Posted on 02/05/2003 8:35:18 PM PST by 11th_VA
Laser technology used to re-enact WWI air battle
Another Canadian war hero's claim to fame has come under attack as a result of a high-tech investigation into the death of the Red Baron.
A documentary that airs tonight on the Discovery Channel has concluded Capt. Roy Brown did not kill the legendary German aviator during a dogfight on April 21, 1918, as history books would have us believe. Bennett still believes Brown could have killed the dashing 25-year-old German aristocrat who flew his bright red Fokker Triplane at the head of the Flying Circus and then terrorized the allies in the First World War by shooting down 80 planes.
But the filmmakers found it was probably an unheralded Australian machine gunner, Snowy Evans, who brought down Manfred von Richthofen near the French village of Vaux sur Somme.
They based their findings on a computer simulation of the brief engagement between Brown and the Baron, a re-enactment of the battle using lasers for machine guns, and the expertise of former Hamilton forensic pathologist Dr. David King.
Daniel A. Martinez, a historian quoted in the documentary Death of the Red Baron, said the case will never be nailed down conclusively. Much of the evidence was looted by souvenir hunters after the Baron's plane landed in a sugarbeet field.
"We don't have the gun. We don't have the bullet. We don't have the evidence to cement this case," he says in the show.
"All we know is it was not Capt. Roy Brown who shot down the Baron. It was the Australian infantryman."
A native of Carleton Place, Ont., who died in 1944, Brown was leading a Royal Air Force squadron the day of the battle. In his combat report, he wrote he fired a "long burst" at a German plane that went down "vertical."
He said the German was chasing his fellow aviator and friend, Wilfrid (Wop) May, who was zigzagging away in his Camel biplane.
Although the military never officially endorsed Brown's claim, school history books have credited him with the Baron's death and he personally dictated the wording of a plaque at the Royal Canadian Military Institute museum in Toronto that says he killed Richthofen.
Bennett, co-author of The Red Baron's Last Flight: A Mystery Investigated, believes the Discovery Channel missed a golden opportunity by resorting to slick computer graphics and other gimmicks rather than relying on the historical record of the Baron's death.
He still thinks Brown had a chance — along with a handful of other people on the battlefield — to fire the single shot that ripped through Richthofen's chest and killed the German aviator.
"It was a damned lucky shot," Bennett said from his office in Grimsby. "He was only hit once (although hundreds of shots were fired at him). If you're dealing with a lucky shot, how do you quantify chance?"
Frank McGuire, another military historian, says the filmmakers arrived at the right conclusion — that Brown didn't kill the Baron — for the wrong reasons.
He said they failed to address the fact that Brown was firing at the wrong side of the Baron's plane to inflict the fatal wound and that his description of the triplane was wrong. He believes Brown was actually firing at another German plane he honestly mistook for the Baron.
McGuire feels the documentary will offend some Canadians still reeling from a recent book challenging the war record of Billy Bishop. In The Making of Billy Bishop, Ben Greenhous portrayed Bishop as a liar who fabricated a combat report that earned him a Victoria Cross.
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German World War I fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen flew a Fokker Dr.I triplane similar to this aircraft.
I always said a *"Dog Face"* shot him down!
This is a dispute that I first learned of more than forty years ago. Without going into detail, from what I remember of it, my money's on the Aussie machine gunner.
You're joking, right?
True. Manfred and his brother Lothar were textbook examples of a social milieu which was somewhat anachronistic even then. Unlike Oswald Boelcke, they tend to come across as rather unpleasant (IMO).
They have a different "unsolved" historical event each week ... they've done the Alamo, Custer's Last Stand, Gunfight at the OK Corral, and several more ... all very interesting and informative.
They have started re-runs on some weeks, so you may be able to catch it again.
You have been deprived of the rich, swashbuckling history of early aviation. Click here for more information on the planes and Aces of WW1. The Aerodrom
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