September 17, 1916 CE – Manfred von Richthofen Downs His First Enemy Fighter and the Legend of the Red Baron is Born Rate this post Rate this post

*Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

World War I represented a monumental shift in the way opposing forces entered combat. Among the innovations in destruction employed in the conflict, tanks and poisonous gas are often cited, but no invention would change how nations fought quite like the addition of the airplane. Powered flight had been a reality for hardly more than a decade, yet its rapid advance naturally led countries to employ pilots in securing the skies — none more famous than Manfred von Richthofen, the German flyer who would be referred to as the Red Baron.

Growing up as part of the Prussian nobility, von Richthofen lived in modern Poland as a boy. At the tender age of 11 — roughly the time the Wright Brothers were taking flight at Kitty Hawk — he entered a military school, eventually completing his education in 1911. Joining a cavalry unit, he spent most of his early career working snooping on the activities on the armies of nations on Germany’s always-contentious borders with Russia, France and Belgium.

In May 1915, while away from the front, von Richthofen noticed a military aircraft parked on the tarmac and immediately applied for a transfer to the Imperial German Army Air Service. …(Read more)