Roy Brown Believers in Action

Strange things happening on this site. Half of my post to you disappears, and is replaced by your responding post to me, with your e-mail address also included in the body of my post. One of the things I raised in the part of my post which disappeared was to question which author you were dismissing as "Whassisname". If its Franks and Bennett, I question whether you have read the book, given that they come out strongly on favor of the Aussies and refer often to your man Carisella.

I remember going through this argument quite some time ago and with all the evidence available(a timemachine would be priceless - come on all you would be scientists it seems to me that MvR was killed by ground fire. No ifs and buts about it. The witnesses in the area all credit ground fire as bringing MvR down. The air force observor(i'll get his name later as I can't remember it at the moment) has said he could not back Brown's claim and indeed General Rawlinson even congratulated the two gunners for shooting down Richthofen.

And it's not only Aussies who believe groundfire brought down the Baron, so do people with common sense.

Cheers

Might I venture two points?
1) If the Baron was killed instantly, then how did he manage to crash land so well such an unstable aircraft? (The rotary engine of his triplane, presently at the Imperial War Museum, London, England, shows only minor damage-- the crash was not catastrophic)...
2) There is an account in the Franks/Bennett book (page 60, if that will satisfy your morbid curiousity) of a Gunner Ernest Twycross being the first to actually reach the crashed triplane (having been ordered by his superior, a Lt. Turner, to take the German pilot prisoner). Twycross was clear that the Baron was still alive, uttered a few words, then expired. He wasn't sure what he (the Baron) had said, but was sure that one word was "kaput"...
Now don't mind me, continue with your Sopwith Snipe-ing; just thought I'd pour some gasoline on the fire...

Oh, ok good, I thought that the dimple meant the belly button and the hanging chad meant the ol' twig and berries. Ha, Ha, what a terrible misunderstanding. Cheers!

[mike_baram]

Moses met with the burning bush while in the Sudan. He brought down the tablets many years later while in the Sinai.
As with the MvR debate, let's get our timeline straight.

Moses in the Sudan? I thought it was subaltern leftenant Winston Churchill, when he was with Kitchner's mob, trying out his new '96 Mauser pistol on unsuspecting Dervishes, or whatever those circumambulators were. History is not clear whether mommie bought Winnie the Mauser or whether he saved his allowance. We know mommie bought him the white horse so he would stand out in the mob.
Also unclear is whether Gawd A'mighty used a Zippo lighter to burn his bush. Wouldn't that be an advertising coup?
As for any last words from the Baron (which there weren't...he was dead) they woulda been "Up yours, honkie!"
As for the double gun jams in the class 3 category; Ground observers saw MVR following May's erratic path (he was dodging and weaving, because he could not see past his rudder without turning or yawing) making a series of short bursts. (Yeah, fellers, he was afflicted with the fight or flight effect and had a definite terminal case of target fixation). It is not certain where his first gun jammed, but it was somewhere on the approximately 2-1/2 mile span between the river and Morlancourt Ridge. His second gun jammed on the Bray-Corbie road, and he was hit as he climbed and began to turn for home. This would have been a left turn. His plane shuddered as he shook violently and died. The tripe was not under his control as it did a gentle crash landing into a large (and soft) pile of mangel werfels (beets used as cattle feed.)
If the Aussies had not stripped the plane, stolen his wallet with the fatal bullet, it would have been an open and shut case. Aussies also stole his watch and possibly a fancy Luger. They stripped the instruments from the plane and ripped up the fabric and detached metal parts. (Sounds like a WTO riot in Seattle, doesn't it."
Members of the original Cross and Cockade were satisfied with these facts. In that nobody is alive to refute anything, there can be no new data added, and indeed, only fiction writers are writing about it today. So they agree with parts of it. Fine. You can believe anything you like, but MVR is still dead, and the Germans still only re-interred his skull (eyewitness reports.) And, he was still killed by ground fire (his mother was telling the truth in her interview.)
You can believe anything you like, but it still won't change the facts, and it still won't get the yard work done.

I've found over the years, anyone saying anything is 100% with this incident looks like a complete ass. One thing is true for sure, MvR died chasing a Rookie over many hostile AA emplacments and a camel chasing him(2VS1 is still 2VS1) his fate was sealed.

You're correct! You believe that 100 percent, so you are an ass.
What I'm saying is that the best evidence is now the accepted version because all of the eyewitnesses are dead and nothing will change from here on.
This was all hashed out years ago in Cross and Cockade Journal.
If certain historians would not try to embellish the truth with their own private fictions, this kind of situation would never float to the surface of our cruddy little pond.

You're correct! You believe that 100 percent, so you are an ass.
What I'm saying is that the best evidence is now the accepted version because all of the eyewitnesses are dead and nothing will change from here on.
This was all hashed out years ago in Cross and Cockade Journal.
If certain historians would not try to embellish the truth with their own private fictions, this kind of situation would never float to the surface of our cruddy little pond.

John L,

wasn't aware that Mother Richthofen was a combat investigator or a forensic pathologist. Why is she to be counted on as an authority in this matter?

You are almost certainly correct in the belief that ground fire killed vR. The best evidence of this are the detailed descriptions of the event, provided to Carisella by literally hundreds of eyewitnesses. Contradictory accounts of the event favoring Brown, also provided by Carisella from his discussions with RAF 209 pilots, are quite weak by comparison and appear to be next to impossible to have occurred as described by the pilots.

For Brown to have fired the killing shot, one must believe that a pilot hit through the heart would continue to pursue his intended victim at tree top level, matching him turn for turn for between 60-120 seconds. This is clearly not possible.