No one has mentioned one of the oddest, which was Richthofen being shot down by a single round from an Australian infantryman’s SMLE.
Richthofen died just after 11 in the morning April 21, 1918, after being hit over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme.
The Red Baron had been chasing a Sopwith Camel piloted by novice Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid “Wop” May of No. 209 Squadron, Royal Air Force. He was spotted and chased by a Camel piloted by a school friend and flight Commander of May’s, Canadian Captain Arthur “Roy” Brown. Brown made a brief quick attack and Richthofen then again set out after of May, but Brown very probably saved May’s life.
In the final analysis, Richthofen may have done as much to kill himself as did Brown, or the Australian Gunners Popkin and Buie. He was exhausted from continual, harsh battle. He broke his own rules that he drilled into his men: never follow a low flying British pilot back over his lines. It was too hazardous. And he lost his situational awareness. He was concentrating so hard on Wop Map in front of him, that he forgot to pay attention to his situation. Had he spotted Brown diving towards him, he may have made an escape. Had he survived the war, it is probable that he would have become highly ranked in the Luftwaffe in WWII, as did aces Hermann Göring, Ernst Udet, Wolfgang von Richthofen, and Bruno Loerzer. Who actually killed him? That can not be proven. Brown admitted in a letter to his father and his later writings obviously showed he felt responsible for his death, but after a while he kept quiet about the whole affair. The Australians maintained for a long time that their men manning a machine gun killed him. The body was not fully autopsied, the plane had been shredded by souvenir hunters and there were no gun cameras at the time. To paraphrase Billy Bishop,
“Brown was an excellent flier, an experienced fighter pilot and was on the tail of Richthofen firing at him just before he crashed. Richthofen came over the Australian machine gun position several hundred feet up at a high speed, was over their position for only a few seconds and they had to fire up at him. So who is the most likely to have killed Richthofen?”
Who indeed? In the final analysis, it really doesn’t matter.
After being hit by ground fire, he made a rather hasty but controlled landing in a field on a hill near the Bray-Corbie road, just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, in a sector controlled by the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Richthofen’s Fokker wasn’t damaged in the landing. A witness, Gunner George Ridgway, said that when he and other Australian soldiers reached the plane, Richthofen was still alive but died shortly after. Eye witness, Sergeant Ted Smout of the Australian Medical Corps, reported that his last word was “kaputt” (“broken”) immediately before he died.
No. 3 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps assumed responsibility for von Richthofen’s remains.
Coming from near Brown’s home town of Carleton Place have often heard the story.
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