Who really got Voss?

According to Arch Whitehouse, there's reason to doubt that Rhys-Davids shot down Voss.

In his book `Years of the Sky Kings' he says practically all seven SE5As got a shot at him. Whitehouse adds he was a gunner in a Bristol flight on the edge of this fight and several of the gunners also fired at Voss. He says Rhys-Davids followed Voss down and fired the last burst at him but "Werner may have been killed some minutes before."

He speculates Rhys-Davids may have been given the kill because he was popular, or because the 56 squadron pilots cut cards to see who should get credit.

There's also a Cross and Cockade article in which a British pilot quotes Collishaw as saying a Naval 10 pilot should have gotten the credit for Voss.

Any thoughts on this?

Come on! Will you ever stop dis-crediting others? Also,Whithouse was one of the biggest liars(I didn't believe this till I faced the facts).

keith,

Bud,

I've been looking back at some of my replys & I would like to apoligies for the harsh tone. Sometimes & get carried away but I still think yu should stop what your doing.

Keith,

[PeterL]

It was Elvis from the grassy knoll. Happy now?

I think it was Saburo Sakai that killed Voss. He got him on the same mission that he almost killed Lyndon Johnson on. I was there. It was scary. Type 21's, B-25's, Fokker D III's, 747's, P-43's, FW-190D's, Albatros D.V.'s, F-117's, Tarpins, Me. 110's, Heinkle 219's, F-4J's and Macchi 202's all over the place. Good thing Charles Lindberg, Erich Hartman, Adolph Galland, René Fonck, and Sailor Milan came and along and pulled my butt out of the fire. The account will be published shortly, under-written by Martin Caiden.

Whitehouse also claimed he was in the plane Richthofen claimed as his 42nd victory. But that has been proven wrong. Whitehouse also said he was an ace, with something like 16 victories and that has been proven wrong.

With all those aeroplanes present maybe another pilot did get Voss. Rhys-Davids probably was given the victory because he was from the upper classes. The British establishment hated working people in those days (in many ways it still does despise them). That is why Ball was a national hero by 1917 but Mannock never got mentioned in the British newspapers until after the war was over. Pretty-boy Rhys-Davids got the credit, whether he deserved it or not.

My money is on Rhys-Davids. I merely reported what was said by two WW1 airmen (Whitehouse and the fellow in the Cross and Cockade article). So don't blame the messenger.

It is another example, however, of how you could cast down on any victory of any pilot if you wanted to. It happened to Brown and Woodbridge with Richthofen, so it could happen to Rhys-Davids. All you have to do is have some author come along and say one of the nearby Bristol gunners was the real victor over Voss and away we go.

Bud,
I'll stick with Rhys-Davids. But the Australian gunner Popkin's claim on MvR is valid, and if you knew anything about the science of trajectory you would agree. Whitehouse was full of himself and would have you believe that it was he who won the air war single-handedly. Who really got Voss was Voss. His ego was his downfall in the instance of his last dogfight. But his courage in the same affair was the stuff that legends and heroes are made of. Nuff said!
VBR,
Jim

First off, From what I can tell, Bud puts his name with every post he makes. Don't like his thread, then ignore it.

Arch Whitehouse is a bad source, no doubt about it. I'm sure the guy had a few bones to pick, especially when it came to social classes.

That aside, lets look at what happned:

Voss, who had been flying wonderfully and had managed to put lead in every plane seems to lose engine power and do a shallow turn right into the sites of Rhys-Davids. At this point Voss was essentially a sitting duck, if not already a dead duck. Rhys-Davids then empties a Lewis drum into the plane and the plane nose dives into the ground with Rhys-Davids sardonic comment "If I could've only brought him down alive".

Whomever hit Voss's Plane just before this engagement may very well have killed Voss, or at least put him out of commission. If Voss were alive, then Rhys-Davids most likely shot down an opponent who had no ability to fight back. But in the heat of a battle, against a cunning pilot could you take a chance?

If he were dead, already, then Rhys-Davids must have shot out some of the control wires which which caused the plane to go from a shallow dive to steep one.

There is little doubt that it took the entire B- Flight to do the job, but only one man, the last man to shoot at the plane got the credit.

I doubt they cut cards as Whitehouse claims. I think Whitehouse says that simply to discredit some of the top aces.

Tobias