Manfred von Richthofen

“ace of aces” by shooting down a total of eighty enemy planes.
In the winter of 1917, his memoirs, Der Rote Kampfflieger (The
Red Fighter Pilot) were published. His book was distributed to
German infantry soldiers to encourage them to fight bravely.
On April 21, 1918, von Richthofen was in a fight
against a British pilot. Pushing the limits as usual, von
Richthofen chased the British pilot farther and faster than the
rules said he should. As a result, von Richthofen’s plane was
shot down over the Somme River in France, and he was killed
in the crash. He was buried with honor and given a military
funeral by the British troops who recovered his body.
For More Information
Books
Gibbons, Floyd Phillips. The Red Knight of Germany: The Story of Baron von
Richthofen, Germany’s Great War Bird. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1927.
Kilduff, Peter. The Illustrated Red Baron. London: Arms and Armour Press,
1999.
Kilduff, Peter. Richthofen: Beyond the Legacy of the Red Baron. New York:
John Wiley and Sons, 1994.
Wright, Nicolas. The Red Baron. New York: McGrawHill, 1977.
Web sites
“The Red Baron.” [Online] http://www.briggsenterprises.com/bluemax/
(accessed April 2001).
Richthofen, Manfred von. The Red Fighter Pilot (online text of Der Rote
Kampfflieger, 1917; translated into English by J. Ellis Barker, 1918).
[Online] http://www.richthofen.com (accessed April 2001).
Manfred von Richthofen 137