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People of Note - Obituaries
GenealogyBuff.com - Manfred von Richthofen
Posted By: GenealogyBuff.com
Date: Sunday, 4 September 2016, at 5:35 p.m.
System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Manfred von Richthofen
May 02, 1892 - April 21, 1918
The most famous air ace of the First World War, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen was born on 2 May 1892 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). The son of Major Albrecht von Richthofen, a Prussian nobleman and career army officer and his wife, Kunigunde. Manfred entered the Prussian military academy at Wahlstatt when he was eleven, and then attended the Royal Military Academy at Lichterfelde. At his father's behest, Manfred joined a cavalry regiment upon his graduation in 1912. When war broke out, Richthofen was stationed near the Russian border and was engaged in one of the first skirmishes of the war. After a few months in the trenches of the Western Front, he applied for a transfer to the Air Service. After flying for a few months as an observer with a bombing squadron, he trained as a pilot. He took his first solo flight after only 24 hours of flight training, on 10 October 1915 He was assigned to a two-seater squadron in Russia, when Oswald Boelcke, Germany's top ace, asked him to join a new single-seat fighter squadron. Richthofen arrived at his new airfield on September 1 and scored his first victory less than three weeks later. A cool and precise hunter, Richthofen’s flamboyance was expressed mainly in his brightly painted aircraft, a Fokker DR-1 Dridecker. His success in the air led to his being named der Rote Kampfflieger by the Germans, le petit rouge by the French, and the Red Baron by the British. Richthofen was appointed commander of the Flying Circus in June 1917. Comprised of Germany's top fighter pilots, the new unit was highly mobile and could be quickly sent to any part of the Western Front where it was most needed. Richthofen and his pilots achieved immediate success during the air war over Ypres during August and September. On July 6, 1917Richthofen was severely wounded when a glancing shot creased his skull. He remained in the hospital for three weeks, returned briefly to duty, then went on convalescent leave until the end of October. During this time, he was active in lobbying for aircraft improvements and promoting an open competition among manufacturers for a new fighter plane. The competition took place in January 1918, and resulted in production of the Fokker D-VII, considered to be one of the best aircraft of the war. After scoring 80 confirmed kills, Richthofen was finally shot down as he flew deep into British lines in pursuit of Wilfrid May on 21 April 1918. Although Canadian flyer Arthur ‘Roy’ Brown – who was flying to May’s aid - was officially credited with the victory, controversy remains over who actually shot Richthofen down; other evidence suggests he was hit by a single bullet fired by Australian gunners in the trenches. In any event, Manfred von Richthofen crashed into a field alongside the road from Corbie to Bray. He was 25. Buried in France by the British with full military honours, Richthofen's body was later exhumed and reburied in the family cemetery at Wiesbaden. Although his eighty confirmed victories made him the top-scoring ace of the war, his most significant contributions to the war included his efforts to induce Berlin and the aircraft manufacturers to improve the quality and performance of fighter planes, and his development of large formation fighter tactics.
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