April 21, 1918: The Red Baron is shot down, ending the career of the most famous -- but not the most successful -- "flying ace" in the history of aerial combat.
Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen was born on May 2, 1892, in Kleinburg, near Breslau, Lower Silesia, then part of the German Empire. His family were Prussian aristocrats, and, when he was 4 years old, they moved to nearby Schweidnitz.
Due to the family's wealth, he, his elder sister, and his 2 younger brothers could enjoy pursuits not available to the vast number of people in the Second Reich. The brothers hunted birds, deer, elk, and wild boars. Manfred also enjoyed riding horses and gymnastics, particularly excelling at the parallel bars. At age 11, he was sent to a military school. Upon graduation in 1911, he joined a cavalry (horseborne) unit.
When World War I began in 1914, he served as a cavalry reconnaissance officer, seeing action in Russia, France, and Belgium. But the advent of trench warfare made traditional cavalry operations outdated and inefficient, so his regiment was dismounted, serving as dispatch runners and field telephone operators.
Disappointed and bored at not being able to directly participate in combat, the last straw for him was an order to transfer to the army's supply branch. His interest in the Air Service had been aroused by his examination of a German military aircraft behind the lines, and he applied for a transfer to Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches (Imperial German Army Air Service), later to be known as the Luftstreitkräfte (literally, "air forces").
He was widely reported to have written in his application for transfer, "I have not gone to war in order to collect cheese and eggs, but for another purpose." His request was granted, and he joined the flying service at the end of May 1915.
A "flying ace" is defined as a military pilot who has shot down at least five enemy aircraft. There were 13 cases in World War I of men becoming "ace in a day," shooting down 5 planes within 24 hours: 3 Americans, 3 British, 2 Canadians, 2 Germans (neither of them Richthofen), 1 South African and 1 Bermudian (from Bermuda). In World War II, a German pilot named Erich Rudorffer set an all-time record for a single mission, taking down 13 Soviet aircraft. Another German, Erich Hartmann, is credited as the all-time "ace of aces," with 352 confirmed kills.
The top American flying aces: World War I, Eddie Rickenbacker, with 26 shootdowns, already a renowned auto racer, later an airline executive; World War II, Richard Bong, 40, but was shot down the day of the Hiroshima bomb; the Korean War, Joseph C. McConnell, 16, survived the war, only to be killed in a training accident within months; and in the Vietnam War, 4 Americans were credited with 5: Future Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham, William P. Driscoll, Steve Ritchie and Jeff Feinstein.
In World War I, René Fonck of France shot down 75 enemy aircraft, making him "the Allies' Ace of Aces." But one man serving with the Central Powers topped him, and that was Manfred von Richthofen, with 80 opposing planes shot down.
Richthofen flew a Fokker Dr.I -- "Dr" standing for "Dreidecker," or "three-leveled," for its three stacked wings -- and painted it red, so it would stand out, partly to make himself a better target for the enemy, to spare the others in his squadron, the "Flying Circus," but also partly to make sure his men saw him, and didn't shoot at him by mistake.
A recreation of Richthoften's Fokker Dr.I,
complete with the pilot wearing a replica of his uniform.
Designed by Anthony Fokker, whose homeland of the Netherlands was neutral in the war, Richthoften's Dr.I became the most famous plane of the war, even more so than the Sopwith Camel, designed and flown by British pilot Thomas Sopwith.
This, Peanuts fans, is a real Sopwith Camel.
Richthofen was a Freiherr ("Free Lord"), a title of nobility often translated as "baron." This is not a given name, nor strictly a hereditary title, since all male members of the family were entitled to use it, even during the lifetime of their father. This, combined with his red plane, led to him being called Der Rote Baron, the "Red Baron," both inside and outside Germany.
During his lifetime, he was more frequently described in German as Der Rote Kampfflieger, variously translated as "The Red Battle Flyer" or "The Red Fighter Pilot." This name was used as the title of his autobiography, published in 1917, made possible because he was already famous.
On April 21, 1918, he was flying over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme River in France. His cousin, Lieutenant Wolfram von Richthofen, had been fired upon by a Canadian pilot, Wilfred May. Manfred went after May, and was himself followed by another Canadian, Captain Roy Brown.
It was in this pursuit that Richthofen was hit in the chest by a .303 caliber bullet. He never had a chance, and may have bled out before hitting the ground. The force of the crash pushed him into the butts of his machine guns, breaking his nose and his jaw. It didn't matter: He was already dead. He was not quite 26 years old.
Britain's Royal Air Force, then with jurisdiction over all British Empire aircraft, including what would become the Royal Canadian Air Force, ruled that Brown had shot Richthofen down. Historians now generally agree that this determination was an error, and that it was a ground-based antiaircraft gun that hit him.
His plane was quickly dismantled for souvenirs. But the British gave him a burial with full military honors. In 1925, his family reclaimed his remains, and reburied him in Berlin. After World War II, his tomb was in East Berlin. In 1975, his remains were moved to a family home in Wiesbaden, in what was then West Germany -- with some irony, not far from a U.S. Air Force base.
Post-World War II changes meant also that his birthplace of Kleinburg is now in Poland, part of the city of Wrocław; and that the town where he grew up is also in Poland, as Schweidnitz became Świdnica.
In film, he has been portrayed by Carl Walther Meyer in Richthofen in 1927, Carl Schell in The Blue Max in 1966, Ingo Mogendorf in Darling Lilli in 1970, John Philip Law in Von Richthofen and Brown in 1971, Ron Ely on a 1979 episode of Fantasy Island, and Matthias Schweighöfer in The Red Baron in 2008.
The DC Comics series Enemy Ace told of Hans von Hammer, a German knight who became a pilot with a red plane like Richthofen's. Unlike the general portrayal of the Germans by the Allies, he was shown to be an honorable man, guided by a knight's code of chivalry, and often disgusted by the excesses of war.
Unlike Richthofen, later adventures showed him fighting in World War II, and becoming even more disgusted by the Nazis who had taken over his homeland, and finally breaking and surrendering to the Allies when he survives a crash-landing on the grounds of the Dachau concentration camp. The character lives until 1969, dictating his memoirs to an American reporter.
Fantasy writer Kim Newman, advancing his Anno Dracula series up to World War I, made Richthofen a vampire in his 1995 novel The Bloody Red Baron.
On October 10, 1965, Peanuts author Charles Schulz first drew the dog Snoopy, in World War I-style pilot gear, on top of his doghouse, saying, "Here's the World War I Flying Ace, zooming through the air in his Sopwith Camel. My mission is to hunt the Red Baron, and shoot him down!" Snoopy's adventures as the Flying Ace always seemed to end with his doghouse getting shot full of holes and smoke coming out of the door, leading him to shake his fist and yell, "Curse you, Red Baron!" However, in real life, Richthofen is not known to have ever engaged in combat with U.S. forces.
The routine proved so popular that it was included in the 1966 Halloween TV special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and was parodied by the rock band The Royal Guardsmen for their song "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron," which nearly hit Number 1 in 1967 -- partly because, in the end, unlike Schulz, they let Snoopy win.
In the 1968 cartoon Wacky Races, a character named The Red Max drove a red car/plane hybrid named the Crimson Haybaler, and he spoke with a German accent. He was voiced by Daws Butler, best known as the voice of Yogi Bear.
Another Wacky Races character, Dick Dastardly, was voiced by famed ventriloquist Paul Winchell. His dog, Muttley, was voiced by Don Messick, who became the original voice of Scooby-Doo. These characters were used in a spinoff cartoon the next year, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, which seemed to be based on World War I, and also on the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines -- which made sense, since Wacky Races was based on a film that came out right after TMMITFM, The Great Race.
By 1975, Hanna-Barbera Productions had lost the legal rights to Dastardly and Muttley, and so, voiced by the same actors, they created the characters of the Dread Baron (who wore olive drab instead of red, suggesting that he was American) and Mumbly. A few years later, after they regained the rights to Dastardly and Muttley, a graphic novel was released, revealing that Dick Dastardly and the Dread Baron were identical twins, and that Muttley and Mumbly were litter brothers.
Athletes with red hair who have been nicknamed the Red Baron include baseball pitcher Rick Sutcliffe and hockey player and coach Gordon Berenson, whose nickname is usually just shortened to "Red." Michael Schumacher, a German racer on the Formula One circuit, drove a red Ferrari, and was nicknamed the Red Baron.
And from 1989 to 2006, a minor league baseball team in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area paid tribute to two former teams in the area, the Scranton Red Sox and the Wilkes-Barre Barons, becoming the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, and adopting a triplane logo. When their affiliation switched from the Philadelphia Phillies to the New York Yankees, the Red Barons name was dropped. Acknowledging a different form of transportation, the area's train heritage, they are now the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.
Perhaps the strangest piece of pop culture connected to Richthofen is Red Baron Pizza, produced by Schwan's Company. The company was founded by German-Americans, but pizza is Italian! And the figure on the box has a mustache that makes him look more Italian than German. (Richthofen did not have a mustache.)
Regardless, in the years since the World Wars, and the shame of the Kaiser and the Nazis, Manfred von Richthofen has become a "safe" hero for Germans, much like Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who excelled as a combat commander, turned on the Nazis, and paid for it with his life.
Had he lived, the Red Baron would have been 47 years old in 1939 -- 6 months younger than Rommel, and 4 years younger than Adolf Hitler -- and would likely have been called back to service in the Luftwaffe. Whether he would have agreed with the Nazi ideology is something for those more expert on the subject of German military and political history than I to debate.
UPDATE: In 2025, the YouTube comedy series Epic Rap Battles of History paired the Red Baron (played by "Nice" Peter Shukoff) with Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper of the 1939-40 Winter War, nicknamed the White Death (played by "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist). Both Snoopy and Red Baron pizza were referenced, as was a parody of the name "Fokker."
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April 21, 1918 was a Sunday. The only scores on this historic day were 2 games in what would later be called Major League Baseball. The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-1 at Redland Field (later Crosley Field) in Cincinnati. Grover Cleveland Alexander was the winning pitcher. By the end of June, he had been drafted into the U.S. Army, and would soon go "over there," lose much of his hearing, and develop epilepsy, all of which made his existing drinking problem much worse.
And the St. Louis Browns beat the Cleveland Indians, 11-7 at League Park in Cleveland. George Sisler went 2-for-6 with an RBI for the Browns. Tris Speaker went 1-for-3 with 2 walks for the Indians.
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