An interview with Norman Franks
This interview with Norman Franks (NF) was carried out by the television production company 3BM for the Channel 4 programme Dogfight: The mystery of the Red Baron. Norman Franks is a military aviation historian with nearly 50 books to his name, among them massive studies of World War I fighter aces: Above the Trenches, Over the Front and Above the Lines. He was one of the historical consultants on Dogfight.
3BM: What role was envisioned for early flying machines at the onset of World War I in August 1914?
NF: By the time aeroplanes had become a fixture in the skies over England, reconnaissance was the military idea behind them. They could look around and cover various aspects from height and get a better overall view – it was purely that.
3BM: And had a reconnaissance role already emerged?
NF: No, I think that, once the war became static, this is when it really developed. War would normally have comprised battles across vast areas of country. It was purely because of the machine-gun and the casualties inflicted on the various sides that they decided, once the winter weather came, to dig in, which no army had ever done before. The trenches and barbed wire made a barrier that was impossible for horses to take cavalry over to various enemy positions to report back. The generals perhaps didn't like the aeroplane all that much, being old school, but they thought, 'Well this is the only way we're going to see what's on the other side of the hill.' And aeroplanes were suddenly in vogue and important.
3BM: Was there some resistance from the old guard?
NF: Undoubtedly the generals thought that the aeroplane was a new-fangled thing that might not last very long – just a new phase in young men's ideas of speed and doing things. So there was some resistance. But then one of the first big movements by the Germans was spotted in time by early reconnaissance, and suddenly the generals took note of this and thought, 'Perhaps we ought to give more credence to these reports.' And once the trenches came into vogue, they had no choice. Aeroplanes had to go over and have a look and see what was happening. And of course, by that time, they could take photographs, which were better than a verbal report that could be inaccurate or misinterpreted.
First combat
3BM: How soon did people realise that, if they were getting this kind of valuable information to help the ground forces, the enemy would start taking shots at these aircraft?
NF: I think it started as a bit of a sporting gesture. 'Why should these people be wandering around? Let's just try and intercept them!' – a typical hunting mentality. Young men with these aeroplanes suddenly saw other young men in their aeroplanes. They were the enemy, so 'Let's take a pot shot at them!' with a pistol or a rifle.
But once it became apparent that the Germans should be stopped or deterred from photographing the Allied side, there was a bit more combat and ideas to stop the other side doing that.
3BM: What were the first things that were done?
NF: Well, the French had a thing called a flêche or flêchette, which was a pointed dart that was heavy at one end with a point. They had these in something like a baked bean tin and, while airborne, would release them over cavalry. If they were on target, this would scatter the horses quite well, but it was very hit and miss.
Other than this, a pilots might use an ordinary revolver, rifle, carbine, hand grenade – just something to be offensive with. There were machine-guns available, and the more daring of the pilots said, 'Let's try and strap one of these things on and use it.' There was a weight problem, of course – not only the weight of the gun but of three or four drums of ammunition. So certain commanding officers of the old school would say, 'You mustn't do that – you're making the aeroplane go slower or not so high.' But in general, this was overruled, and eventually the gun became almost mandatory for aerial combat.
3BM: How far is there a sense in this period that everything has never been done before, that there's a clean slate for people just to experiment?
NF: Yes, it was totally new. There had never been an air war before. They had to innovate the whole time. There were no books to read, no lectures to go to. Very few people had experience.
But remember that these people had to fly aeroplanes to get that experience. They had to know where they were, they had to navigate, they had to fly from A to B – no use getting lost and not being able to come home. They also had to have a good idea of what they were looking at, learn to see in the air. And then if they were going to have a fight with somebody, they had to get themselves in the right position to fire at an opponent with minimal response from him. It was no use attacking him and you get shot down. You tried to shoot him down without him seeing you.
3BM: What was the challenge of getting an effective machine-gun in the air? What were the problems?
NF: Well, the problems were struts, wires, the pilot. In the early machines, the observer and, therefore, his gun were in the front cockpit, which was surrounded by struts and wires. The observer would have to lift his machine-gun round to various holes in his cockpit, making sure he wasn't hitting struts, or firing through wings or the propeller, and making sure he didn't bang his pilot on the head with the gun.
Anybody who does clay pigeon shooting knows that you have to lead a target. Instead of shooting at the target, you had to shoot to where the bullet will be when the target reaches it. This became an art once fighter pilots began to develop air combat, which was never easy. You either had the knack of doing it or you didn't. And if you had the knack, you became a bit of a scorer. If you didn't, you were just an ordinary pilot who was doing a relatively good job defending others.
The fighter aircraft's role
3BM: Was the raison d'être of the fighter aircraft to protect the reconnaissance aircraft? Was that how they first emerged in the skies?
NF: I think that they were there to protect but also to be offensive against the other two-seaters. I wouldn't be too sure which was the chicken and which was the egg.
Fighter aircraft really arrived on the scene because there was a need for offensive action against hostile two-seaters, which were either bombing or attacking or looking at Allied positions. And then there was also the defensive role for the fighter in escorting reconnaissance aircraft across the other side.
There were problems escorting other aircraft. The escorts had no radios, so you couldn't call up and say, 'I'm over such and such a wood. Come and escort me or we'll meet up over such and such.' Once you were in the air, you either met up or you didn't. However, as long as the air was patrolled by fighter squadrons, that would keep it fairly clear of the opposition and you could protect by just being in the same sector.
Different speeds were another problem. The two-seater was a slow aircraft, and if it were circling round and round taking photographs or looking at the artillery firing and the fall of shots, it was very difficult for fast single-seater aircraft to linger. You had to keep a certain speed up in case a combat situation developed. Therefore you had to be flying fairly rapidly.
Forward firing
3BM: Can you tell me a little bit about Garros and how he solved the problem of getting a forward firing machine in the air.
NF: Frenchmen such as Roland Garros, Adolphe Pègoud, Jules Vedrines were pre-war aviators. They'd offered their services very quickly to the French air force, and being experienced, they had innovative ideas. They decided that the best way to attack an enemy aircraft would be to aim your aeroplane straight at it. However, they had to overcome the problem with the two-bladed propeller. Roland Garros had little metal deflecting plates put on the blades so that he could fire a machine-gun directly ahead. Every now and again, a bullet would hit the propeller, but the metal deflector plate would deflect it and it would spin off. But most of the bullets would go through.
Once Garros got the hang of this, he shot down three or four German two-seater reconnaissance aircraft. Then he had engine trouble and was forced to land on the enemy side and was captured. He escaped only to be killed in the last weeks of the war, again flying.
Once Garros's aircraft was on the German side, it was given to Anthony Fokker, the aircraft designer from Holland. History says that Fokker then went away and, with his team, designed an interrupter gear. In fact, the German LVG company had put one on paper pre-war but hadn't had the time, money or inclination to develop it. Fokker soon saw that there was no real problem. The propeller was constantly hit by these deflecting bullets. So he devised an interrupter gear that, by a series of cams and levers, stopped the machine-gun from firing when the blade was directly in front of the gun muzzle. And in that way the bullets would pass through and go to the target. And we're only talking about two propeller blades. We're not talking about three, as in later aircraft. So you only had to stop the thing twice in a cycle.
3BM: So the key was to make your aircraft effectively the gun?
NF: The aim of the pilot would be to fly directly at the opponent aircraft and fire. Obviously if the opposition aircraft is turning, you had to turn with it and fire ahead of the target, so that the aircraft would fly into the bullet stream. But if you could get right behind it and fire ... Not so much chivalry in that, but it was the name of the game. Just fire the gun straight at the aeroplane.
And generally speaking, you fired at the pilot. There was no protection. There was no metal armour behind the seats – they were just sitting on a wicker seat, probably above the petrol tank. So you aimed at the pilot – that was the most expedient way of hitting him: the aeroplane comes down.
Effectively the aeroplane becomes the machine-gun – because the aeroplane is the gun platform. The steadier and better the pilot and the aeroplane, the better the results. And if he can use the angles to his advantage, he becomes successful.
3BM: Fokker had offered his services to the British but was turned down. How costly an error was this?
NF: Well, it's hindsight, isn't it, really? He offered his services to the French as well and they turned him down, too, so there must have been something that they weren't quite happy with. Obviously, in hindsight, it was a costly thing, because Fokker's aircraft were very effective and are well known. But it was just one of those things, I believe. It was unfortunate, but I can't see that the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) with Fokker would have defeated the Germans that much quicker.
The Fokker Eindecker
3BM: What happened when the Eindecker came on the scene?
NF: The Fokker Eindecker was a very indifferent aeroplane, a reconnaissance aeroplane basically but a single-seater. But with the Fokker putting initially one, then two, later even three synchronised guns firing through the propeller, it became quite a potent weapon. Half-a-dozen young German pilots, like Boelcke and Immelmann, had this sense of 'I can do something with this new machine. I can fire through the propeller. I can achieve victories.'
But there were only a few Eindeckers – probably only one, two or three assigned to each German two-seater [reconnaissance] Flieger Abteilung [Flying Section]. They were there for support and protection [of reconnaissance aircraft]. Once they were free of those duties, the odd guy would go up and do some hunting and then would attack French or British aeroplanes. So it became a potent weapon simply because they were achieving results.
But although there was an era called the 'Fokker scourge', there were really only eight or nine really successful Eindecker pilots. If you read some of articles, you'd think that the sky was full of Fokker Eindecker pilots. But that wasn't quite true. There were lots flying them, but most didn't achieve any successes.
3BM: Can you tell me about [Fokker test pilot Oswald] Boelcke and [Max} Immelmann?
NF: Well, Boelcke and Immelmann were assigned to Fleiger Abteilung No. 62 as two-seater pilots. When the Eindeckers arrived, these were the guys who said, 'Oh, yes, I'll volunteer to fly those.'
3BM: Boelcke was also a great innovator in terms of aerial tactics ...
NF: I think that he thought about it more and decided how best to do things, and how best to attack – using cloud cover, using the sun, not just going bald-headed into an attack, but sizing up the situation, getting the best advantage of all things. The idea was to get the opponent down without or with minimum hurt to you. And Boelcke was very good at that, and very good at imparting that knowledge to other airmen.
3BM: And what was [the head of the Royal Flying Corps Sir Hugh] Trenchard's response to the effectiveness of the Eindeckers in the sky?
NF: Until that time, most squadrons would have had two or three different types of aircraft, but they were gradually getting to the point of having one single aeroplane type per squadron. Then they were decided that they should have single-seater fighter squadrons. By that time, the [Airco] DH.2 was coming across, which was a small 'pusher scout', with the propeller behind and the gun in front so you didn't have a propeller problem.
The French had developed the Nieuport Scout, which was very good. You could have a gun on the cowling firing through the propeller. The British tended to have a Lewis gun on the top wing, which was slightly angled down. That would fire over the propeller blades.
Once these things came in and you had the aggressiveness of the RFC pilots, you could overcome the inferiority of the basic Fokker Eindecker machine, as opposed to the Fokker Eindecker with a gun, so you outflew the aeroplane. If it had been a better aeroplane with a gun, it will have been much harder to overcome. But because it was a fairly indifferent aeroplane – just successful because of the machine-gun and the aggressiveness of the pilots flying it – that saw them through the easy period of the 'scourge' in 1915/16.
Tactics
3BM: Did the British also adopt the tactics of covering each other?
NF: The British mainly went hell for leather. They tended to be so aggressive that they just attacked. It was some time before formations went over with leaders who were actually in control. Again, the main problem was that there was no communication between aircraft. Quite often, the British would just be led down to an attack, all hell would break loose and then the dogfight as we understand it would develop. Then you suddenly found yourself alone. If you hadn't been shot down, you'd say, 'Which way is west?' and fly that way.
It was only when the patrol leaders began to develop tactics and kept some control that things improved. But until then, you just had hand signals, wing wobbling, flares – which you either saw or you didn't.
3BM: In this period, you're getting more aircraft in the air so you're getting the beginnings of the full-blown dogfight ...
NF: Aircraft were increasing in numbers, and formations got larger. Engines became more reliable. You could actually fly half-a-dozen aeroplanes in a single formation without them straggling all over the sky. More numbers meant more opposition, more opposition meant more numbers, so there was this scale of development on the numbers game. And then the [German] Jastas [short for Jagdstaffel – dedicated fighter groups] came in, which would fly in formations.
British squadrons, fighter squadrons, tended to fly in patrol strength – five or six aeroplanes. In big offensives, they would fly all their aeroplanes – 10 or 12 if they had others available.
More and more aircraft were attacking more and more aircraft, so the sky became quite a lethal place. The day of the lone fighter – who could go out and patrol around and find an opponent and attack him – were fast diminishing by 1917.
3BM: When the British started to get more effective aircraft and forward firing in 1916, did that take things back to what they had been before the so-called 'Fokker scourge'?
NF: The advantage came back slightly to the Royal Flying Corps with the arrival of the [Sopwith] Pup and the [Airco] DH.2, the FE.8 and the [Vickers] FE.2b.
But the Germans were canny in that they were choosing the place and the time of battle. If they didn't think the circumstances were right, they wouldn't attack. Of course, the British and the French would say, 'Oh, the Germans never fight,' but the Germans fought quite well if the circumstances were right. And this was quite sensible really: why go in and shoot down four and lose three when it's much better to shoot down three and lose none?
The British attitude was to attack everything, as Trenchard said. Go on the offensive, lean on the opposition all the time – keep bombing them, keep attacking them, get over the lines, bomb, strafe, keep them occupied, harass them. Whereas the Germans could choose their own area of battle and engage or not engage. And quite often, they would know when patrols were going away or hadn't quite arrived and were leaving two-seater reconnaissance or artillery aircraft slightly vulnerable. Then they would pounce, taking advantage of any gaps.
3BM: The British were prepared to lose more men?
NF: Whether the Royal Flying Corps were prepared to lose more men – I don't know. They just absorbed the losses, and once the losses became apparent, they said, 'This must be the cost, so let's carry on.' I don't think they ever drew back because the numbers were a problem. Certainly the Allies had more men to call upon. The British had troops from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, as well as their own native UK contingents. So there were lots of men to come to fight, and lots of men came to fight – the Canadians came over in droves. So I don't think that manpower was a problem. Perhaps if they had a bit of a problem, they might have been less offensive.
3BM: What was the 'Immelmann turn' and why did it pass into aviation folklore?
NF: Immelmann is supposed to have designed this turn to get quickly behind an opponent. I think the Immelmann turn was really a climb with a stall at the top, and you come back down again. But the Eindecker really couldn't do that because it didn't have ailerons – it had wing warping. Anybody who saw something quite different in the air, if it was done by an Eindecker, they would say, 'This is Immelmann.'
But there were so many people flying Eindeckers that I just don't think [the turn] was something Immelmann invented. If he did, he probably did it by accident. He would try to get on the tail of an aircraft and attack, and he would certainly dive underneath and come up and fire if he could. But all circumstances are different. Certainly in his letters and his combat reports, there's no indication that he was doing anything special, and there was no imparting of this to other pilots. It is a good manoeuvre, so I think it's just something that developed and the name has stuck to him.
3BM: What about the tactics of someone like Albert Ball [British ace who shot down 40 German aircraft]?
NF: Ball had this aptitude for stalking. He was quite a patient person, flying along using cloud cover, using the sun and spotting the occasional aircraft and stalking it. And his best manoeuvre would be to come up underneath it and, using the top gun on the Nieuport Scout, fire up. The first the German two-seater crew would know about it was when bullets were coming up through the fuselage and into them. That was his tactic – he was good at it. He had the patience – as [Major James] McCudden [who had 57 kills and was awarded the Victoria Cross] did later on – and the skill to creep up on somebody and fire from below. Rarely did he attack from the top on a two-seater because of the danger for the observer with the gun at the back. Minimum risk for maximum profit.
3BM: What did Boelcke achieve on the suggestion of the Jasta squad – what did he realise was the way forward for the German offensive?
NF: Once the Somme offensive was coming up, Boelcke realised that more single-seaters should be grouped together rather than having them spread piecemeal among the two-seater units. He could envisage a dedicated fighter unit with Eindeckers or, as it turned out, with the early Albatros scouts. They would use the aircraft purely for offensive action against the Allies' two-seaters and not necessarily protect by patrolling.
Boelcke had some pull because of his rank and his ability, and I suspect that the High Command thought that this was quite a good idea. So 12 Jastas were formed in late December 1916, with 7-12 pilots per unit. They don't seem to have had the same numbers as Royal Flying Corps squadrons.
The leader would lead the attack and would be supported totally by his men. A pilot like Boelcke and, later, von Richthofen was successful because he attacked at the head with everybody protecting him – he'd be the guy. So you'd find that a lot of these Jastas had perhaps one or two stars with big scores and everybody else would really be in a supporting role, and just pick off one or two now and again.
Manfred von Richthofen
3BM: Boelcke could pick his pilots, and one of them was Manfred von Richthofen. What do you think made von Richthofen stand out from the crowd?
NF: I simply don't know why he chose him. I don't think von Richthofen had achieved a lot. He didn't have a combat record. It must have been just something that Boelcke saw in him.
3BM: What was Manfred von Richthofen's background?
NF: Von Richthofen's background was the cavalry, but cavalry had become obsolete with the development of trenches and barbed wire systems. So it was natural for him to want to do that reconnaissance job, but in another medium, by becoming an observer in an aeroplane. He was observing, doing some bombing, and then became a pilot but not in two-seaters – two-seaters were for reconnaissance and bombing. The hunter in him decided that, with the new single-seater aircraft like the Eindecker, there was a role for him. He met Boelcke by chance on one of his tours. There was probably something about von Richthofen's personality that made Boelcke think: 'He could be in one of the squadrons we're forming. I'm sure to get one.' In fact, he was given one – Jasta 2 – in August 1916, to take to the front.
3BM: Manfred von Richthofen had the image of a daredevil, but was he actually a careful pragmatist, calculating his survival?
NF: Von Richthofen's background led him to be a cautious person. I don't think he was an excellent pilot. He was good pilot, but he was an excellent shot and tactician. He'd learnt a lot from Boelcke before the latter was killed, and he could impart that to others.
He had a presence. We've all seen pictures where he is obviously the centre of attention, even though he wasn't the commander of a particular unit. Everything seems to focus on him. He became successful, managing to destroy aircraft in the air. He was popular with the press and the general staff.
A classic fight
3BM: With the arrival of the Albatros, did the Jastas regain the initiative once more in the see-saw of aerial advantage?
NF: Once the Jastas were formed, the Eindecker had really gone. The Albatros and the Halberstadt scouts were coming in. Better aeroplanes, they had twin synchronised machine-guns, which gave them a lot of fire power, and both were strong. The Albatros was a bit heavy, but that didn't matter too much with the strength. It was nicely streamlined, had a nice in-line engine that was, by this time, reliable.
They could wrestle back the superiority from the Allies, but the Germans still remained on the defensive. They chose their moment of battle; they chose their battle area. The Royal Flying Corps and the French air force still had to go to them to engage. The Germans could always break off if they needed to.
3BM: Boelcke was killed at the height of his success. Can you speculate on the effect on von Richthofen of losing his mentor?
NF: When Boelcke was killed, I'm sure it affected von Richthofen because he could see that even the most successful pilots were vulnerable to death in the air. He knew that it was always a possibility, and he was going to have to live with that. He was probably saddened, but carried on. And very soon afterwards he was given his own squadron, so he had other things to think about.
3BM: Can you comment on Manfred von Richthofen's duel with Lanoe Hawker?
NF: The fight between von Richthofen and Hawker – who was one of the first VCs [Victoria Crosses], certainly the first air-fighting VC – has gone down in history as one of the classic air fights.
Hawker had gained his experience on a Bristol fighter, which was an indifferent aeroplane, with a gun that fired off past the propeller as opposed to straight on. By the time he was commanding 24 Squadron, which had a DH.2 fighter, he was no longer required to fly in combat. At times, the RFC frowned on their commanding officers endangering themselves. But Hawker would often fly out alone or accompany a flight as a subordinate, really just keeping his hand in. So when the fight started, he obviously brought his skill to bear.
How much Richthofen thought he was flying against somebody special is unknown, but he obviously knew that it was somebody who knew how to handle an aeroplane because the fight did last for a while. I think that they were fairly evenly matched.
Of course, Hawker's plane drifted – as it always seemed to do because of the prevailing westerly wind – into German-held territory. He was hit in the head by a single bullet, crashed and was killed. Von Richthofen then knew that he'd shot down this famous man. He was quite happy with that.
Enter the Red Baron
3BM: In early 1917, von Richthofen became leader of his own Jasta. What did he do to his Albatros aircraft?
NF: He painted his aeroplane red. The idea was that his men could see him in the air. Again, bear in mind that there were no radios. If a fight developed and then broke up, the more quickly he could re-form his men, the more effective they would be. By painting his aeroplane red, they could see him standing out like a sore thumb.
There didn't appear to be any requirement from the German side for fighters particularly to be camouflaged, whereas the British had a great penchant for heavy green-grey camouflage.
There's a slight misunderstanding of how much of von Richthofen's aircraft was coloured red. He appeared only to have all-red aircraft in battle situations where the front was fluid. The rest of the time, he would only have parts of his aircraft red – tail-plane, perhaps the top wing and the cowling. But in a battle situation, when they were on the offensive, he would be red for two reasons: first, for very quick identification in the air; and second, because he liked the people on the ground see him shooting down aircraft that would fall in no-man's-land or on the British side. These 'kills' would be confirmed that much more quickly because it was obvious that this all-red aircraft had shot those aeroplanes down.
3BM: Did it also make him a target for everyone wanting to shoot down the Red Baron?
NF: I don't think so. A lot of people believed that, if you saw this red aeroplane, it had to be von Richthofen. I've seen lots of combat reports of people supposedly fighting him when we know he was in Germany on leave. He didn't keep red exclusively for himself; there were a lot of other aeroplanes that had portions painted that colour. There's no doubt that some people thought, 'Is this Richthofen? Is this the flying circus?' But in a combat situation, you've basically got to take on what you've got, and not be put off by the fact that there's a red aeroplane. It had an effect, of course. You'd probably think twice about mixing it if there was a possibility of having von Richthofen in competition with you. But in the air, you just get on with it and do the best you could.
The deadly assassin
3BM: The Albatros dominated the Jastas in the spring of 1917, and the Germans were very effective. Why was Bloody April such a disaster for the Allies?
NF: Bear in mind that, by the time the Arras offensive opened in April 1917, the German Jastas had been formed for six or seven months and had all their new aircraft and synchronised machine-guns. They were raring to go, really wanted to explode on to the scene. They'd been frustrated by the winter weather when they could rarely get into full swing. Suddenly there was this big offensive coming up, when the French and the British filled the sky with aircraft. This mammoth increase of aircraft meant that there were more targets to shoot down. It was a disaster from the Royal Flying Corps' point of view.
3BM: What were von Richthofen's qualities as a tactician in the air, which made him such a deadly assassin?
NF: Richthofen was good because he'd learnt the lessons that Boelcke had taught him and his other pilots. He led from the front, and didn't have to worry too much about things behind him, because he knew his men were there. This was Jasta 11's tactic.
Before attacking, he made sure that everything was OK and chose the battle area. Then he attacked, knocking his opponent down – he was a good, even a perfect shot, but only an adequate pilot.
Then he would break away. If he saw there was danger – unlike the British who would just go hell bent for it – he would break off, come back later when everything had quietened down, then hit out at the two-seaters.
There was this business of him flying against 'obsolete' aircraft. But he could only attack what the Allies were putting up against him. It's not his fault that a lot of the aircraft were not so much obsolete as inferior two-seaters. His job was to stop artillery bombing his countrymen, to stop the enemy photographing things. He was doing a superb job – so why all this 'he was only doing this and only doing that'? He was doing exactly what he was being paid for – shooting down Allied aircraft.
But he was also quite good if he fought against British fighter aircraft. If you analyse his victories, there are any number of perfectly good, Royal Flying Corps fighters that could have defeated him, were on a par to his aircraft, but he could still shoot them down.
New aircraft
3BM: In the summer of 1917, the British got more aircraft ...
NF: Another problem with April 1917 was that the British were still using 1916 aircraft, even though a lot of new ones had been promised. In April, the SE.5 started to arrive, but only one squadron. The Bristol fighter – the two-seater – also began to arrive, but that wasn't used effectively in its first combats. They tended to bunch up and protect each other rather than being used as the very effective two-seater fighter it became later on.
As the summer progressed, the Sopwith Pup was superseded by the Sopwith Camel. These aircraft were very manoeuvrable, had very potent engines, with good machine-gun fire. The Camel had twin guns like the Albatros. The SE.5 had two guns, although in a different configuration: a single gun fired through the propeller, and a gun on the top wing (as the Nieuports had).
These aircraft began to make inroads into combating the Jastas and their tactics, but they still had to fly over the land and could still be attacked. The Germans were flying as many Camels and SE.5s as they had been flying Pups and Bs and FEs earlier. The British had better aircraft, but they were still being overwhelmed to a degree by the Germans. The Germans were very effective air fighters.
3BM: What attracted von Richthofen to the Fokker DR.I triplane?
NF: Von Richthofen saw the Fokker triplane as a very manoeuvrable aeroplane. It had high wing loading, with three wings, and could turn on the proverbial sixpence. Everything, including the rotary engine, was up front, as with the Camel. The whole weight of the Camel was up front – the pilot, the fuel tank, the guns, the ammunition – which made it a very effective turning aeroplane.
So the Fokker DR.I was a very effective aeroplane. It was something that von Richthofen could use to get into close air fighting – the triplane could get round behind you every time. He knew that, if he ran into fighters, he could turn very effectively and quickly and get out of trouble or turn on his opponent
Royal Flying Corps pilots would be told not to dogfight the triplane because it would get on your tail every time. It was best to dive and zoom, get out the way as quickly as you could. Even though most of von Richthofen's scores occurred with Albatros scouts, he became identified with the triplane.
3BM: Was the Fokker triplane based on the Sopwith triplane?
NF: I don't think the Fokker triplane was necessarily developed because of the Sopwith triplane. The latter was effective, but it was not the greatest of aircraft. Only the Royal Navy's air service used it and only for a time. Von Richthofen shot down just one, and he didn't have more than two or three fights with one. So I'm sure that he didn't know how good or bad it was.
Both sides were developing ideas and must have said, 'Let's try three wings.' There had been three wings very early, almost pre-war, but there were only two aircraft in 1917 that became anything like frontline fighters.
Glamorous airmen
3BM: Manfred von Richthofen became Germany's leading ace in that year. Can you tell me about the glamourisation of people like von Richthofen?
NF: The Germans seemed to laud and applaud their airmen and soldiers. They received a lot of publicity, especially when they were decorated. Whereas the British tended not to glamourise their men. They thought it was a team effort, and why should they pick out people who are perhaps doing a bit better than the others?
The Germans didn't go along with that thesis. They wanted to applaud their men, probably thinking that it was some encouragement, to bring others along. It certainly did encourage a lot of the German World War I pilots to emulate those big-scoring people with chests full of decorations and a 'Pour le mérite' at their throats. Von Richthofen was part of all that. He would certainly see his high score as a way to gain reward and celebrity status.
The French also glamourised their war heroes to a degree – you could buy postcards of them just as you can buy posters of pop idols today. As for the British, you were lucky to see a picture of a war hero. Perhaps in The Times if they were coming out of Buckingham Palace, having been decorated by the king – you might spot a face then. But that was it.
Von Richthofen's last flight
3BM: By spring 1918, what was von Richthofen's mood? Do you think he was disillusioned at that point?
NF: By the spring of 1918, Richthofen was a different man to what he had been a year earlier. He had been wounded in July 1917 and I think that altered his approach. I don't think he had realised that he was vulnerable. Suddenly he had this head wound that had nearly killed him, and he'd been involved in a bad crash, but he did manage to get down. I think that, after that, he was a little more cautious. People who knew him said that he was certainly a different man after that.
But nevertheless he was a dedicated German officer. I don't think he would have been particularly disillusioned. I imagine that he thought that, whatever trials his country was going through, it would eventually achieve victory. I'm sure he didn't have any doubts on that. After all, at the time he was killed in April 1918, the Germans had just had a fairly successful offensive during March; even though it had petered out, they'd gained a lot of ground. Like a lot of other Germans, von Richthofen knew that American manpower and industry would soon fall upon them, but he was still determined to go on.
His score was 80. His mother was trying to get him away from the front. He wanted to carry on. I have a sneaking suspicion that they probably said, 'Well, let's call it a day when you get 100 victories, Manfred.' I think that's what he was going for – that last kill that was just a bit too silly to go for.
He had doubled his mentor Boelcke's score of 40, so he was probably ready for a rest. But he was the leading ace, he was heading a big circus of aircraft, he was popular. He would have been reluctant to give all that up. Those last few months, he did have several leave periods. He was not as much in combat after July 1917 as he had been before, but he was still a very effective fighter pilot.
3BM: Coming to the day that he was killed, why has there been such controversy surrounding the last flight of the Red Baron?
NF: Controversy over the Red Baron's fall was mainly hyped up in the 1920s and '30s by pulp fiction writers and those who were starting to look at the first war in the air. Like all wars, it takes perhaps 10 years before people start writing their memoirs; then the next generation of youth comes up and wants to know.
Certainly in America as well as in England, the 1920s and '30s were the era of the pulp fiction writers. If they saw the slightest glimmer of a controversy – which may or may not have even been a controversy – that was obviously the thing to sell newspapers, magazines and books. The controversy shouldn't really have developed as it did.
Chasing May
3BM: Why do you think that von Richthofen went against his own tactics to pursue Wilfred May over Allied territory? It was not something that he would normally have done.
NF: The action on 21 April 1918 is strange in that he followed this Camel over the Allied lines, low down and too far with problem guns. There are no real answers as to why he did that.
My theory is that he saw that this guy was running away from him. That was a sure sign that it was a fairly novice pilot or a pilot in trouble. An experienced pilot, even if he didn't have any guns, would fight you just to put you off. A guy running away could be a quick kill. Von Richthofen had made lots of quick kills, and here was No. 81 coming up.
The wind had changed direction that day. Rather than west to east, it was east to west. It blew him over the Allied lines quicker than he had anticipated. He was over the Somme river, in the Somme valley – low down so he couldn't actually see, as he would have been able to see from a height, exactly where he was. There were several identical bends in the river, with very similar little hamlets. I'm sure he didn't realise that he was over the lines as far as he was until he came up against Morlancourt Ridge.
Then he probably thought: 'I'm way out of my area here. This is silly. My guns aren't working properly. I'm not getting any advantage on this Camel.' He pulled out and then was attacked from the left-hand side by another Camel, which gave him a fleeting burst. He thought, 'I've got to get out of this.'
So he went over the ridge and saw some Australian guns, which, in fact, the Germans had been looking for for some time. He couldn't really have missed them. He then suddenly thought, 'Ah, that's what we've been looking for. Perhaps I should go back with that information.' He came back over Morlancourt Ridge and was hit by ground fire.
3BM: Why do you think that he failed to hit May, who should have been an easy target for him?
NF: Some time before noon, German aeroplanes – including one flown by von Richthofen – were in combat with a couple of RE.8 aircraft that had been observing German troops on the ground. One of von Richthofen's guns jammed. As luck would have it, the other gun spit its firing pin, which meant that every time it hit a round, it didn't fire, so he had to keep recocking the gun. To keep doing that, he had to loosen his harness. We know that he had his harness off because, when he crashed, he smashed his head on the guns. So we know that he had undone his harness simply to get forward in the cockpit to recock the gun.
So he was going forward, cocking his gun, bang bang. As it jammed again, he went forward, recocking it, getting the jam out. He didn't have the concentration he normally had, and he was just hoping that one or two of his quick bursts would be enough to hit, but they weren't.
Why, with his own tactics, when he usually said, 'I'll go and come back tomorrow' – why he didn't fly away? Who knows?
3BM: What was unusual about the weather conditions?
NF: Anybody who has studied the weather over France and England appreciates that most of it comes from the south-west and, therefore, most wind blows up from the south-west. On the Western Front, the wind was usually coming from the west, blowing into the east. This was fine from the Germans' point of view because it blew the enemy towards them very rapidly, and when the enemy needed to go back, they had to fly against the wind.
However, it wasn't always west to east. On this particular morning, the morning of 21 April 1918, the prevalent wind was from east to west. Therefore, when von Richthofen was starting to chase May, he was going much faster because whatever wind there was was behind him. However, there couldn't have been that much because there was quite a haze over the Somme river that day, which Roy Brown [see below] was to take slight advantage of.
But I think that just disorientated von Richthofen a bit. If you're high up, you could see where you were. Being low down, von Richthofen was right above the trees and the river, and he could have been anywhere – until he came up against Morlancourt Ridge and realised that he'd gone too far back, over the Allied line.
Who shot down the Red Baron?
3BM: When he was shot down, word spread. Who were the prime contenders?
NF: There were three claims made, once word had got out that von Richthofen had crashed. One of the RE.8 gunners had fired at two or three triplanes. So it was quite natural for him to put in a claim and say, 'I shot him down.' And, in fact, he'd damaged one of the other triplanes, the leader of Jasta 11, who had gone back home. But the timescale was out, so that couldn't have happened.
The second one was a claim by Roy Brown of 209 Squadron. Actually, he didn't claim it. He put it in the combat report because other people said that he'd shot von Richthofen down, which is a bit different.
He had only tried to get the Red Baron to stop chasing this Camel, which turned out to be May's Camel. So he did the job and then backed away, coming round Morancourt Ridge to meet up with May later, by which time the Camel was ahead and the triplane had turned.
The third (or 300th!) claim was made by anybody who was firing in the general direction of the triplane on that morning. But there was an Australian machine- gunner who had knowledge, experience and a good position. Von Richthofen had his right side to him; everybody else had fired from the left. But Von Richthofen was hit from the right-hand side. The Australian was the only person we know who was firing a gun from that side at the right distance. A lot of witnesses would tell us exactly when he was hit.
3BM: And wasn't there a second Australian gun crew that said that they'd shot him down as well?
NF: The Australian guns that the Germans were looking for, across the other side of Morlancourt Ridge, had their own defensive gunners with Lewis guns. A chap called Robert Buie put in a claim because he'd fired at this triplane and later on it crashed. The problem with that is that he was firing at the triplane head on.
The story is that another Australian then went over to the crash site, looked at the body and saw a lot of blood on the front of von Richthofen's flying jacket and his boots and legs. He came back and said, 'He's been hit in the chest and the legs. That must have been your burst.' He then said, 'When I was looking at this triplane coming on where you were standing there firing, I could see the bullets hitting von Richthofen's chest.'
But if you can imagine an aircraft about 50 feet up, coming straight towards you, you're hardly going to see the top of the pilot's helmet, let alone his chest, which is in a cockpit behind a big engine and behind guns. So it was obvious that he was stretching the truth to make sure that this claim for Buie was put in. The fact that von Richthofen was covered in blood on the front was because he had bled from the mouth quite profusely. But he had this side wound that had nothing to do with an Australian gunner called Buie.
3BM: Why do you think that the British and the Canadians were so reluctant to consider the Australian gunners' claim?
NF: On the afternoon of the 21st or even on the 22nd, it wasn't that important to know who had shot down von Richthofen. It was probably only of interest that this top German ace had been brought down. Death was all around these people everyday. Why should they worry too much about one more dead airman? The fact that he was famous and, as it turned out, would continue to be the top German ace is an historical fact.
I think there's always been this tradition that the air force say that the ground guns can never hit anything, and the ground gunners always say that, if there are any claims to verify a kill, it's always by what in World War II would be called the 'Brill Cream boys' – the fighter pilots – they're always going to get it. There's always that love-hate relationship.
As the days went on, the question of who killed von Richthofen just died a death. It was only after the war that people decided that they wanted to make these statements that became controversial and have kept that pot boiling ever since.
New evidence
3BM: When you began your investigation into the controversy, two crucial new sets of evidence came to light. Can you tell me why the Coltman papers are so significant?
NF: The uncle of a lady from north London had, as a young man, been interested in the von Richthofen shoot-down and had contacted all the people he could in the mid-1930s. That man was John Coltman, who ironically was killed in World War II while flying over Germany with RAF Bomber Command. When he died, all his papers and research files were kept by his mother and, when she died, were passed to this lady. She thought that they were too important just to throw away, and had contacted the Imperial War Museum.
The museum said that they understood that I was researching a book about von Richthofen's death. They contacted me through my publisher, and suddenly I was presented with this file of correspondence going back to the mid-1930s. What I discovered very quickly was that, although other books had been produced in later years, almost of none of the original contributors to the Coltman papers had been contacted by later authors. Those authors were contacted by a lot of people, but the latter had all been in their 50s and 60s, whereas the Coltman contacts were speaking in the 1930s, only 17 or 18 years after the event, and hadn't been influenced by all the publications that had come out in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Therefore the Coltman papers were very fresh and very rewarding to look at it.
Alan Bennett, my co-author on the book, decided that we should look at von Richthofen's death from two angles. First, we should investigate the pathology, the actual body wounds and what happens to bullets when they hit the body. But we also had to know when von Richthofen died, and when and where he was hit.
Brown was supposed to have hit him on the way up to Morlancourt Ridge, Buie is supposed to have hit him over Morlancourt Ridge, and Sergeant {Cedric Basset] Popkin [of the 24th Machine Gun Company] was supposed to have hit him as he was coming back over the ridge. We found a letter in the files that said that a sergeant working on the bridge down below saw the triplane, coming back over the ridge, rear up and then crunch down in a forced landing. That indicated to us when von Richthofen was hit, which was way past Brown's attack.
Brad King, a pal of mine who works at the IWM, had a letter from a Mr Twycross who had taken his father to the area of Morlancourt Ridge in his last days because he wanted to see over his old wartime battle grounds. He had mentioned to his son where the Red Baron had crashed and where his officers had sent him to capture the German. Mr Twycross had gone over to the aeroplane. The wounded pilot, covered in blood, had said in German, 'I've had it,' and then slumped forward. Australians were then coming out of the woodwork towards the triplane, so Twycross had moved away. But that gave us the knowledge that von Richthofen was actually alive on the ground. He didn't die in the air and then crash – he was on the ground when he died.
That was also confirmed by the fact that von Richthofen had quite naturally acted as he normally would in an emergency. He had done two things: switched the engine off and depressurised the fuel tank so that there'd be no risk of fire. He knew that he had to get down quickly; he knew he'd been hurt. So he did those two things so that the plane wouldn't burst into flames. Then he crashed and then he died.
We also looked at the pathology. Alan interviewed some eminent pathologists in North America, who said that the wound that von Richthofen had suffered would have given him no more than 12-20 seconds of life once he was hit – just enough to get down.
Therefore we knew that, because the sergeant down in the valley had seen his aircraft rear up, that must have been when von Richthofen had been hit. And there could be no way that he was hit on the other side of the ridge by Buie and his gunners – wrong angle. He couldn't have been hit by Brown firing from the left-hand side perhaps two minutes earlier – wrong angle, wrong side.
Sergeant Popkin, who had fired at him as he went along, had turned his gun round and said, 'If he comes back over that ridge, I'm in a perfect position.' And von Richthofen had come over the ridge and Popkin had fired. He had fired quite a distance in front of the aeroplane, because he knew how to lead a target. He'd already shot down two or three German aircraft, so he knew what he was doing; he knew how to handle a gun.
We also looked at it from the bullet's point of view. We know that a bullet, once it hits a body, does two things. If it's fairly close to the body, it begins to fragment. If it's fired from a fairly long distance, the bullet hits and goes through the flesh. Then, because it's slowing down as it goes through the body, it tumbles and rips.
We know from doctors' reports that the bullet that killed von Richthofen had presumably hit his spine, had been deflected forward and had come out of the left-hand side of his body. It would have either ripped out the aorta or torn the back of the heart. But it had not had sufficient speed to penetrate through his clothing, and it hadn't fragmented. It was later found inside the Red Baron's clothing.
We know all that because one of the medics who had cleaned up the body for the doctors had found the bullet when he was taking off von Richthofen's uniform. He took it home as a souvenir and kept it in a kitchen drawer for many years. When he died, his wife threw it out – which is unfortunate, but a bullet is a bullet.
So we asked our gun expert, 'What do we need to look for?'
He said, 'You need to have a machine-gun 600 yards away firing at von Richthofen's right-hand side.'
'Why 600 yards?'
'Because, at that range, the bullet will remain virtually intact. It will not fragment. Have you got somebody who knows what they're doing, 600 yards away, and he's firing at von Richthofen's right side?'
'Yes.'
'There's your man.'
Now we're not saying that Sergeant Popkin, who was that man, actually fired the shot. But we haven't found anybody else who comes close to firing from that distance and location and who saw that the aircraft was hit and another person saw that it was hit.
The legend
3BM: Your best deductive guess would point to Sergeant Popkin?
NF: My best educated guess is that Sergeant Popkin was in the right place at the right time, knew what he was doing and could lead a target. I'm 95% confident that Popkin got von Richthofen, but I can't say that it wasn't some Australian, Canadian or British soldier who just fired a lucky shot, probably didn't think much more about it and went back to his lunchtime sandwich. But the evidence certainly shows that that person had to be where Popkin was, and Popkin was the only person we know who was firing at that distance, at that location.
It ties up with the sergeant seeing the aircraft – as he described it – 'hitting a brick wall'. Von Richthofen just went up and went down. Imagine yourself sitting and someone comes in and gives you a big dig in the ribs. Imagine that you've got your hand on the control column of an aircraft. The involuntary movement you make will make the aircraft go up like this, which is the brick-wall effect. Then von Richthofen just went down. Engine off, depressurise, crunch. Took the wheels off. And then somebody came up and heard him say, 'I've had it.' It all ties in nicely.
3BM: You could rule out Brown's claim because he was firing fire too early?
NF: Brown fired from the left-hand side coming from over the river, because he'd gone into flight commander mode and had already made sure that the sun was behind him. And he was really only firing to deflect the triplane from the pursuit of the other Camel. The pulp fiction writers say that he stitched up a load of bullet holes and saw the pilot jerk and all that stuff, which didn't happen. Although von Richthofen's aircraft was pretty much wrecked by souvenir hunters, there was enough of the top – sufficiently apparent in photographs – to see that there were no bullet holes along the top faring.
And if von Richthofen had been hit in the back, where's the bullet? A lot of people say that, if you look at the seat (which is in Canada, in Toronto), there are bullet holes in the back. These are purely holes where screws screwed it to the mainframe of the aeroplane. The shooting through the back was corroborated because somebody said the bullet came out of his face, which it couldn't have. The facial wounds were caused purely by the banging of his head on the guns. And if it came out of the chest, there are no exterior wounds on the chest.
3BM: Why has the legend of the Red Baron been so appealing?
NF: The legend of the Red Baron came about simply because von Richthofen was a bit of engima in his own right. He was the top-scoring ace, and he was a colourful character, from an historical point of view.
3BM: Do you believe that the air war was not a sideshow to the main war or do you believe it was a side show?
NF: I believe the air war was a major factor, if only because of the bombing and the strafing of German troops in 1918. Most German soldiers' diaries show that they were very affected by being constantly bombed and harassed and strafed by low-flying RAF aircraft, especially in those last months of the war. They could hardly get above ground without being bombed and shot at, and so it was a major factor.
The air war didn't get into the historical documents of army regiments or general's autobiographies and memoirs simply because that wasn't their scene. But bombs were dropped on dumps behind the lines, on railways, troop concentrations, transport, everything that affected the outcome of the front-line battles. Just as it did in Normandy in 1944, the air force constantly bombed, strafed, knocked out the ability of the Germans to get front-line troops, support, ammunition – it was exactly the same.
3BM: So when warfare took to the air for the first time, this pointed towards the future of all wars?
NF: War in the air during 1914-1918 was the first air war, and it had a major impact on how wars would be fought from then on.
Find out more
A selection of books by Norman Franks
Above the Lines: The aces of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service
and Flanders Marine Corps, 1914-1918 by Norman Franks, Frank W Bailey
and Russell Guest (Grub Street, 1994). US edition only; available from
online bookshops.
As well as covering decorations and post-war careers, this book also investigates
the claims of the pilots, especially Manfred von Richthofen.
Above the Trenches: A complete record of the fighter aces of the British
Empire air forces 1915-1920 by Christopher Shores, Norman Franks and
Russell Guest (Grub Street, 1995) £35
Biographies of 800 British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African
and American pilots.
Bloody April, Black September by Norman Franks, Frank Bailey and
Russell Guest (Grub Street, 1995). Out of print; may be available from
libraries or second-hand bookshops.
In April 1917, the Royal Flying Corps and French Air Force launched a
major offensive to break the frustrating and deadly stalemate on the Western
Front. What followed was an Allied massacre and the worst month for flying
casualties so far in the war. The events 15 months later were no less
disastrous with the Allies, including the Americans, once again suffering
a crushing defeat.
Over the Front: The complete record of the fighter aces and units
of the United States and French air services, 1914-1918 by Norman
Frank and Frank Bailey (Grub Street, 1992) £27.50
A companion volume to Above the Trenches, this work contains 400
biographies, flying records, awards and citations of the US and French
pilots who fought in World War I.
The Red Baron's Last Flight: A mystery investigated by Norman
Franks and Alan Bennett (Grub Street, 1998). US edition only; available
from online bookshops.
A detailed account of von Richthofen's last flight, which began with the
pursuit of a Sopwith Camel across the Allied front line, and ended with
a mortal wound from a single bullet.
