Albert Ball

[Bulldog90]

Ok guys, all of you are missing a couple of key points to consider.

1) The weather that night, this fight took place between 7:30-8:30 pm, was bad. Stormy, thunderclouds, windy and rainy, and getting dark.

2) Lothar had been flying fighters at the front with Jasta 11 only since March 10th .

3) The Germans were very impressed with the perfomance of the RFC Triplanes, so much so that they began the development of their own, which would become the Dr1. The English, with their inter service rivalrie, failed to recognize this, and probably pulled the type out of service too early. They never making any great improvements to the triplane, nor did they send them out in great numbers. The cache of saying you fought one and brought it down may have been a big deal to the German pilot, until he learned that Englands top ace had been brought down.

4) 56 squadron was the first RFC squadron equipped with SE5's, and they had only been flying over the lines for two weeks before Ball went down, so the fact that LvR may have mis-identified the aircraft type is understandable.

I think that the fight did involve the triplanes, Jasta 11, and 56 squadron. I think in the battle, flying in and out of the clouds, etc... it all became very confused. Ball became disoriented in a cloud, became inverted, his engine flooded, and he crashed. I think he and Lothar likely did make several passes at each other, but then I think also that Lothar probably also had several passes at triplanes. Lothars plane was damaged in the fight and he went down nearby, but I don't believe he visited Balls wrecked aircraft. I think he simply filed a report saying he was in a running fight with some triplanes, and then learned later that an aircraft ( Ball's) came down at the same time and place, and he figured it belonged to him.


They were only boys, flying some high performance machines. In the heat of the moment, in that weather, their mistakes are explainable.

Bulldog 90

[JG1Schorner]

Force downs tat resulted in the loss of the aircraft were acknowledged on all sides. I believe Fonck got one early on when, flying an unarmed Caudron, he forced a German observation machine to land behind French lines.

As an aside, in WWII there were numerous instances of victories being given without actually shooting down the aircraft. Hartmann once got 4 IL2s without actually shooting down any of them. He made a pass, the leader went into a split-S to evade, and the rest of the formation followed. Problem: split-S was initiated at 1500 feet in a heavily armed and armored aircraft. The four hit the ground in formation. American pilots also reported numerous victories forcing opponents to crash.

As this relates to Ball it's a tough call. I firmly believe that Ball became disoriented and crashed. I also believe that he was in combat with Lothar. Was his crash a result of the combat or did it occur well after the fact? This one to me falls into the same category as Brown getting credit for Richthofen - if the victim wasn't so famous the victory would never even be questioned. Because the victim was so famous it has been analyzed to death.