Why did the Allies fear "The Red Baron" so much in WW1?

Factual Questions
21

Some people have pointed out that under certain circumstances red can be an effective camoflage. For example if you were flying over the dug up earth of the WWI trench system and your opponent was flying above you (and therefore had an advantage).

Two other pieces of Red Baron trivia. After Richtofen’s death, Herman Goering took over his command. And the present location of Richtofen’s body is unknown; when his grave was opened for a reburial several years after his death, his remains weren’t there.

22

Wasn’t the time for survival of a new pilot in WWI something like 20 minutes? I imagine lasting long enough to get 60-80 kills was impressive indeed.

23

It was my understanding that he instituted the policy of painting the planes in his unit garish colors so they would be easy to identify in the air, to prevent friendly fire and identify combat kills. At certain times in the war both the allies and central powers were flying very similar looking aircraft (his DR 1 was directly inspired by the Sopwith tri-plane), the flag designations weren’t easy to see from any distance so he wanted to know EXACTLY who and where his wingmen were in the air. He probably chose the blood red color to terrify, but that was secondary to choosing something distinctive and easy to identify.

24

Well, the American’s didn’t get into WW1 until 1917, and WW2 until very late 1941. Recall Fowler’s observation in Chicken Run about Americans being late for every war.

As for Canadians, we’re just cooler than everyone else.

At this point, I’d like to plug an alternate-history compilation called Arrowdreams, with all stories describing alternate Canadian history. My personal favourite is 'Misfire" by Shane Simmons, about the possibility that Roy Brown only wounding instead of killing the Red Baron. Germany still loses WW1, but with Richtofen put in charge of the Luftwaffe, they squish Britain like bugs in 1940.

25

Possibly, although it goes against my understanding of Richthofen’s personality. He was effective as a tactitican and as a pilot, but he did not seem to take much concern for strategic issues. His personailty was that of a hunter, not a general.

26

A contributing factor to the nickname of the Jagdgeschwader was its mobile nature: The unit moved from place to place, the personnel lived in tents, and it even had its own integrated ground transport. The parallels to a travelling circus were probably too obvious to overlook.

27

Weeeeelllll, since it was probably an Australian AA gunner who KILLED Richtofen… :wink: In October Nova is going to solve it forensically.

However HE died, we cannot forget that most of the men he killed were NOT in fighter planes, but in poorly armed, unmanueverable observation planes and that his favorite way to dispatch them was to come from underneath (where the gunner couldn’t shoot at him if he saw him coming at all) and rake the underside with fire. Many of these guys didn’t know they were being attacked until after they were dead. Not chivalric, but a fighter in WWI’s main role was to deny the enemy the data their reconnaissance planes had collected.

28

Back to the OP briefly - Alan Clark describes (in his book Aces High) Richtofen’s duel with Captain Hawker, probably the RAF’s best fighter pilot in the early war period. The RAF lacked a proper fighter plane at this point in the war, and Hawker had actually mounted a single-shot rifle to his plane. Despite this, he had managed quite a number of kills, but his luck ran out when he met Richtofen. They fought for a long time, with Hawker striving to keep his lumbering machine out of his more agile opponent’s line of fire for half an hour or so, until eventually he ran out of sky & was shot down & killed.

And the point? As Clark says, the aim was to gain an unfair advantage and shoot down a helpless enemy, not to win a fair fight. Lots of pilots were good at this (e.g. Mannock encountering a flying school, shooting down the instructor & then ruthlessly hunting down his 5 pupils) but Richtofen was at the top of the tree. Clark also points out that, from photographic evidence and anecdote, Richtofen was the only WW1 ace who actually thrived on combat; the others lost weight, wrote morbid letters home, gazed at the camera with shell-shocked eyes, etc.

29

I haven’t read dropzone’s links, but I did read a book a couple of years ago that attempted to resolve the mystery of who shot Richtofen down. Part of the problem is that both the AA gunner and the British fighter planes were equipped with .303 machine guns, which makes it impossible to tell where the fatal bullet came from based on caliber alone. However the authors concluded, based on wound descriptions and sketches made by the doctors who performed the autopsy on Richtofen, that the angles of the entry and exit wounds indicate that the bullet was fired from the ground.

Of course, the Germans couldn’t believe that The Red Baron could be shot down by a lowly enlisted man on the ground! He must have been shot down in aerial combat by a brother Knight of the Air! Brown was persuing, and he was shooting. (Or at least he got off a short burst.) But from the evidence I’ve read, Richtofen was killed by the Australian AA gunner.

Incidentally, while Richtofen was killed in a Fokker DR.1, that was not the only plane he flew. Many of his kills were in other types. The DR.1 was very maneuverable, but it was not as good a fighter as the Fokker D7. (IIRC, Germany was specifically prohibited from having any D7s after the war.)

The most effective way of shooting down an enemy aircraft is a “hit and run” approach. Richtofen used this a lot.

As far as skill, there is something people should know about WWI aircraft: Many of them used radial engines. (Many used in-line engines.) The common engine in use at the time was the Le Rhone. The Germans used a copy of it (which I think they were building under license before the war). Radial engines made after the war have an engine block, cylinders, and a crankshaft. The engine block is mounted to the airframe, and the pistons turn the crank within it. The Le Rhone had the crankshaft mounted to the airframe and the block and cylinders routated around it! The propeller was fixed to the engine block.

So instead of just having the crank and prop spinning around, you had the prop and the whole engine spinning around the crankshaft. This resulted in a lot of torque forces. A pilot had to be skilled to handle them, and many pilots were killed in crashes. Another thing is that – at least early on – there was no throttle. Your engine was either “wide open”, or it was off. Pilots would modulate their power (for example, while landing) by turning the switch off and on.

In addition to the massive torque forces and the on/off nature of the engines, there was another problem. The engines were lubricated with castor oil, which would be flung out in a mist as long as the engine was running. Castor oil has a laxative effect, and it made many pilots quite sick. Imagine being nauseated and having to squirt your bowels and fighting for your life all at the same time!

So Richtofen was certainly aggressive. But he was also an excellent tactician and an excellent pilot.

30

Yeah, but you could use the torque produced by a rotary engine to snap roll instantaneously. As long as the roll was WITH the torque and not AGAINST it. And you had to hope your airframe could take it.

31

His cardboard pizza, obviously.

32

Keep in mind, though, that those 80-120 men killed by the Red Baron were a mere blip, considering the whole bloody war. WWI sets the mark for numbers of military casualties.

The air war produced a number of good stories, but had little impact on the course of the war.

33

Which raises the question, Why do they use some Biggles clone as their spokesmodel instead of someone impersonating the REAL Red Baron? Cripes, they didn’t get the side right and that guy looks NOTHING like the real Richtofen. For that matter, he looks more Battle of Britain, so they didn’t get the WAR right, either.

34

I suppose a machine gunner on the front could claim that many on any morning of a big offensive.

35

As a Wisconsinite I must mention the top US ace of WWII was Richard Bong with 40.
http://www.acepilots.com/usaaf_bong.html

Brian

36

Certainly, the impact that air forces had on WWI was far less than in nearly every subsequent war, in which whoever had the best air force ultimately won. However, the reconnaissance gathered by the air forces did have an effect on the success of the tactics at the time. In addition, at the very end of the war, the air forces played a quite specific role with the introduction of the U.S. forces. (The primary contribution of the U.S. was simply lots of fresh troops on the side of the allies. Please do not misunderstand my following comments as a claim that U.S. air power decided the war, which it did not.)

Billy Mitchell had already begun speculating on the nature of air warfare even before WWI began. When he was sent to France, under General Pershing, he put a lot of effort into bringing his theories to practice. The U.S. air industry never produced a decently designed and built war plane in time for WWI (aside from some very nice flying boats for the Navy), but Mitchell gathered his borrowed British and French bombers and fighters together to launch specific, large scale raids on important communications and material centers behind the German lines, thwarting their ability to follow up on their successful attacks in August, 1918 and preparing the way for the amazing counterattacks that the Allies launched in response in September and October. I make no claim that the general results of those battles would have changed without his actions, but his air arm certainly played a significant role within those battles.

37

I heard that it was because of his impressive (albeit soon to be outdated) 1916 style “Death Ray.”

38

When my BIL moved to Racine I thought the ng Recreation Area be right up his alley.

39

There may, according to some versions I’ve read, also have been some sentiment that the man the best British pilots couldn’t get just could not have been killed by a convict-descended colonial from Australia, much less a (sniff!) enlisted man in the bloody infantry. Or, if it was true, it just wouldn’t do to publicize the fact (Standards, old chap, we’ve got to have standards, you know - can’t let the riffraff start thinking they’re as good as us. Best let the public think that a pilot and officer did it, even if he happens to be a Canadian - we can gloss over that bit, and they’re at least not buggering convicts). This was at about the same time that the Aussies and Kiwis were proving the prejudices wrong at Gallipoli.

40

Ran out of sky? That must have been quite a sight!