Death or the Red Baron

[Michelle Young]

Just heard on the Today programme a short piece about a new theory regarding the death of the Red Baron. Someone is putting forward the idea that a graze on the head from a bullet a year before his death led to his eventual demise and contributed to his reckless behaviour.

Did anyone else in the UK hear this?

[Tim Birch]

Yes I heard it. But was it an Aussie bullet?!

Tim

[MatthewT]

The article is in the Daily Telegraph today....page 4 I think...

It reviews the injury he received the year previous as they have located his medical record, this has then been examined by a Doctor who has given a modern day interpretation of what he possibly went through.

Do I take it then Tim that the "Aussie bullet" theory brings a smile to your face!!!...do I detect a antipodeane feel to this!!

[Dolphin]

The article in today's Sydney Morning Herald originated in the Washington Post, and is below. The theory is that von Richthofen never recovered from the bullet that grazed his head during a fight with FE2bs of No 20 Sqn RFC on 6 July 1917.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are two schools of thought on the origin of the bullet that hit MvR that day:

(1) it came from a Lewis gun fired by 2Lt A E Woodbridge in the front cockpit of A6512 flown by Capt D C Cunnell; or

(2) it came from another Jasta 11 Albatros as the Germans got in each other's way as they attacked the FEs.

We'll never know.

Gareth

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

Don't you think allocating his bizarre behaviour to one incident a bit suspect?

Some of the things described in the article could be put down to basic fatigue. Whilst I agree that having your head grazed by a bullet would probably not have a good effect on a person, there must be other factors to take into consideration here.

[andigger]

Ok..... I could get in real trouble for doing this at work... as I look over my shoulder. Here is a related link I just saw on CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/09/22...n.ap/index.html

Andy

[Somme1916]

So I guess the assist if not the credit for shooting down the Baron goes to British flier A.E. Wooldridge. Who ultimately set the Red Baron on a fatal course because of the brain injury he inflicted in Jul 9117.

Jon

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

Was his name Wooldridge or Woodbridge?

This is significant for me

Ian

[Somme1916]

Was his name Wooldridge or Woodbridge?

This is significant for me

Ian

Ian,

I'm not sure, that's the way the AP artical on CNN spelled it. I know some Woodbridge's and as such had to go back and reread it to be sure it read as Wooldridge. Any one else know?

Jon

[Dolphin]

I've just looked at two reputable sources: Nowarra and Brown's "Von Richthofen and the 'Flying Circus'" and Franks, Giblin and McCreery's "Under the Guns of the Red Baron" and both give the surname of the FE's observer as Woodbridge.

A photograph of the man in question is below.

Gareth

[chris.wight]

Don't you think allocating his bizarre behaviour to one incident a bit suspect?

Some of the things described in the article could be put down to basic fatigue. Whilst I agree that having your head grazed by a bullet would probably not have a good effect on a person, there must be other factors to take into consideration here.

I agree with Ian.

Before he was wounded, he was "The Red Baron", no one could touch him and it was always the enemy who was killed or wounded. No doubt he was supremely self confident about his abilities and this was what changed once he was wounded. His air of it can't happen to me was gone and now he probably realised he was as mortal as anyone else. Maybe he even started to doubt himself which led him to being more rash.

All supposition I know but I think the psychological side of being wounded is being overlooked.

[Malcolm]

He was wounded following his 57th victory. Does that mean he went ' bald-headed ' at the last 23 ?? I don't think so. The combat reports don't support it if you have read ' Under the Guns..........'

Least that's my opinion.

Aye

Malcolm

[Guest bonza]

Any parallel to putting a small cut in a tree branch. The branch gets progressively weaker, then......

and the 'then' doesn't have to be during a storm.

There's a pin-***** in the lid of a tomato pickle jar.

There's a loose tile on a space shuttle, a small crack in a damn wall, & a stitch in time saves........

nien Manfred.

Perhaps post-op sutures would have.

[Peter Beckett]

This article is in the Melbourne Age, Sep 23, page 15

Peter

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

Lets get things into context here - 2/Lt Woodbridge wounded the Red Baron, an Australian machine gunner killed the Red Baron.

Credit for 'stopping' the Red Baron lies with the Australian Machine Gunner, as he went on to claim 23 further kills after being wounded by Woodbridge.

This is one bit of history that cannot be re-written!!

Ian

(Apologies for forgetting the Aussie MGC man's name )

[Dolphin]

Ian

It was probably Sgt Cedric Popkin, 24th Machine Gun Company, AIF.

We'll never know for sure, and it probably doesn't matter - not that it will end the speculation.

Cheers

Gareth

[Guest AmericanDoughboy]

I believe it has been proven to say that the Red Baron was shot down by the Australian Anti-Aircraft Gunners below him. That is the most logical explanation in my opinion. I recently purchased a book about the young Manfred von Richthofen, I have yet to read it.

-Doughboy

[Andrew P]

For Australians, SBS will be showing a Red Baron special on 'As it Happened' on Saturday night at 7.30pm.

Popkin is the most likely, but the 44th Battalion machine gunners were also stationed nearby and in their unit history a claim was made for one of their machine gunners, a Pte Sowerbuts.

[Edward_N_Kelly]

For those of you who doubt that Australia "claimed" the Red Baron I would refer them to this article The Death of Manfred von Richthofen: Who fired the fatal shot?.

Geoffrey Miller has put together a very good article analysing the available evidence to come to a logical conclusion.......

Cheers

Edward

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

Just read it - it is a very well balanced argument and comes to a good conclusion. I have always suspected that Capt Brown was cajoled into 'claiming' the Red Baron on the basis that being killed by ground fire has less valuable propaganda wise than the Red Baron being killed as the result of losing a dogfight.

Ian

[Guest bonza]

Edward

Its amazing how much detail Bean accumulated on this one incident, considering that he had the rest of the war to write about. I can't fully evaluate the evidence and leave that to the experts. Would probably not envy the bloke up the chimney his grandstand seat. Suspect he may have felt a little insecure with all them planes and bullets whizzing around, yet his account still seemed accurate.

The 1st I knew of the Australian claims was in an article in a weekly mag, also about 1959. It was the POST, went thro a couple of name changes and may have been AUSTRALASIAN POST. Don't remember the details, but THINK they claimed a single rifle shot [Miller's Option 4]. The part I do remember is that it starts off by talking about an AIF signaller who was repairing telephone lines along that ridge who also had a bird's eye view.

Spose you reckon nobody could remember that far back. Wot if there just happens to be a pin-up of a local lass from Cann River in a tiger skin bikini in the same edition. Wouldn't you remember it?

ooRoo

Pat

[Edward_N_Kelly]

Edward

Its amazing how much detail Bean accumulated on this one incident, considering that he had the rest of the war to write about. I can't fully evaluate the evidence and leave that to the experts. Would probably not envy the bloke up the chimney his grandstand seat. Suspect he may have felt a little insecure with all them planes and bullets whizzing around, yet his account still seemed accurate.

The 1st I knew of the Australian claims was in an article in a weekly mag, also about 1959. It was the POST, went thro a couple of name changes and may have been AUSTRALASIAN POST.  Don't remember the details, but THINK they claimed a single rifle shot [Miller's Option 4]. The part I do remember is that it starts off by talking about an AIF signaller who was repairing telephone lines along that ridge who also had a bird's eye view.

Spose you reckon nobody could remember that far back. Wot if there just happens to be a pin-up of a local lass from Cann River in a tiger skin bikini in the same edition. Wouldn't you remember it?

ooRoo

Pat

Oddly enough the claims about the ground fire bringing down this fella actually appeared (to me) for the first time in the Harlyford (sp?) publication on the Red Baron. They (the authors) came to the conclusion that it was ground fire that claimed him but cannot remember which of the competing claims it was that did the deed….

Geoffrey commented on the TV “Special” on the Red Baron (done by the History Channel?) on the WWI list server (out of University of Kansas) and he liked much of what he saw there (“they came to the right conclusion but for the wrong reasons” !) He also went to some length debunking the theory that his concussion (from the head wound suffered in 1917) caused his loss of sense of caution though he did conceded that he appears to have been suffering from osteomyelitis (“bone infection”) of the skull as he had had a small piece of the skull removed from the wound site some time before the last flight….

Will try and dig the comments out tonight (Oz time) and post them…..

As to retained memory – events that happened many years before can be very clear to the subject (whereas recent ones can be “forgotten”). It is dependant on the trauma or significance of the event and how it is recalled (similar trauma, extreme emotion, etc). This seems to be a common occurrance as we all age - we remember things from our childhood/youth but cannot remember where we put the damn keys five minutes ago !

There is also the problem that the subject may have been influenced by stories heard or read since the event that may change it from what he/she actually saw/experienced even in subtle ways.

See also the recent controversies over the child abuse cases that have come from “repressed memory”

Cheers

Edward

[Edward_N_Kelly]

From Dr Geoffrey Miller (the writer alluded to in my earlier comment):

According to the news article Drs Orme and Hyatt of Missouri have concluded that Manfred von Richthofen (MvR) was unfit to fly. However this hypothesis was proposed by my German colleague, Dr Henning Allmers, who had an article on this published in the Lancet back in 1999 ("Richthofen's Medical Record - was the Red Baron Fit to Fly" Lancet, 1999, 354: 502-4)).

Henning Allmers described how MvR was engaging a Vickers 'Bomber' on July 6th 1917 when he sustained a gunshot wound of the head, fired by the British observer at a range of over 300 metres. After the blow to his head he "was totally paralysed and blinded. After a great effort he was able to move his limbs again while sensing that his plane was in a dive; still he could not see. When the darkness slowly lifted he first checked his altimeter, which showed 800 m, a drop of 3200 m within a few moments.

He reduced his altitude to 50 m and made a rough landing, when he realised he was going to faint again. He was able to get out of the plane and collapsed remembering only that he had fallen on a thistle and had not been able to move from the spot. After a drive of several hours in a motorcar he was taken to a field hospital.

The history in his medical file is very similar, noting that he did not lose consciousness in the plane. "His arms fell down, legs moved to the front of the plane. The flying apparatus fell towards the ground. At the same time he had a feeling of total blindness and the engine sound was heard as if from a great distance. After regaining his senses and control over his limbs, he estimated that the time of paralysis lasted for only a minute. He descended to an altitude of 50 m to find an appropriate landing spot until he felt that he could no longer fly the aircraft. Afterwards he could not remember where he had landed. He left the plane and collapsed." His memory of his transportation to the hospital was blurred. Upon arrival von Richthofen immediately told his physician that he had only been able to retain control of the aircraft because he had had the firm conviction that otherwise he would have been a dead man. The initial diagnosis on reaching hospital was "machinegun (projectile) ricocheting from head". The stay in hospital was uneventful after surgery to ascertain that the bullet had not entered the brain.

Von Richthofen stayed in the field hospital for 20 days until July 25, 1917. He left because he wanted to take command of his wing again. The skull wound was not closed, and the bare bone was probably visible until his death. He was advised not to fly until the wound in his head had healed completely. There is a special mention of the fact that even the surgeon in charge held this opinion in the medical file. It was also recorded that "without a doubt there had been a severe concussion of the brain and even more probable a cerebral haemorrhage. For this reason sudden changes in air pressure during flight might lead to disturbances of his consciousness". The record ends with the statement that von Richthofen promised not to resume flying before he had been given permission by a physician.

On August 27 1917 a piece of bone was removed from the open wound that was 3cm in size, suggesting to me that MvR had osteomyelitis (a chronic infection of the bone). MvR commented in the spring of 1918 that he was depressed; he felt unwell after each air combat and attributed this feeling to his head injury.

Under his heading of”Fitness for Flying Duty", Henning wrote:

Since there were no special rules concerning fitness to fly a combat aircraft, a general view of the ability to perform combat duty has to be considered to determine von Richthofen's ability to serve after his head injury. In the general rules for determining fitness for military duty that were drawn up in peacetime, a head injury or malformation made a person ineligible for duty only if he could not wear appropriate headgear such as a helmet or cap. Pictures of von Richthofen during parades show him wearing a cap with his dressed head wound, so the rule did not apply in his case. Taking a more serious look at suitability for duty of wounded soldiers was necessary after the war dragged on and new replacements became scarce. A series of medical conferences was held in the autumn of 1916 sponsored by the Prussian Ministry of War concerning the evaluation of fitness for military and combat duty of soldiers who had received injuries or wounds. Kurt Goldstein (professor of neurology from Frankfurt am Main) gave a lecture on brain injuries and concluded that fitness for combat duty would only be restored in rare cases and that a qualified evaluation of the course of disease was necessary to make such a determination. He pointed out that only 20% of patients with a skull wound and only 4% of those with a brain injury wound were deemed fit for combat duty again. According to those recommendations, von Richthofen should not have been allowed to return to active flight duty since he was diagnosed as having a concussion and cerebral haemorrhage. The physicians and surgeons who treated him knew this, as can be concluded from their strong recommendation to von Richthofen not to fly before his head wound had completely healed.

Under "Conclusion" Henning wrote:

After reviewing the available medical information on von Richthofen and the state of the art in neurology and psychiatry at the time, I believe that the Red Baron should not have been declared fit for duty after the head wound he received on July 6, 1917. It is most probable that after having been released from the field hospital under the instruction to fly only after getting permission from a physician there were no further medical checks. The times were such that manpower was sparse. An experienced ace and hero such as von Richthofen could not be grounded against his wishes for public relations reasons. Furthermore von Richthofen's sense of duty and comradeship would not have allowed him to desert his fellow soldiers while he still felt capable of aerial combat.

There have been many hypotheses as to who killed the Red Baron but I am quite certain that captain Brown could never have fired the fatal shot. In this context I wrote a critical analysis of the postmortem examination and a reconstruction of the probable events of Manfred von Richthofen's last flight, (including who, I believe, fired the fatal shot) in 1998; this was published in "Sabretache", the Journal and Proceedings of the Military History Society of Australia, Vol XXXIX, No 2, June 1998.

This article is online in the WWW/WW1 Archives at

The Death of Manfred von Richthofen: Who fired the fatal shot? (this was the article I had pointed out earlier but on a different site ENK)

With regards,

Geoffrey Miller#1,

(Edited to add source at head)

[Edward_N_Kelly]

And now for some more.....

Gaston Graf wrote to the 1ww list yesterday giving the URL of another report at WWI’s Red Baron Victim of Traumatic Head Injury Prior to Being Shot Down that suggested that MvR's death was due to a frontal lobe syndrome following his gunshot head injury and that this contributed to his death.

My understanding of frontal lobe injuries is that there is a loss in competence and loss of learned behaviour, as well as dis-inhibition (however the evidence in the article for this dis-inhibition is rather weak, appearing to rely on only one episode when MvR laid his head down to show his wound in public. We have no information of the circumstances that led him to this action).When MvR suffered his head injury he had shot down 57 aeroplanes but after he returned to duty he shot down 23 more! This would be most remarkable if he had frontal lobe disease!

A severe blow to the skull from the front, as occurred, could well cause a 'Contre-Coup' injury to the visual cortex at the back of the brain, leading to visual disturbances - and Henning Allmers clearly describes temporary blindness. However there is little evidence that MvR had permanently damaged the frontal lobe of his brain. I have difficulty in believing that MvR suffered from a frontal lobe syndrome!

MvR appears to have been ill in April 1918; MvR commented in the spring of 1918 that he was depressed; he felt unwell after each air combat and attributed this feeling to his head injury. I note, from Henning's article, that on August 27 1917 a piece of bone was removed from MvR's open wound. This, and the fact that the scalp wound didn't close, suggests that MvR had developed osteomyelitis (a chronic debilitating infection of the bone). Such an infection could have impaired his concentration on the day of his death but I agree with you that his concussion, due to the glancing gunshot wound, was unlikely to have caused any long term impairment.

With regards,

Geoffrey,

[Edward_N_Kelly]

And a couple of final extracts from Dr Miller's discussion on the Red Baron's death.....

The first is in comments about the programme that had just been aired in Australia (DOGFIGHT - THE RED BARON by BBC Channel 4)

The programme failed to mention von Richthofen's head injury in 1917. They also made great play on Gunner Twycross's claim that he was the first to reach the crashed triplane and that von Richthofen was alive and spoke to Twycross "in German". They stated that this was "... recent evidence that led to the breakthrough in the debate concerning who shot down von Richthofen"! I do not believe that this can be true as von Richthofen had broken his jaw and dislocated his front teeth backwards when he crashed and was flung forward on to his gun sights. It would have been impossible for him to have phonated the words that gunner Twycross claimed that he heard (they did not mention this but the words were supposed to be"Alles ist kaput" or "ist kaput"). The word "kaput' cannot be pronounced without labial sounds with the lips pursed, (this would be rather difficult with a compound fracture of the jaw), and the final T of kaput requires lingual contact of the tongue just behind the teeth. This is an impossibility if the front teeth were dislocated back to the palate, as they were, (they had to be replaced by the orderly preparing the body for the post mortem examination)! Von Richthofen's compound fracture of the lower jaw is likely to have occurred just before the time of death as there was evidence of bleeding which could not have occurred if the heart had stopped. However, in my opinion, based on the distances travelled and time elapsed, Manfred von Richthofen was very likely to have been unconscious and at the point of death by then.

------------------------------------------------

There is more to follow.....

Cheers

Edward