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Major Hawker

Event ID: 145

Categories: 

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

23 November 1916

50.04398164288403, 2.8345021710831597
South of Bapaume
Bapaume

Source ID: 4

Der rote Kampfflieger von Rittmeister Manfred Freiherrn von Richthofen, 1917, 351.000 - 400.000, Verlag Ullstein & Co, Berlin-Wien p.  103 

“Major Hawker I was proudest of all when I heard one fine day that the Englishman I had shot down on 23 November 1916 was the British Immelmann. Judging by the aerial combat, I could have guessed that it was a hell of a guy I was up against. One fine day, I was flying around hunting again and watched three Englishmen who seemed to have nothing else to do but hunt. I noticed how they were flirting with me and as I was in the mood for a fight, I went along with it. I was lower than the Englishman, so I had to wait until the brother pushed down on me. It didn’t take long before he came sailing up and tried to grab me from behind. After the first five shots, the customer had to stop again because I was already in a sharp left turn. The Englishman tried to get behind me, while I tried to get behind the Englishman. So we both spun around like madmen with the engine running at full throttle at an altitude of three thousand five hundred metres. First twenty times round to the left, then thirty times round to the right, each anxious to get above and [104]behind the other. I soon realised that I wasn’t dealing with a beginner, because he wouldn’t dream of breaking off the fight. He had a very manoeuvrable box, but mine climbed better, and so I managed to get above and behind the Englishman. After we had descended two thousand metres without having achieved a result, my opponent must have realised that it was high time for him to back off, for the wind, which was favourable to me, drove us closer and closer to our positions until I had finally arrived almost over Bapaume, about a kilometre behind our front. The cheeky chap now had the cheek to wave to me, when we were already a thousand metres above the ground, as if to say: ‘Well, well, how do you do?’ The circles we made around each other were so tight that I estimated they were no further than eighty to a hundred metres. I had time to look at my opponent. I peered vertically into his body and could observe every movement of his head. If he hadn’t had his cap on, I would have been able to tell what kind of face he was making. Gradually, even the good sportsman got a little too colourful, and he finally had to decide whether he wanted to land with us [105] or fly back to his lines. Of course he tried the latter, after he had tried in vain to evade me with a few loops and such jokes. My first blue beans flew around his ears, because so far no one had been able to get a shot off. At an altitude of a hundred metres, he tried to escape to the front by zigzagging, during which it is notoriously difficult for the observer to shoot. Now was the moment for me. I followed him at a height of fifty to thirty metres, firing incessantly. So the Englishman had to fall. A jam in the gun almost robbed me of my success. The enemy crashed with a head shot, about fifty metres behind our line. His machine gun ran into the ground and now adorns the entrance above my front door.”

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