‘In the army report of 26 April 1916 I am mentioned for the first time, if not personally, at least by one of my deeds. I had mounted a gun on top of my machine between the carrying decks in the style of the Nieuport and was very proud of this construction alone. People probably laughed at it a bit, because it looked very primitive. I swore by it, of course, and soon had the opportunity to put it to practical use. I met a Nieuport who was apparently also a [73]beginner, for he behaved terribly foolishly. I flew at him, whereupon he bolted. Apparently he had a jam. I didn’t feel like I was fighting, but rather: ‘What will happen now if you shoot at him?’ I fly over, for the first time at a very, very close range, press the button on the machine gun, a short series of well-aimed shots, my Nieuport rears up and rolls over. At first, my observer and I thought it was one of the many tricks that the French tend to pull on us. But this trick wouldn’t stop, it went lower and lower and lower; then my ‘Franz’ tapped me on the head and called out to me: ‘Congratulations, he’s falling!’ Indeed, it fell into a forest behind Fort Douaumont and disappeared between the trees. ‘You shot him down,’ I realised. But – beyond! I flew home and reported nothing more than: ‘A dogfight, a Nieuport shot down.’ The next day I read about my heroic deed in the army report. I wasn’t too proud of it, but this Nieuport doesn’t count as one of my fifty-two. * Army report of 26 April 1916 Two enemy aircraft were shot down in aerial combat over Fleury, south of Douaumont and west of it.’

‘The anti-Richthofen squadron (25 April 1917) The British had come up with a great joke, namely to catch or shoot me down. For this purpose they had actually set up a special squadron which flew in the area where we were mostly ‘hanging around’. We recognised it by the fact that it mainly went on the offensive against our red planes. I should note that we had painted our whole fighter squadron red, as the brothers had begun to realise that I was in that bright red box. So now we were all red, and the Englishmen’s eyes widened when they saw a dozen such boxes instead of one. But that didn’t stop them from trying to attack us. I’d much rather the customers came to me than have to go to them. We flew to the front in the hope of finding our opponents. After about twenty minutes the first ones arrived and actually attacked us. This had not happened to us for a long time. The English had curtailed their famous offensive spirit somewhat, as it had probably cost them a little too much. There were three Spad single-seaters, who thought they were very superior to us because of their good machines. They flew together: Wolff, my brother and me. Three against three, so it was a perfect match. Right at the beginning the attack turned into a defence. We already had the upper hand. I got my opponent in front of me and could quickly see how my brother and Wolff each had one of these guys in front of them. The usual dance began, circling around each other. The good wind came to our aid. It drove us fighters away from the front towards Germany. Mine was the first to crash. I must have shot his engine. Anyway, he decided to land with us. I knew no mercy, so I attacked him a second time, whereupon the aeroplane folded apart in my sheaf of bullets. The wings fell like a sheet of paper, each one separately, and the fuselage hurtled down like a burning stone. It fell into a swamp. It could no longer be dug out. I never found out who it was I was fighting with. He had disappeared. Only the last remnants of his tail were left, showing the place where he had dug his own grave. At the same time as me, Wolff and my brother had attacked their opponents and forced them to land not far from mine. We flew home very cheerfully and said: ‘I hope the anti-Richthofen squadron comes quite often.’’

‘In the meantime, Lothar has also joined in. I had long expected it. But the speed at which he is moving is still upsetting. 25 April 1917, in the field. ‘I have now happily achieved the tenth kill. Manfred is going on leave in the next few days. I hope he can stay for a long time, because he really needs to get away from this exhausting job. It’s a great pity for me, of course, because I was able to learn a lot from him. And yet I’m happy that he’s taking a break. I can’t go on holiday now…”’

“Report from the Matin newspaper dated 25 April 1918

The Death of Richthofen

THE FUNERAL OF THE RED CORSAIR

In Santerre, 23 April
…One of those Picardy highways, dusty with flint, that look like a ribbon of the Milky Way fallen from the sky onto the plain. The north wind gallops along it breathlessly. As if stripped bare by its bite, the lines of the horizon and the silhouettes of the trees stand out more sharply against the cold blue of the air. Its sharp gusts shake the brownish canvas gables of an aviation camp that has pitched its wigwams off the road. It was to one of these that the body of the German ace of aces, the rittmeister of the four red squadrons, Captain Baron Manfred von Richthofen, was transported after his fall.

A bed of honour was made for him out of engine crates draped with regulation blankets. A gloomy day, slipping through the single opening of the entrance, dilutes its pale reflections in the twilight. A surgeon, leaning over the corpse, whose torso is exposed, scrutinises and assesses the wounds. He has found six, all from machine gun bullets. One is visible on the right side. Another bleeds just below the heart. The face, though intact, remains contorted from the agony of the fall, Germain’s blond, heavy face with its pronounced jaw and heavy lines, where any spirituality, if there was any, has died with the gaze. I have seen a hundred of these expressionless faces among the shuffling mass of prisoners. His plane is there, on the bank of a low road. The dark red of the shredded wings bathes the grass in a stain
of blood. Its small size is disconcerting. It looks like an extremely fragile toy. There were seven machine gun discs on board, twice as many as are usually carried by fighter planes. How did he die? The most likely version is this. I got it from one of the six who are amicably disputing the honour of having shot him down. He engaged in combat with four of his own against three of ours on Sunday around noon above Sailly-le-Sec. According to tradition among the red corsairs, he let his companions strike the first blows and drive down their prey until the decisive moment when, diving in a straight line, he was to charge like a matador to deliver the final blow. But this time, our men managed to isolate him. A first bullet hit him. Wounded but not defeated, he let himself fall like a dead leaf, thinking that, twenty metres above the ground, he could recover and escape. But struck by flying machine guns and caught in the nets of those waiting for him on the ground, he fell, struck down.

…Five o’clock, the time set for the funeral: a funeral with no pomp and circumstance other than the spartan and bare honours of war. The coffin, painted black, closed over the remains. An aluminium plaque bears this simple inscription in two languages:

Cavalry Captain

Manfred, Baron von Richthofen
25 years old
Killed in action in aerial combat
on 21 April 1918.

Six officers, all pilots, carried the coffin on their shoulders to the funeral carriage, which was an aircraft trailer. Twelve soldiers form a double guard of honour. They carry their rifles slanted under their arms, butts forward, according to ceremony, and march at the traditional pace of one step per second. The Anglican military chaplain, in a sidecar, his surplice slung across his chest in a soldier’s bag, precedes the procession. Four French airmen, who have arrived by air, and around fifty soldiers, lined up in rows of four, bring up the rear. In front of the grave dug in a reserved corner of the humble Picardy cemetery, the padre has donned his black and white surplice and stola, punctuated by the double red and blue spots of the D.S.O. ribbon. As he chanted the words of farewell and mercy, three volleys of gunfire rent the air, while a
slow circle of aircraft, in the haughty wind, spread the impressive largo of their organs. The ceremony was over. The glory of the man whose impetuous pride carried him to the heavens, as his followers seek to extend it across the horizon, is now nothing more than a handful of ashes beneath the earth. Is this not, sooner or later, the symbolic fate of German presumptions, which rose so high and so far only to fall from a greater height? No doubt a day will come when we, in turn, will give them simple and quiet funerals.”

“General von Hoeppner to the Vice-President of the Reichstag WTB. Berlin, 25 April

The Vice-President of the Reichstag, Privy Councillor Dr. Paasche, has received the following telegram:

Headquarters, 25 April
The warm words with which Your Excellency commemorated our greatest aviator in the Reichstag, and the honour bestowed upon the departed hero of the air by the assembled representatives of the people, fill the hearts of all members of the German Air Force with gratitude. We know that we are united with all of Germany in mourning our victorious fallen comrade. This awareness gives us the strength to bear the loss and strengthens our joyful certainty that Richthofen’s lively energy will live on as a noble legacy in the hearts of all airmen and will continue to secure our air supremacy.

The Commanding General of the Air Force, signed Lieutenant General von Hoeppner.”

“The grief in Germany was immense. Condolences poured in by the thousands.
Much had been written about him, much had been said about him, countless legends had formed around him. What he was, where only his fellow combatants, his comrades saw him, where enemy aircraft saw him, in aerial combat and at home with his squadron, is evident from the following description: He was first and foremost a soldier. And as a soldier, he was first and foremost a fighter pilot.
He subordinated everything else to this view. Nothing was too difficult for him, nothing impossible, when it came to achieving something for his fighter piloting, for his squadron. As a 25-year-old cavalry captain, he was given the position of commander, a task for which there were as yet no standards or models. It was Richthofen’s task to create these. He had set himself this task. The idea of a “fighter squadron” originated with him. Few people know what he achieved outside of his flying activities. His work on the ground was no less important than his work in the air. No sooner had he returned from a flight than he was already at work in his barracks. Nothing happened in the squadron that he did not know about. He dealt with the paperwork just as reliably and quickly as he dealt with the war in the air. For example, if there was any office work to be done, important matters to be dealt with that could be dealt with most quickly and directly by the higher authorities, he would get into his triplane and take off, fly to the higher authorities, put the stuff on the table and arrange everything on the spot. Once, in incredibly bad weather, when every mouse would have stayed in its hole, he flew carefree to the AOK to settle an important matter.
Only someone as physically fit as he was could cope with such demands. No matter how much he had been through, he always looked fresh and tireless. He only made demands for comfort if they were inexpensive and did not interfere with flight operations. His clothing was as simple as possible; among us, he usually wore only his deerskin trousers. If it was cold, he wore a leather jacket over them. He was only seen in his tunic on festive occasions or when guests were present. In the early days, he would suddenly rush into the adjutant’s office to borrow gloves and a field bandage because he had to report to the ‘Braunschweiger’ quickly. He would then return with a smile: he had received the inevitable house order for the second time. ‘But I can’t tell the man that!’
He was extremely fond of good food, especially when the necessary mustard was available, which he took with everything and anything. But if there was no other option, he was perfectly satisfied with everything. He did not have prima donna moods, although he could have afforded them. He did not refuse a good drop either. But he was always seen sober, even when there was considerable blue air around him.
He valued camaraderie above all else and cultivated it actively. He had the sensible principle that his men could and should do whatever they wanted after the flight. He joined in many jokes and put up with a lot. I can still see his exuberant face when the High Command sent some Reichstag deputies to visit, who went to sleep in a corrugated iron hut in the evening, and Reinhard staged an enemy bomb attack in the silence of the night with a few helpers. When the highly suitable flares, explosions sent through the stovepipe into the corrugated iron hut with a terrible crash and a lot of stench, drove the no less horrified guests out of the barracks with deathly pale faces, they almost ran over the commander right in front of the door. But he quickly slipped away into the darkness…
However, if Richthofen thought that there was any difference between two comrades, he intervened immediately. So one fine day, a gentleman was summoned to him because he had taken a rather loud and somewhat heated exchange with a comrade seriously. He received a fatherly admonition…and promptly snapped to attention. We didn’t know this side of him at the time. It was only later that we realised how well he meant us. Almost all of us had to put up with such “fatherly admonitions”. There were even some among us who received them by the ton, because he felt it was necessary. ‘How the squadron behaves on the ground is how it behaves in the air.

That was his ironclad educational principle, and he applied it not only to his personal squadron, Squadron 11, but extended it to the entire wing. He visited the other squadrons every day and knew each and every one of us, on the ground and in the air. He had a close friendship with his adjutant, First Lieutenant Bodenschatz, and Captain Reinhard, the then leader of Fighter Squadron 6. But his acknowledged favourite was Wölfchen, Joachim. Wölfchen had been in the squadron for a long time, had been wounded three times and had the deadly luck of getting shot up at every opportunity, whether appropriate or not. His fighter pilot activity was therefore initially only passive. Nevertheless, Richthofen kept him in his squadron, while he otherwise ruthlessly and immediately removed anyone who did not meet his tough requirements. But Wölfchen had once rescued the cavalry captain from a dire situation, and Richthofen “smelled” the good fighter pilot in him despite his initial failures. And under his guidance, Wölfchen suddenly learned how to fly properly, took off, wreaked havoc among the enemy squadrons and shot down 10 enemies in a short time.
It is actually superfluous to talk about Richthofen as a fighter pilot. He was probably the best fighter pilot who ever lived. Even though he writes in his book that he shot down the first 20 without being able to fly properly, this was no longer the case later on. He combined great flying skills with great intuition and a certain instinct. Wherever he flew, there was always something going on. Then he shot excellently; after his first shots, the enemy was usually lost, he burned immediately. And that is the whole secret of his great successes; he had no other secrets. He knew no special tricks, perhaps carefully guarded by him. At most, he had one trick, and that was probably shared by all experienced fighter pilots: he kept a close eye on his “bunnies” during the flight, that is, he looked out for the beginners in his own squadron. When the enemy aircraft approached, they naturally also recognised the novice, and soon the bunny was harassed by an attacker; Richthofen took care of this attacker, because he was busy with the “bunny” and left everything else out of consideration. And this attacker, who had latched onto a bunny, was usually doomed. Because Richthofen roared up behind him until he was within ramming distance. And Richthofen was a magnificent shot.
“Those who fly a lot experience a lot” was also his motto. “On good days, an average of three take-offs can be made in the morning.” Then, of course, he flew again in the afternoon and evening. The rest of the time he stood with his men, usually dressed, on the square, the knot stick in his hand and Moritz, the big Great Dane, beside him.
Here he lay in wait for the enemy and regulated the deployment of his squadrons.
He had no sympathy whatsoever for sickly and weak-minded individuals.
That was very hard for some.”