Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen. German Empire
The legendary Red Baron of Germany was the eldest of three sons (with one older sister) of an aristocratic Prussian family. He was well educated, an excellent hunter, and athletic. His military training began at the age of 11, and in 1911 he entered a cavalry unit of the Prussian Army. In the early days of First World War the battle lines were dynamic, and cavalry units were often engaged in reconnaissance duties. Richthofen served on the Russian front as well as in the Low Countries and France.
When the war bogged down into trench warfare the cavalry units were no longer able to perform their traditional functions, and Richthofen transferred to the Imperial German Army Air Service in May 1915. Richthofen was at first an observer on the Russian front before transferring to France. After meeting German ace Oswald Boelcke Richthofen applied for flight training, and convinced his younger brother Lothar to join him. When he returned to the front as a pilot he was assigned to two-seaters for a time.
Richthofen’s first confirmed aerial kill occurred on September 17, 1916, an event for which he ordered a silver cup to commemorate. He continued to purchase silver cups for each of his victories until he reached a total of sixty. By that point in the war Germany’s silver shortage was acute, and Richthofen refused to commemorate his victories with another, less valuable metal. The cups were engraved with the type of aircraft destroyed and the date.
In September 1917 Richthofen began his association with the Fokker Triplane, painted blood-red, for which he is most famously remembered. Most German fighter pilots developed distinctive colors or paint schemes for their aircraft. The German High Command recognized the propaganda value of the pilot’s individual records, and Richthofen became known as the Red Fighter Pilot, a term he used as the title for his autobiography, published in 1917. The book had been heavily modified by German censors, and before he died Richthofen repudiated it, saying that he was no longer as arrogant as the book made him appear.
Richthofen was wounded in the head in July 1917, returning to combat later that same month against the orders of his doctors. After an extended leave that fall he again returned, and it was clear that he was not the same man. In the spring of 1918, after he had refused the opportunity to remain in the service at a ground job he was killed in action. Shot through the heart and lungs, he managed to land the airplane as he died. Today it is generally agreed that the fatal shot came from troops on the ground. Richthofen shot down 80 enemy planes.