The prevailing wind, blowing from the west, accelerated the British aircraft that crossed the German lines on their way out and slowed them on their return. The Luftstreitkräfte had only to wait over their own territory, between the Allied front line trenches and the returning RFC and RNAS aircraft, to intercept them. ‘Let the customers come to the shop,’ Manfred used to say. Apart from taking advantage of the headwind that handicapped the ‘customers’, there was another consideration: the German air service was outnumbered by the combined strength of the British and French in the air and could not afford to lose aeroplanes shot down onto enemy territory.
The official British history of the air war explains, ‘Richthofen’s task was to inflict the greatest damage with the minimum loss to his own service, and he knew that on any day suitable for flying great numbers of aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps would be over the German lines. He seldom had to seek combat. It was offered to him.’
He could make his choice whether to join action, to break off if that were prudent, or to avoid it in the first place.
It was now that Manfred became known as The Red Baron, Le Petit Rouge and Le Diable Rouge because he had the tail unit and wheels of his aeroplane painted red, then later the fuselage and ultimately the whole machine. Three reasons have been attributed to this: one, that he did so in order to be readily identifiable to the members of any formation he was leading; another, that both the Germans and the Allies had been experimenting with camouflage to make their aircraft more difficult to spot in the air and Manfred, impatient with the apparent futility of these experiments, figuratively cocked a snook at them; the third is that he hoped thus to frighten his opponents when they knew his identity. The first is reasonable, because, although British squadron and flight commanders flew coloured streamers from mainplane struts on either side of the fuselage, these could be seen only by those flying quite close. When a flight or squadron scattered it was often difficult to spot streamers if trying to re-formate. The second is not implausible, for he was impatient with any waste of time and had a quirky sense of humour beneath his sober demeanour; the third is convincing because it conforms to the inherent insolence of the aristocratic Prussian nature. He acknowledged none of these. He himself wrote disarmingly that he did so for no special reason, which is too naïf and out of character. It seems logical to conclude that he did so from flamboyant arrogance and to intimidate his enemies; although a really frightened pilot, particularly a novice, would have turned tail and deprived him of an easy kill — the last thing the Baron wanted.
Between patrols he lectured his pilots on tactics and air discipline, the importance of closing the range before opening fire and the uselessness of aerobatics. In this last, he was right only in part. Immelmann’s half loop and diving turn off the top onto his opponent’s tail was immaculately timed and executed, but in most instances a loop as an evasive measure presented a plan view of the evading aircraft and gave its pursuer a big target. Also, any aerobatic slowed the aircraft, which gave an attacker more time to close and aim. However, a good aerobatic pilot could in an extremity use his skill in evasion when a lesser artist could not. The least promising fighter pilot material in both world wars were instructors, whose polished flying became an unbreakable habit, whereas in a dogfight there was no time for delicate handling and accurate flying: the controls had to be treated roughly in evading attack and getting into position for a successful shot.
Many excellent aerobatic pilots were immensely successful in battle: Douglas Bader had been in the RAF aerobatic team and, ten years later, fighting with two artificial legs, shot down twenty-four enemy aircraft. Air Chief Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst had led the tied-together aerobatic team as a squadron leader, was thirty-three when the war began and, three years later, when he became the RAF’s youngest air vice-marshal, had a score of twelve victories. He had also led his squadron’s air firing team of three, which won the RAF trophy — no small help in action and confirmation of Manfred’s insistence that good shooting was the most important factor.
In Manfred’s day, there were few aerobatic experts and there was little time to spare for beginners to practice. In 1940, No. 13 Group of Fighter Command issued a booklet, Forget-Me-Nots For Fighters. The foreword explains, ‘This book is the outcome of discussion amongst the Training Staff, on the best and simplest way to bring to the notice of new Fighter Pilots certain salient points in air fighting, which it is essential that they should master before taking their places as operational pilots in Fighter Squadrons’.
The guidance it gave would have been equally applicable in 1914-1918. Under the heading ‘Evasive Tactics’, the first item is, ‘A barrelled aileron turn is very effective with fighters. An increasing rate of turn prevents the enemy getting his sights on you, and will usually give you a shot at him.’
A barrelled manoeuvre is an aerobatic. It might have saved Hawker’s life. As for the increasing rate of turn — he must already have been flying as fast as practicable in a steep turn and, anyway, Manfred had much the faster aircraft.
*
Germany began to emulate France in forming elite squadrons. Jasta commanders with high scores could ask for outstandingly successful pilots to be posted to them. Some of those whom Manfred began to gather around him because they had already drawn his attention by achievement or showed promise of it were destined to command squadrons and win the Blue Max. Among them were three Leutnants, Karl Almenröder, Kurt Wolff, Emil Schäfer, and Unteroffizier Sebastian Festner.
His pilots soon became uneasy about the danger in their Commanding Officer’s flying a machine whose paintwork was so easily distinguishable. They persuaded him to let them have their aeroplanes ‘personalised’ in the same way. He agreed to their having various components — tail units, struts, wheels, portions of the fuselage, etc., — coloured according to each man’s fancy. One chose black for the rudder, elevators and rear half of the fuselage, others’ decorations were in all the colours of the spectrum plus one that was all pink. The RFC called them the Flying Circus. One of the many rumours in circulation for a while was that the one dubbed the Pink Lady was actually flown by a young woman.
To date, all Manfred’s kills had been made when flying a Fokker E type or an Albatros D type. On 1 February he went up in a Halberstadt DII, which was a trifle slower in level flight than the Albatros but ninety seconds faster in reaching 10,000 ft, with Almenröder as his wing man. They caught a BE2d unawares and Manfred shot it down. Pilot and observer died of wounds. Manfred resumed flying the Albatros.
Early in February he had to go to Berlin to discuss the evident weakness in the Albatros III’s lower mainplanes. Thence, he went home to show his mother his Pour le Mérite. She reproved him for making himself dangerously conspicuous to the enemy by the gaudy decoration of his aircraft, but this did not deter him from retaining its livery.
Winter weather inhibited activity, but on 14 February, returning to base from a visit to Jasta 2, he came upon an artillery spotting BE2d, shot it down, wounded the pilot and killed the observer. In the afternoon, leading a formation of six, he interrupted the work of two BE2cs. While his ‘gentlemen’, as he often referred to them, attended to one, he sent the other down. Its crew, who had as much chance as a celluloid cat in Hell, got off lightly: the pilot wounded, the observer unscathed. This easy success was his twenty-first. In March he notched up ten more, on the 4th (two), 6th, 9th, 11th, 17th (two), 21st, 24th, and 25th. The aeroplanes he sent down were, in order, BE2d, Sopwith 1½-Strutter, BE2e, DH2, BE2d, FE2b, BE2c, BE2f, Spad S7 (La Société Pour l’Aviation et ses Dérivés), and Nieuport 17. The fates of the crews were, respectively: pilot wounded, observer unhurt; both killed; both killed; single-seater, pilot killed; both killed; single-seater, pilot killed; both killed; single-seater, pilot wounded; and single-seater, pilot unhurt.
Most of these successes were against aircraft inferior to his. The FE2b was slower and less nimble. His victory over the DH2 of Second Lieutenant A. J. Pearson MC of 29 Squ
adron proved the superiority of the Albatros DIII in all respects over the hitherto dominant British fighter. The one over the Spad, flown by Second Lieutenant R. P. Baker of 19 Squadron, was fairly creditable. To get the better of the Nieuport 17, capable of 135 mph and the fastest machine at the Front, flown by Second Lieutenant C.G. Gilbert of 29 Squadron, was meritorious. Nonetheless, one has to take into account that the Albatros’s twin Spandaus gave him a vast advantage over all these single-gun machines.
During this orgy of bloodshed, Manfred had suffered a defeat on 9 March — not a fatal one, which would have saved the lives of many Britons. He was leading four others of his squadron at the apex of the usual V formation he favoured, at 3,000 metres altitude, when they intercepted nine FE8s of 40 Squadron on barrage patrol: unwieldy, lattice-tailed 69 mph affairs that were no longer fit to qualify as fighters. Even though they outnumbered the enemy, they were as much at a disadvantage as nine sheep being attacked by five wolves. They held formation, which gave them the best chance of some, at least, surviving. In the early moments of the fight, when Manfred had fired only ten shots, he was hit by tracer bullets from fifty yards, then: ‘Suddenly I heard a tremendous bang and something hit my machine. I was thankful my aeroplane had been hit and not I. At the same instant there was the smell of petrol and I switched off the engine’. Spillage onto the hot engine could set the aircraft on fire. He dived away as a burning FE8 began to fall and, in constant fear that his own machine would ignite, landed in a meadow near a main road. A car arrived to take him back to camp and he was airborne again soon after. He compensated for his misadventure by hacking down Pearson’s DH2.
Lothar was able to admire, and be inspired by, his elder brother’s last six kills of the month immediately as they occurred: on 10 March he had joined Jasta 11; not because Manfred asked for him, but because higher authority was awake to the publicity value of the two fraternal Freiherren operating together.
On 28 March Lothar had his first victory by forcing an FE2b down behind the German lines, its pilot dead, the observer wounded.
CHAPTER 10 - THE LUFTSTREITKRÄFTE’S RECORD MONTH, APRIL 1917
In September 1916 there were seven Albatroses at the Front. Two months later there were seventy-eight. By January 1917 their numbers had increased to 270, by March to 305 and in May reached 434. They were flown by thirty-seven Jastas, each numbering fourteen at full strength. German fighter operations were served by the Flight Reporting Service, which received information about enemy aircraft approaching or over the German lines, from observation balloons, spotters in church steeples, and ground troops. This was passed to the aerodromes by telephone. Because they stayed behind their own lines, German fighters were able to climb high and up-sun while awaiting the arrival of the British or French.
The Battle of the Somme in July 1916 had launched that year’s big offensive. The British infantry attacked after the manner of troops in past centuries, across open ground, rank after rank. By the end of the day they had suffered 60,000 casualties cut down by machine-guns, 20,000 of these killed and most of the others dead too because the Germans had taken few prisoners. And that was only the beginning of the three months’ slaughter.
‘Must do better next time’, the obtuse British General Staff resolved; and so, for 1917, a titanic offensive on the Arras Front was planned, to open on 9 April and be followed a week later by a massive French assault in Champagne. The British were immediately successful and the next two months brought more gains in ground. It was the French who were to be the victims of poor generalship this time: in May there were widespread desertions and sixteen of their corps mutinied. It took a month to restore good order and discipline.
The Albatros DIII remained the best fighter at the Western Front despite the failure to identify and rectify the structural weakness that was causing frequent crashes. Aerodynamics had not yet led to the discovery of wing flutter. The DIII was a sesquiplane, i.e., its lower mainplane was shorter and narrower than the upper. This improved manoeuvrability and the pilot’s downward view. But there was only one strut on each side, near the wingtips and V-shaped, with the apex exerting pressure on the lower wings’ weakest point where, under excessive torsion, it broke.
In spite of this defect, fatal accidents were few in proportion to the number of sorties flown and the Albatros remained master of the air. British Flying Training Schools were having to send newly qualified pilots to the Front with so few flying hours that their life expectancy had shrunk to between eleven and twenty-one days. The French were in almost the same predicament. The Germans’ training remained more rigorous than either, which meant that although their supply of new pilots was slower than the oppositions’, the demand for replacements was lower because the new entries at the Front were more competent than Britain’s or France’s.
The fourth month of 1917 became known to the RFC as ‘Bloody April’. The scale of air casualties can be judged from the fact that Manfred had twenty-one victories in twenty-eight days. His varied bag numbered seven BE2s, two Sopwith 1½-Strutters, five FE2s, an RE8, two Nieuport 17s, a Spad S7, two Bristol Fighters and a Sopwith Triplane. He killed eleven pilots and ten observers; wounded six pilots, of whom one died; and five observers, two of them fatally.
The new Bristol was the first of its type to be called a fighter. Hitherto the word ‘scout’ had been used and continued to be as a generic term. The Germans’ nomenclature, Jagd, meant ‘hunt’, and the French had always called them avions de chasse, (hunting aeroplanes).
The F2b Bristol Fighter was a big, strong two-seater. A synchronised Vickers gun was mounted for’ard, while a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring covered 180 degrees astern. Over twenty-six feet long, with a wingspan of nearly forty feet, the ‘Brisfit’ had a top speed of 111 mph at 10,000 ft, to which it climbed in thirteen minutes. Despite its size it was highly manoeuvrable. No. 48 Squadron was the first to receive it. So desperate was the situation in France that the squadron was sent there in late March 1917 although only six had been delivered.
On 5 April the new scout went into action for the first time when Captain Leefe Robinson VC, a flight commander who had won his decoration by shooting down a zeppelin near London, led a formation of five. They were intercepted by five Albatros DIIIs led by Manfred. The RFC had not yet appreciated that the pilot’s heavy machine-gun should be used for attack and the observer’s light one primarily for defence. The ‘Brisfits’ therefore adopted the standard tactic of positioning themselves so as to give the observer the best possible field of fire. Consequently, Manfred shot two down, his companions took out another two and the fifth returned to base badly damaged. Henceforth 48 Squadron attacked head-on, as did all the other squadrons that flew this formidable aeroplane. It was so successful that it was ultimately regarded as the best all-round aeroplane of the war.
After that initial fight, Manfred described the Bristol Fighter with contempt to newspaper reporters — a great disservice to his fellow Jagdflieger — who, when they first encountered one or a formation of them, expected to make easy kills; until they learned that their star performer was not infallible.
He had been promoted to Oberleutnant on 22 March. On 7 April he went up another rank, to Rittmeister, captain of cavalry.
On 13 April he scored his first kill, an RE8, at 8.55 a.m., thus beating the record of forty-one victories set by Boelcke. He made a second kill (FE2b) at 11.45 a.m. and scored a third (FE2b) at 7.30 p.m.
The High Command, worried that he might be shot down, had told him to go on leave immediately after he had surpassed Boelcke’s score. He ignored the order: an extraordinary departure from the tradition of a family such as his and the discipline under which he had been brought up. He denied that he did so because amassing the biggest possible score took priority in all his actions. His attitude implied that he went on fighting because he felt physically and mentally fit to do so without a rest. In view of his lust for collecting trophies of the aeroplanes he shot down and the silver commemorative cups, this claim is not
entirely convincing. Sheer pot-hunting, patriotism and a sense of duty that, he felt, justified his continuing to lead and fight seem the most likely motives.
On the 29th Manfred shot four down: a Spad S7 at 12.15 p.m., an FE2b at 4.45 p.m., a BE2e at 7.25 p.m. and a Sopwith Triplane at 7.45 p.m.
About the BE2, his combat report was, ‘With my brother, we attacked an artillery spotter at low altitude. After a short fight, my adversary’s machine lost its wings. When it hit the ground it caught fire.’ So, when they opened the attack together, it was ‘we’, but when the BE2’s wings were shot off it was ‘my’. Lothar shot the other one down, his tenth score.
Between them, Manfred and five others of his squadron had thirteen victories that day, of which Lothar was credited with two. It was perhaps this orgy of homicide that caused Manfred to admit, when writing about it, that he still had nightmares about the first Briton he had killed.
Reminiscing about the blood-soaked day, in his autobiography, he changed the subject as though it were distasteful, by waxing sentimental over his dog. ‘Ever since Ostend he has accompanied me and grown in my affection. The little lapdog has become enormous. He is now a year old, but still a puppy. He plays billiards very well. Unfortunately many balls and table cloths have been ruined. He also has quite an instinct for hunting, about which my mechanics are pleased because he has brought them many nice hares. But he gets a good thrashing from me for it, as I am not pleased by this.’
Evidently affection did not over-rule cruelty; nor, since the dog continued to hunt hares, was it effective, therefore sheer brutality and a waste of time. The wholesale carnage he perpetrated on pig and various species of deer suggests that he had no love for animals. A possible inference is that, being short in stature, he compensated for a feeling of inferiority by dominating animals, so subjugating a huge dog was flattering to his ego. But to a Prussian, especially one who had been under military training from an age when most boys would be playing childish games, inflicting pain was not sadism, it was discipline.
Von Richthofen: The Legend Evaluated Page 8