The dramatic true story of the Red Baron

November 23, 1916

Victory 11 - Burrows' version

The pilot of the bullet-nosed Albatros that now followed Hawker around a tight circle at 3,000 feet near Bapaume, two miles inside German lines, did not know wh...

June 10, 1915

Advanced Training

Richthofen worked hard at Cologne and was the first of the thirty to finish. Several did not qualify. On June 10, he was sent to the No. 6 Air Replacement Secti...

August 21, 1915

Mail Pigeon Detachment

He was to report to an airdrome at Ghistelles, a village near Ostend, Belgium, on August 21, for duty with the Mail Pigeon Detachment.

September 1, 1916

Bölcke asks MvR to join Jasta 2 - Burrows' version

One afternoon, Oswald Bölcke appeared. He was on his way back to Germany from a tour of air groups in Turkey. The trip had been arranged by the high command wit...

September 18, 1916

Bölcke's analysis of MvR's first victory

Bölcke was not only the commander of Jasta 2, but also its mentor, so the battle was analyzed the next day, when the weather was too bad for patrols. He had sta...

February 1, 1917

On victory 19

Twenty minutes after the pilot and his observer, both mortally wounded, were dragged from their airplane, a Canadian artillery battery blew it to splinters to d...

February 13, 1917

Going over tactics

The army might be on the defensive, and the Air Service, too, but not Richthofen. He spent the first two weeks of February going over tactics with his squadron...

February 14, 1917

On victory 20

He said in his report that the pilot had been killed in the air and the observer seriously wounded when the B.E.2 crashed into German trenches. The opposite was...

March 20, 1917

A postcard from Baron von Riezenstein

Richthofen rarely saw his victims' bodies. Orderlies were sent to the crash sites to get information necessary for reports and to collect souvenirs. Several day...

May 1, 1917

MvR is asked to write his memoirs

After the meeting with Hoeppner, Richthofen toured almost every department in the building, including 'Airplanes', which recorded air victories, kept track of p...

July 6, 1917

Shortly after crash-landing

A lieutenant in an air-observation post about a mile away had seen Richthofen's fall through his telescope and rushed to the spot under the two circling scouts....

December 28, 1917

Peace talks with Russia

"The Richthofen brothers arrived in Brest-Litovsk in mid January, and had their first look at Bolsheviks, which was fascinating to the unworldly young Prussians...

March 15, 1918

Ernst Udet joins MvR

"One of the many squadrons that were ordered to support the great offensive was Lieutenant Ernst Udet's Jasta 37. On March 15, Udet was told to move his group t...