Death of the Greatest

[WFS]

Richard:

I have revived an earlier thread "Belaboring the Death of MvR" which discusses the story of Gunner Ernest Twcross of the Royal Garrison Artillery. It was Twycross who claimed, later, to have been the first to reach MvR's plane.

Regards,
Wayne

[Immo_Frese]

Hi Amy,

well, I have the german version of Franks "The Red Barons last flight" and on p.61 Aussie Ernest Twycross, who is said to be the first to arrive at Richthofen, says his third word was definitely "kaput"! I doubt that because I have often seen this word used by Brits or Americans as a sort of phrase for things that are completely destroyed , perhaps to give the sentence a touch of german flavor.
But I can imagine very well that Richthofen was still alive when Twycross reached the plane...Twycross reported this to his son in 1970. It's really a very long time for a man to remember some words exactly, mumbled in a language he don't understand.

Immo

[Amy]

Hi Immo:

I don't doubt that MvR said something, but no telling what it was. *One thing is for sure, there's never an Englisch-Deutsch translator around when you need one. *Albert Einstein was on his death bed when he said his last words in German to his English-speaking nurse. *Aggghhh! *

Cheers,
Amy

[WFS]

I've read medical opinions that stated that after being shot through both lungs MvR would have been literally drowning in blood. I wonder if even a German-speaker could have understood what he really said. IMO, the point of the Twycross story isn't what was said; interesting as it would be to know. It is the information about the Baron and the plane before souvenir hunters got to everything.

Wayne

[Zif]

In Richthofen's death I still have a question on my mind :

If Brown was chasing him from behind and shot him from behind how could the bullet that killed Richthofen followed a path from side to side in his braist ?

That's something who make me think about a shot from the ground, and from a side.

[stephen]

Unless one knows the exact angle of Brown's plane at the moment of the bullet's impact (we don't), the exact pitch and yaw angles of the Tripe at the moment of impact (we don't), the exact path of the bullet through the body (we don't), and the exact degree of banking of the Tripe relative to the ground at the moment of impact (we don't), we have absolutely no way of knowing who shot down - or who DIDN'T shoot down - the Rusty Baron.

Suffice to say that the limited available circumstantial evidence points strongly to an Aussie machine gunner, and Popkin is the most likely accepted candidate.

I have real problems with any forays beyond that.

By golly, Barrett was right. This IS turning into another WKTRB thread!

[Graeme]

There is a precedent for the belief by some Germans that MvR was shot on the ground. On 21 March 1917, Lt C E M Pickthorne, 32 Sqn, manoeuvred onto the tail of an Albatros scout that he forced to land behind the British lines. The German pilot was Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia who, while attempting to regain the German trenches, was shot by Australian infantry. He died of his wounds on 11 April 1917.

Graeme

I'm not sure if Richthofen could have really said much of anything after that crash landing. He hit the gun butts pretty hard, losing three upper front teeth on one side and pushing back the other front teeth on the other, breaking his jaw and nose.

Plus, bleeding to death and coughing out blood through your mouth and nose because your lungs were filling with blood.

Aviatik

Graeme,

Where do you get the 11 April 1917 date for Prinz Friedrich Karl von Preußen's death? I've read elsewhere it was the 6th of April, his birthday.

thanks,

Aviatik

[rammjaeger]

>>There is a precedent for the belief by some Germans that MvR was shot on the ground.<<

The crew pilot Josef Suwelack / observer Leutnant Oskar Teichmann is *- according to the later famous A.C.J. Dowding - another example for German aviators killed by infantrists (13 September 1915). Dowding called it an "execution".

As well a relative of the German fighter pilot Hans Gottfried von Haebler told me von Haebler was killed on the ground by the handgrenade of a British infantrist (22 March 1918 ) but that is hard to check after 84 years.

VBR
Rammjaeger *