• picture source: Thomas La Padula - Aviation Art
  • 17GW430 Manfred von Richthofen had his Albatros D.III painted red - hence the name the Red Baron. This aircraft is D789/17.
  • picture source: The Illustrated Red Baron - The life and times of Manfred von Richthofen - Peter Kilduff -Cassel & Co - 2000

Overwinning 18

Event ID: 157

Categorieën:

Luchtgevecht
Engels
Under the guns of the Red Baron, Norman Franks, Hal Giblin and Nigel McCrery

24 januari 1917

50.37622781830363, 2.8098147229337216
West of Vimy
Vimy

Source ID: 13

Under the guns of the Red Baron, Norman Franks, Hal Giblin and Nigel McCrery p. 55

ISBN: 9781898697275

Tegenstander was Oscar Greig

vliegend met de F.E.2b 6997

VS

MvR vloog met de Albatros D.III 789/17

“Overwinning 18 en noodlanding na verlies van bovenvleugel

Gevechtsrapport: 1215 uur, ten westen van Vimy. Vaste motor: Vliegtuig No. 6937; Motor No. 748. Inzittenden: Piloot – Kapitein Craig. (Obs) Luitenant McLennan.

Vergezeld door Feldwebel (Hans) Howe viel ik om ongeveer 12.15 uur het bevelvoerende vliegtuig van een vijandelijke formatie aan. Na een lang gevecht dwong ik mijn tegenstander bij Vimy te landen. De inzittenden verbrandden hun vliegtuig na de landing. Ikzelf moest landen omdat een vleugel op 300 meter was gescheurd. Ik vloog met een Albatros DIII. Volgens de Engelse bemanning is mijn roodgeverfde vliegtuig geen onbekende voor hen, want op de vraag wie hen had neergehaald, antwoordden ze: “Le petit rouge”. Twee machinegeweren zijn door mijn Staffel in beslag genomen. Het was niet de moeite waard om het vliegtuig te verwijderen, want het was volledig verbrand. Weer: de hele dag goed.

Comments (1)

  1. source: Inside the victories of Manfred von richthofen – Volume 1, James F. Miller, Aeronaut Books, 2016

    MvR wrote of this victory in Der rote Kampfflieger but there are several discrepancies between that account, his combat report, and other reports/recollections of the combatants. In his autobiography Richthofen wrote that after damaging the FE.2 (“two-seat Vickers”) he felt the crew had been wounded and experienced “deep compassion for my opponent and decided not to send him plunging down” (he wrote the FE.2 eventually burst into flames before reaching the ground), after which he experienced “at about five-hundred-meter altitude, a malfunction in my machine during a normal glide [that] forced me to land before making another turn.” He then described landing his Albatros D.III nearby amongst some barbed wire near the FE.2 and then overturning, after which he spoke with Greig and MacLennan personally (“I enjoyed talking with them”) about this “careless” landing and learned from them that his red Albatros was known as “Le Petit Rouge.” Richthofen’s combat report (written immediately after the event and not dictated some four months later) states Greig and MacLennan actually set fire to their plane themselves on the ground (“the inmates burnt plane after landing”) and that his Albatros wing “cracked” at 300 meters, an altitude which dovetails with what Richthofen wrote in a personal letter to his mother 27 January (“one of my wings broke in two during the air battle at three-hundred-meter altitude”). His combat report also states “according to the English inmates my red painted plane was not unknown to them, as when being asked who had brought them down they answered: ‘Le petit Rouge.”‘

    However, Floyd Gibbons’s postwar interview with MacLennan indicates he never spoke with Richthofen: “As regards the red machine, we had previously seen it, but we did not know who it was. I glad to hear that he had to land, as I did not know this.” Unless MacLennan is lying it is almost without question that had such an event and subsequent conversation about that event occurred, one would retain the memory of speaking with the man who had just shot one down and then crash-landed nearby. Richthofen’s combat report agrees that the Englishmen knew of his red plane but it does not state specifically that this knowledge was gleaned first hand via personal conversation. This suggests Richthofen learned of the name “Le petit Rouge” either through conversations with the soldiers who had captured and spoken with Greig and MacLennan and then relayed the information to Richthofen (perhaps as he later scavenged the wreckage of 6997 for souvenirs), or by similar second-hand means. Whether Richthofen actually up-ended his Albatros upon landing—which is mentioned neither in his combat report nor personal letters, as are other similar events—or the event was included as autobiographical embellishment is uncertain and open for conjecture.

    MacLennan revealed Richthofen continually attacked the gliding 6997 (always from its six o’clock low) until “the machine was but a few hundred feet from the ground, ” corroborating the relatively low altitude at which Richthofen experienced structural failure and contradicting Der Rote Kampfflieger’s claim of “deep compassion” for the enemy, Rather, it is another example of his no-quarter modus operandi.

    Due to the structural problems of the Albatros D.III, which led to Idflieg grounding the make/ model on 27 January, Richthofen began flying a Halberstadt D-type (see Victory No. 19).

    Beantwoorden

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