Roy Brown & The Red Baron

Creaking Door,

The fall of shot pattern at that range from a tripod mounted machine gun (Popkin) is significantly more compact and different from that of an aircraft mounted machine gun or a rifle at a similar range. It is reasonable to say that if one bullet from Popkin’s gun had hit the Baron, several more would also have hit him and the aircraft, but they didn’t! In the whole incident only three bullets hit the plane. The book is worth a read.

Steve

Creaking Door:
If you ever get the chance, you should drive across the country from the Maritimes, across the prairies, and through the Rockies.
When you get out into the prairies, you’ll quickly realize that the old guys in the
Middle Ages were correct in that the Earth IS flat !!

Grew up in Vancouver. It sure has grown since I was a kid. Beautiful city!
I believe one of your (British) aviation magazines ran an article on the airbase and range at Cold Lake a few years ago. In the article, they overlayed
the range on a map of Europe. The range covered the entire map!

Yes, the size of Canada is truly staggering! I flew out a few weeks ago and after about three-and-a-half hours we were over Canada, the mainland I think, having crossed the Atlantic from London (England :))…

…only another five hours to Vancouver then!

Yes, there is an Uxbridge, Ontario, and …. a London, Ontario, a Paris and a Stratford, Ontario, among others. There’s even a Washington which happens to be no more than an old crossroads town not far from London. Oh, other towns in Ontario include a Waterloo, a Kitchener, and a Cambridge. 🙂 Of course, everybody knows Toronto, but it’s not the only city in Ontario. Did I mention Kingston, or Sandhurst? Yes, both in Ontario, although Sandhurst in size is far from being a city.

Just googled Ontario – the province is only 415,600 square miles. Yes, miles.

I’m not sure you can rule-out a tracking machine-gun by ‘fall of shot patterns’ at that range against a moving aircraft; is the assertion that because only one bullet hit Richthofen it couldn’t have been fired from a machine-gun?

Not a machine gunner, the fall of shot patterns rule that out. (It’s in the “Gunning For…” book).

Steve

I’m certain the seat was removed using tools…

…bayonets and rifle-butts!

I don’t suppose that the seat was removed using tools to unfasten it …

I have been to see the seat and have been assured by the people that care for it that there is absolutely no bullet hole or bullet damage on the seat , only the seatbelt holes . The bullet hole rumour has been around for years

No, I know; the story I was told was that the bullet (single!) passed through the edge of one of the existing holes in the seat, enlarging it, and thus was confused with a (damaged) existing seat-mounting hole.

Here is a link to a good photograph of the seat-mounting holes:

http://www.wopmay.com/current/resources/myths.htm

There is a surprising amount of damage to the seat-mounting holes, presumably from the crash and the looting of the aircraft for souvenirs, but you can see how the argument for a ‘hidden’ bullet-hole could be made; surely modern ballistic forensics could sort this one out?

Also, from the article above, I doubt very much if the seat-mounting holes are 2mm apart as stated! Probably a confusion by somebody unfamiliar with the metric system; my guess is they are 20mm apart?

MVR’s seat as displayed in Canada does have two holes in the back but they are rivet holes from the seatbelt attachment not bullet holes

A few years ago, a remarkable 11-year-old schoolgirl from Uxbridge — Nadine Carter — took an interest in Brown and discovered Brown had been disinterred and reburied after the war at an unmarked grave at the Necropolis in Toronto. Thanks to her efforts, his burial site now is formally recognized. Carter’s efforts helped raise Brown’s profile, leading to formal induction in Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame.

I presume there is an Uxbridge in Canada then; the accomplishment of Nadine Carter is remarkable enough if she is Canadian, it would be astonishing if she lived in Uxbridge in the United Kingdom!

Edit: Yes, there is; Uxbridge, Ontario!

Yes, that’s what I understood the current theory was; an unknown Australian machine-gunner or rifleman; no disrespect intended towards Roy Brown or anybody else in the air, or on the ground that day, and apologies for the thread drift!

Does anybody know of a good photograph of the seat?

The ‘bullet hole’ comment comes from something that somebody told me after seeing the seat close-up (in a commercial airport in Canada I think?); if I remember the story correctly, there were a couple of mounting holes in the back of the seat where it was fixed to a (wooden?) crossmember at the back of the fuselage; the ‘bullet hole’ was across one of these mounting holes between the seat metal and the (missing?) mounting-bolt. Not obvious you see, and easy to miss in the mounting-hole…

…I’d love to have that story confirmed (or otherwise) after about thirty-five years!

Nothing startling, just not Popkin, ironically his own map of the events recently rediscovered at the Australian War Memorial actually rules him out of the kill shot. The suggestion is an unknown Australian Rifleman. And the seat does not have a bullet hole in it. I can recommend two books: “Gunning For The Red Baron” by Leon Bennet, and Brown’s two volume biography by Alan Bennet (No relation as far as I know). Both approach the subject from very different viewpoints and both come to the same conclusions. That neither Brown or Popkin are in the equation for the “kill shot”, and that that honour should go to an unknown Australian rifleman.

Happy reading!

Steve

Some people on this thread really need to do some reading or research into this incident that was conducted this century.

I’ll admit that I probably do; what conclusion would that ’21st century research’ come to?

Some people on this thread really need to do some reading of research into this incident that was conducted this century. And I agree, that diorama is amazing.

Steve

That diorama is amazing. It seems like it’s very much alive somehow.

Omaka, NZ.

Mark

Why do they talk about having the actual cockpit when all they have on display is the seat?

And in having the seat the Royal Canadian Military Institute may have the most conclusive piece of evidence that the ‘Red Baron’ was only hit by ground-fire; apparently the seat has a bullet hole in it and from the angle the fatal round came in from below and from well to the side.

I recommend “The day the Red Baron Died ” By Dale Titler, for a very interesting take on the saga. Taking the Harleford photo map from their Richtofen book I visited the crash site near Corbie in 1977 with my father ,who had studied the story closely.The actual terrain contours alongside the River do tend to support Sgt Popkin’s account. Roy Brown actually never claimed to have shot Richtofen down, this story being largely an RFC/RAF propaganda exercise for obvious reasons.