner Robert Buie reported:

I began firing with steady bursts. His plane was bearing frontal and just a little to the right of me and after 20 rounds I knew that the bullets were striking the right side and front of the machine for I clearly saw fragments flying. Still Richthofen came on firing at Lieutenant May with both guns blazing. Then, just before my last shots finished at a range of 40 yards Richthofen’s guns stopped abruptly.

The Australians were firing at the front quarter of the triplane and clearly saw hits on the aircraft—not surprising given that they’d fired an entire magazine at less than 200 yards. But it would be virtually impossible for a fatal right-side wound to come from this position. However, it is almost certain that the gunners hit the engine, which was shielding the Baron, and forced him to break off the combat. What happened next, according to Buie’s account, nearly guarantees it:

Immediately I noticed a sharp change in engine sound as the red triplane passed over our gun position at less than 50 feet and still a little to my right. It slackened speed considerably and the propeller slowed down although the machine still appeared to be under control. Then it veered a bit to the right and then back to the left and lost height gradually coming down near an abandoned brick kiln 400 yards away on the Bray-Corbie road.

If the Baron had been wounded earlier, from the air or the ground, he would’ve died within a minute or so. If the triplane had been hit sooner, Richthofen would certainly have broken off and tried to get back toward his own lines. Indeed, it appears that’s exactly what he tried to do as he cleared the ridge. He would’ve turned right toward the east and safety, as his own aerodrome at Cappy was less than 10 miles away. However, at such a low altitude with an obviously damaged engine, he knew immediately that it wouldn’t work. Turning back a little left, he cleared the trees and aimed to land in the fields close to the east-west road.

In Buie’s account, the machine still appeared to be under control
.
Of course, he could have stated this to make his own claim stronger, but witnesses say the red triplane made a decent landing—it didn’t crash. So it’s very possible that Richthofen was alive and unwounded when he landed near the brickworks. The following account is from an original letter written by Maj. L. E. Beavis, the former commanding officer of the 53rd Field Artillery Battery, Australian Imperial Force, who was on Morlancourt Ridge that morning in 1918:

As an officer commanding the 53rd Battery, 5th Division, I am intimately associated with the claim that one of the two anti-aircraft Lewis guns of the Battery was responsible for the destruction of Richthofen. I was a close eye witness of the circumstances and as I had Richthofen’s body brought from the aeroplane to my dugout before it was called for by an R.A.F. tender, there is no question of the identity of the airman.

So who killed him?

Peter Hart, in his excellent book
Aces Falling
, says, “In the absence of any real evidence to the contrary, I have always sentimentally preferred to believe that it was indeed Brown and that Richthofen spent his last dying minute, as he would surely have wished, trying to get his eighty-first kill. No one will ever know and one cannot be dogmatic at this distance in time.”

Maybe so. It’s possible that Brown hit him with his long-range single burst. It is also possible that one or several gunners on the ground hit him, too. Cedric Popkin was a gunner with the 24th Machine Gun Company. He and R. F. Weston also opened fire on the red triplane as it cleared the ridge and began to turn back toward the German lines. Recalled Popkin:
^*

As it came towards me, I opened fire a second time and observed at once that my fire took effect. The machine swerved, attempted to bank and make for the ground, and immediately crashed. The distance from the spot where the plane crashed and my gun was about 600 yards.

Popkin made it clear in subsequent interviews that he was fairly sure his fire caused the crash, but he would not claim to have killed von Richthofen. A low-altitude deflection shot against a maneuvering target 600 yards away would be either very, very good or extremely lucky. But it could happen.

The author’s opinion, backed by the stated evidence in conjunction with the Beavis letter, is that the Baron was killed after he landed. The ground near Sailly-le-Sec and Corbie was a no-man’s-land, and any pilot coming down would be fired upon by both sides. The natural thing for any pilot in that situation would be to get away from the aircraft attracting all the attention. In this case, there were German positions about a quarter of a mile to the east. The Baron would’ve raised both arms, grasping the struts to pull himself out of the cockpit. This would have clearly exposed his right armpit to ground fire, aimed or otherwise. The slight upward entry angle is also consistent given that the cockpit was a few feet in the air and above a shooter on lower ground. It might also have been a ricochet. No one knows. But however it happened, Manfred von Richthofen, Germany’s Red Knight and premier ace, was dead.

Amid as much ceremony as they could manage, the Royal Air Force buried their greatest foe at Bertangles. Later his remains were exhumed and reburied at Fricourt with 18,000 other Germans. Bolko von Richthofen, the Baron’s youngest brother, dug him up again in 1925 and had the remains shipped to Berlin, where they remain.

There were those who hated him and those who loved him. His enemies, whatever their personal feelings, respected and feared his abilities—as well they should. He became a yardstick by whom all others would be measured. Aloof, somewhat formal and cold, the Baron was a product of his heritage and the times in which he lived. As Napoleon once said, “Prussia was hatched by a cannonball.” This certainly applies to Manfred von Richthofen, as he was, above all else, a fighter pilot.

In one sense his death was also the death of the German Air Service. Had events been going their way, they could have recovered and an Ernst Udet or Josef Jacobs might have filled the leadership void. But at this point in the Great War, Richthofen was more than just a superb combat flyer. He was a national hero, a symbol desperately needed by war-weary Germans—and a symbol that the Entente was equally desperate to destroy.

CHAPTER 5

DARKNESS CRUMBLES

“
I HOPE HE
roasted all the way down.”

Mick Mannock grumbled loudly and turned away from the circle of RAF officers in the mess. They had all learned about Richthofen’s death and were drinking to the memory of their enemy. Mannock would have none of it. By late April, as Operation Georgette continued, he’d shot down twenty-one Germans and was fanatical about killing more.

Over the next five weeks, he would claim twenty-three more, including four in one day. The Luftstreitkräfte was taking a beating, losing some of its finest pilots, but was in no way defeated. However, its fate, like that of all the air services, was closely tied to events on the ground.

The offensive ended by April 29, and the Channel ports remained in Allied hands. Ludendorff’s plan was to attack up and down the line, wearing out the Allied reserves. He could then launch a major offensive against Paris followed by another in the north against the British. While the situation was hardly ideal, the Germans were far from finished. The Hindenburg Line was still intact and sat directly between any Allied force and the German border. All the fighting had taken place outside Germany, and as long as the line held, then the Fatherland would be safe. The High Command thought of it as a breakwater that the Allied armies would smash against and thus destroy themselves.

Perhaps that would have been true in 1916, but by the spring of 1918 many things were different. Tanks, though still primitive, were playing an increasingly active role in frontline fighting. Aviation had grown from a curious sideshow into a decisive force multiplier. No attack would even be considered now without photo reconnaissance and close air support, which meant fighting scouts were needed to sweep the skies clear. The latest British and French assortment of aircraft were proving themselves daily in multiple roles to support ground forces.

On May 27 at 0100 hours, more than 3,500 German guns opened up along a 30-mile front in the Champagne region near Reims. In nearly the same place where Nivelle’s 1917 offensive collapsed, the German Seventh Army now came over the top. A textbook artillery barrage hammered the line, and close air support aircraft strafed the trenches, so the storm troopers met very little resistance.

In a stroke of incredibly bad luck, the Allies had chosen Reims as an ideal place to rest five battered British divisions after the fighting in Flanders. The 50th Division had been part of Gough’s Fifth Army and had borne the brunt of Operation Michael. What was left of it was pulled out and sent north to Lys to recover—just in time to catch the opening of Operation Georgette. The Germans punched through the line and made it to the Marne in three days. Less than 40 miles from Paris, they were stopped by French reserves and the first American infantry to fight in France.

The Royal Air Force and French Air Service were also confronted by a new threat. Often labeled as the best fighter of the war, the Fokker D-VII arrived on the Western Front in May. Operating from Puisieux-et-Clanlieu, Jasta 10 was the first unit to receive the winner of the January 1918 fighter competition—the plane that was the first choice of both Manfred von Richthofen and Ernst Udet.

Capable of speeds between 115 and 125 mph and a service ceiling of 20,000 feet, the D-VII was armed with standard twin Spandau guns. Initial production motors were water-cooled six-cylinder Mercedes models. This was much preferred over the vibrating, air-cooled rotary of the triplane. After lagging considerably in engine development, the Germans were finally back on track and quickly modified the Fokker with a stunning 185-horsepower BMW IIIa engine. This gave the fighter a climb rate exceeding 1,500 feet per minute and unparalleled performance above 12,000 feet. Suddenly the Sopwith Camel had a very serious problem.

In addition to the engine, the new fighter used cantilever wings with steel tubing for the struts and ailerons. This made it extremely strong yet very lightweight relative to all-wooden aircraft. The wings were thick, with rounded ends, so the plane was easy to fly and hard to spin, thus allowing the pilot to concentrate on fighting. It was so easy to fly, in fact, that Rudolf Berthold, the irrepressible one-armed German ace, loved it. He’d suffered wounds to his pelvis, thigh, and skull and had been hurt badly enough in the fall of 1917 to lose the use of his right arm. Teaching himself to fly left-handed, Berthold was soon back in the air, and by March 1918 he was commanding JG 2. A very tough man, he was one of those who stepped up to fill von Richthofen’s boots.

My arm has got worse. It is rather swollen and infected underneath the still open wound. I believe the bone splinters are forcibly pushing themselves out because the swollen area is very hard. The pain is incredible. During my air battle yesterday, in which I shot down in flames two English single-seaters, I screamed out loud from the pain.

—HPTM. RUDOLF BERTHOLD, JG 2

But the Fokker wasn’t perfect. The 7.92 mm incendiary ammunition drums were placed too close to the engine and would sometimes cook off from the heat. This was solved by adding vents in the cowling. Despite the teething issues, the Fokker D-VII fast became
the
threat in the skies over the Western Front. The biggest problem for the Germans was that there weren’t enough of them, and by June 3 the advance against Paris had run out of steam. French reserves with the 3rd American Infantry Division had held the line and destroyed the bridge over the Marne near Château-Thierry. The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division would move into Belleau Wood and eventually take some 5,000 casualties. Accompanying them were the first Air Service squadrons of the U.S. Army to fight in France.

The 1st Pursuit Group consisted of the 27th, 94th, 95th, and 147th Aero Squadrons from the United States Air Service. Originally based at Toul and flying Nieuport 28s, the group followed the American advances up from the south. They would move to Torquin, east of Paris, and eventually finish the war based from Rembercourt.