According to a team of forensic experts on a tv show called Unsolved mysteries the Red Baron could of only been killed by aussie antiaircraft gunners.They even figured out the soldier who fired the fatal shot.
Posts: 113 | Location: canada | Registered: 21 March 2005
Von richthofen had a headinjury that wouldnt heal properly so he was shot down by the Aussie artillery. He couldnt tell properly the height he was flying in. What a shame to a great man. He was given a full millitary funeral by the Ausssies though as they recognized him and gave him the respect he deserved.
His brother led the condor Legion in spain and he lead amongst all the air attack on Guernica . It is written in anthony beevors book.
The ANZAC was and is a important part of the good guys forces ,please let it be so for centuries to come.
Posts: 1196 | Location: Kristiansand,Norway | Registered: 20 April 2006
The red barons ancestors now live near Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. I saw an article about them in a local paper there years ago.
Kithener was called New Berlin up until WW1 and therafter renamed Kitchener. Its most famous recent citizen is Lennox Lewis who learned to fight at the Kitchener police boxing club, won two gold medals for Canada at the Olympics and therafter retruend to England where he was born.
Posts: 1116 | Location: asted@freenet.de | Registered: 14 January 2006
The identity of the person who shot the Red Baron remains unknown; 0.303 ammunition was the standard ammunition for all machine guns and rifles used by British Empire forces during World War I. It is now considered all but certain by historians, doctors, and ballistics experts that Richthofen was killed by an anti-aircraft (AA) machine gunner, as the wound through his body indicated that it had been caused by a bullet moving in an upward motion, providing ample evidence for a shot coming from the ground.
Many experts believe that the shot probably came from Sergeant Cedric Popkin of the Australian 24th Machine Gun Company[3]. Popkin was the only ground-based machine gunner known to have fired at Richthofen from the right, immediately before he landed. Many Australian riflemen were also shooting at the Baron at the time, so it is possible that one of them may well have fired the fatal shot. The Royal Air Force gave official credit to Roy Brown. However, it has been calculated that Richthofen could have lived for only 20–30 seconds after he was hit and that Brown had not fired at him within that time frame. It was reported that a spent 0.303 bullet was found inside Richthofen's clothing, which would also support a low-velocity shot from a long distance.
An American television documentary, The Death of the Red Baron, on the Discovery Channel series Unsolved History, found it was probably an unheralded Australian machine gunner, W.J. "Snowy" Evans, a Lewis gunner of the 53rd Battery 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 Captain Brown and the baron, a re-enactment of the battle using lasers for machine guns, and the expertise of former Hamilton, Ontario forensic pathologist Dr. David King. The program rules out Popkin as the shooter based on a hand drawn map and his own writings where he states that he did not shoot at Richthofen's plane at an angle that would have caused the fatal wound.
Posts: 214 | Location: Texas | Registered: 24 May 2003
