Framed picture depicting fighter pilot Wop May being chased by the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen in the First World War. Edmonton May 26, 2014. He (Wop) was the final allied pilot to be pursued by Manfred von Richthofen (Red Baron) before the German ace was shot down.

PHOTO: Ed Kaiser, Edmonton Journal Framed picture depicting fighter pilot Wop May being chased by the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen in the First World War. Edmonton May 26, 2014. He (Wop) was the final allied pilot to be pursued by Manfred von Richthofen (Red Baron) before the German ace was shot down.

In the treasure-filled catacombs below the Royal Alberta Museum, Sean Moir reveals a fragment of history the size of a portable hard drive.

“What I’ve got here is a ratty old piece of wood that looks like a piece of junk, frankly,” says the museum’s curator of military and political history.

He turns the artifact in gloved hands.

Related: The Red Baron chased Edmonton pilot just before being shot down (with video)

“If you look at the end here, you’ll see these holes — they would have been for wires. What this is is a piece of wing strut for a bi- or a triplane. This on the aircraft would have been vertical. You can see that the one end is broken rather ragged. The other end is cut quite clean.”

A showman, he pauses: “So what is this? This is a piece of Baron von Richthofen — also known as the Red Baron — this is a piece of his famous aircraft that was scavenged by May, after (von Richthofen) was downed and he died.”

Richthofen’s pursuit of Edmonton ace Wilfrid ‘Wop’ May over the hills of France on April 21, 1918 is the stuff of legend.

“What’s really interesting about that is Richthofen contravened all of the policies and procedures of the German air force, which he himself had written, put in place and demanded that all pilots follow,” says Moir.

“There’s a lot of speculation as to why Richthofen went after May. He was near enemy lines, down below a certain altitude. Was he determined just to get another kill? Was he suffering from post concussion syndromes?

“Regardless, that was his choice, and it turned out to be a fatal one.”

The Fokker triplane Richthofen used to make the last of his 80 kills sat broken in a ditch alongside Route De Bray-Corbie in northern France. Men on the ground — the Australian infantry that most likely shot him down — moved in quickly, cautiously, still working the front line. The plane’s famous pilot was removed, identified and photographed, his battered face first whitened with baking soda. Richthofen’s gloves were taken, bragged about and confiscated, all by the Australians, according to oral history. Fabric, wood, spark plugs and other materials also disappeared, hindering the investigation.

How and when May joined the souvenir-taking is unclear, but the Edmontonian was certainly generous with what he brought home.

“The reason why it’s cut off like this is that when May got back to Edmonton, this was a bigger piece, and he cut it in half,” says Moir.

For Christmas 1925 May gave a segment to his friend W. Bligh Shaw, an Edmonton Flying Club member. The RAM received that piece by donation in 1975.

A decade earlier the May family donated some mementoes from the incident — a piece of deep red fabric and wood from a strut — to the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. Curator Aimee Benoit said the museum also has a number of May’s badges and uniforms.

The Glenbow’s Richthofen artifacts are on display at the Air Force Museum of Alberta in Calgary, and they will join the RAM piece for Wild Rose Overseas: Albertans in the Great War, a show that starts July 28.

It’s unknown what happened to the other half of the piece May brought home.

“In the run-up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, May gave the piece to Percy Page, the coach of the Edmonton Grads women’s basketball team,” says Moir. “They were going to Berlin, participating in a demonstration of women’s basketball — they weren’t actually at the Olympics itself.

“The request from May was that Page present this other half of the Baron’s wing strut to the Baron’s mother as a token of respect and goodwill and friendship.”

It’s unknown if the piece was presented or if it survived the Second World War intact.

And, while he flew his Fokker Dr.I Dreidecker triplane only in the final weeks of a 20-month tour, the Red Baron’s was the most famous of the 320 produced. Not one of the originals exists today.

But as May’s son Denny joked recently: “With all the artifacts people claim to have around the world, you could probably build four Fokker triplanes.”

With files from David Ryning

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