• MvR's Fokker E.III nose down after his Oberursal engine failed on take-off. (picture source: The Red Baron, a photographic album of the first world war's greatest ace, Manfred von Richthofen, Terry C Treadwell, Pen and Sword Books, 2021)
  • Fokker E.IIIn serial number unknown, Kasta 8/KaGohl 2, Mont, France, June 1916. Drawn from photographs of the pranged machine, in which heavy castor oil staining obscured the serial number. (picture source: Inside the victories of Manfred von richthofen - Volume 1, James F. Miller, Aeronaut Books, 2016)
  • The remains of Richthofen's Fokker Eindecker after a takeoff engine failure and subsequent crash landing at Mont, June 1916. (picture source: Inside the victories of Manfred von richthofen - Volume 1, James F. Miller, Aeronaut Books, 2016)

The first time on a Fokker

Event ID: 123

Categories: 

General Event
Deutsch
Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1917, 351.000 - 400.000, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin-Wien

16 June 1916

Summer 1916
49.33212776672484, 5.8350083764002525
Flughafen Mont
Mont

Source ID: 4

Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1917, 351.000 - 400.000, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin-Wien p.  79 

“The first time on a Fokker From the beginning of my career as a pilot, I had only one ambition, and that was to be allowed to fly in a single-seater fighter aircraft. After much agonising with my commander, I managed to get permission to fly a Fokker. The engine turning round on itself was something completely new to me. Sitting alone in a small aeroplane like that was also alien to me. I owned this Fokker together with a friend who has now been dead for a long time. I flew it in the morning and he flew it in the afternoon. Each of us was afraid that the other might smash the aeroplane. On the second day we flew against the enemy. I hadn’t met a Frenchman in the morning, but in the afternoon it was the other one’s turn. He didn’t come back, no news, nothing. Late in the evening the infantry reported a dogfight between a Nieuport and a German Fokker, after which the German seemed to have landed on the other side of the Toten Mann. It could only be Reimann, because everyone else had returned. We were sorry for our bold comrade when suddenly, at night, we received a telephone message that a German aviation officer had suddenly appeared in the foremost [80]sapper head of the infantry position on the Toten Mann. He turned out to be Reimann. His engine had been shot to pieces, forcing him to make an emergency landing. He had been unable to reach our lines and had landed between the enemy and us. He quickly set fire to his aircraft and then hid a few hundred metres away in an explosive funnel. During the night he then appeared in our trenches as a sneak patrol. This was the first time our stock company ended: ‘The Fokker’. * After a few weeks we got a second one. This time I felt obliged to fly the good thing into the afterlife. It was perhaps my third flight on the small, fast aeroplane. The engine cut out on take-off. I had to descend, straight into a field of oats, and looking around, the proud, beautiful machine had become nothing more than an unrecognisable mass. Miraculously, nothing had happened to me.”

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