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So who really shot the Red Baron down?
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Happily for all who respect the chivalry of those magnificent
men in their World War One flying
machines, 21 April 2018 is the one hundredth anniversary of the
day Baron Manfred von Richthofen,
alias the Red Baron, made history, but unhappily with events
surrounding the shooting down of his
Fokker DR1 triplane on 21 April 1918, which caused the death of
this 25 year old ace who had 80 kills
of British allied aircraft to his credit, still being debated by
many 100 years later.
The unanswered controversial question still fascinating many is:
“was the Red Baron shot down by
Canadian pilot, Captain Roy Brown, flying a Camel fighter
pursuing the Red Baron, who was in fact
chasing and shooting at another Canadian, a novice flyer
Lieutenant Wilfred May, or was he brought
down by ground fire from below … and if so who fired the bullet
that killed him”.
The scene that day may have looked much like this, with
Australian soldiers on the ground firing
their .303 rifles and even hand held machine guns upwards at
their red target:
By the time the Baron’s triplane was brought down in what was
‘no-mans-land’ near the Bray-Corbie
Road, near Sailly-le-Sec in France, it looked like this:
The words written at bottom right in this picture: “Very like
the scene as I remember it” is first-hand
testimony of Lieutenant James Lee Smith, a pilot of an RE8
aircraft with 3 Squadron Australian Flying
Corp who was later to be awarded a WWI Distinguished Flying
Cross after being wounded and
crashlanding in August 1918, after flying 108 reconnaissance
missions since late 1917.
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So who really shot the Red Baron down?
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Lieutenant Smith wasn’t flying on the evening the Red Baron was
brought down, so he was ordered
to lead a small salvage crew to bring back both the aircraft and
the Red Baron’s body still inside his
Fokker triplane to 3 Squadron’s headquarters at
Poulainville.
Even though the crashed aircraft lay between the German and the
allied lines, it didn’t stop a few
Australian soldiers sneaking out after dark to souvenir what
they could of the Red Baron’s
possessions and parts stripped from his well known aircraft.
Lieutenant Smith later wrote the following recollections of
events:
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So who really shot the Red Baron down?
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When the 3 Squadron crew returned with aircraft and body, even
more souveniring of the Red
Baron’s possessions and parts of his aircraft continued.
Lieutenant Smith’s own piece of ply he
souvenired on 22 April 1918 was taken from the lead section of
one of the wings:
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So who really shot the Red Baron down?
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3 Squadron’s senior officers then conducted an official post
mortem on his body, photographed at
the time:
The 3 Squadron official report clearly established that the
entry and exit points of the single bullet
which killed the Baron could only have been fired from below but
not from the height Captain May
was positioned whilst firing his aircraft’s guns at the
Fokker.
3 Squadron later buried the Baron’s body providing a respectful
guard of honour. One of the Baron’s
fellow pilots from his own squadron, Jasta 11, also flew over
the aerodrome to drop a wreath - a
truly cavalier gesture accepted unchallenged by his enemies.
But the question still remained: which Australian soldier on the
ground had fired the bullet?
Investigations followed a variety of claims. They lead to a more
or less official opinion that either
Sergeant Cedric Popkin or Gunner Robert Buie were in the right
place at the right time, with both
evidenced to be firing accurately at the same red target.
For those who must have a definitive answer, a walk through the
Cemetery at Brooklyn, NSW, near
the Mooney Mooney Bridge, will reveal this inscription on Buie’s
own grave:
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So who really shot the Red Baron down?
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Neil L Smith
16 April 2018
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So who really shot the Red Baron down?
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Additional evidence written by JLS: