[atomicpossum]

Too bad. He made good pizza.

[Vigilanteman]

There is still debate about who fired the shot that fatally pierced Richthofen's chest - an Australian artillery crew on the ground, or a Canadian flier, Roy Brown.

That's stupid. Doesn't everybody know it was Snoopy?

[Drawsing]

I always get irritated when Hollywood movies depict someone being hit in the head, falling down, then shaking their head and all is fine.

Ah yes...the gentle anasthetic of a concussive blow to the head. Where would Hollywood be without this gimmick?

[The Brush]

The Royal Guardsmen put this controversy to rest 30 years ago.

[RAY]

Dang it, maybe this explains my lack of success -- due to all those white-eye experiences as right guard and line-backer (145lbs) on a AAA high school football team. We didn't have face guards either. Not to mention the many school yard fracases and bicycle jumps that landed wrong.

Shucks, no telling how good I would have been if not for all those head injuries.

Of course, my wife tells me, the older I get the better I was!

[Jonah Hex]

In a related story, famed WWI ace Snoopy also suffered from "target fixation".

[Phsstpok]

In high school in the late 60s a friends grandfather turned out to be the mechanic for Baron Manfred Von Richthofen. I did a biography report on the Red Baron and interviewed this old man for the paper. I got to spend a fair amount of time with him over several weeks afterward, as he enjoyed having someone interested in his stories.

We actually talked about this period at the end of the Red Baron's life and he specifically spoke about the funk that had come over him after the head wound. My source never talked about any brain injury, like these guys, but said it was fatalism that overcame the Baron. Richthofen felt he should have been killed in the incident when he got the head wound and from then it was only a matter of time. That's what accounted for his change in behavior. Richthofen was convinced that he was already dead and that it was only a matter of when he'd fall down. Therefore why be cautious?

Ironically my classmate, this mechanics granddaughter, was dating my best friend. His grandfather is the psychologist who wrote the secret psychological profile of Adolf Hitler for the OSS in WW2, which was later published as "The mind of Adolf Hitler; the secret wartime report." Interesting couple.

There's actually some of the Hitler report online here:

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/osstitle.htm