APRIL 21, 1918
A Fokker DR.I fighter biplane crashed just north of the village of Vaux-sur-somme, its pilot fatally wounded, on April 21, 1918.
This wasn’t just another casualty of the increasingly brutal theatre of aerial combat which had developed during the First World War.
On board the distinctive all-red plane was Manfred von Richthofen, a man better known to the world as The Red Baron.
Born to an aristocratic Prussian family, von Richthofen was originally a cavalry officer serving on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. Trench warfare meant horseback warfare was obsolete, so von Richthofen was forced to instead deliver packages through the lines.
It was in the air where he found his purpose. His first air victory was in 1916 over a British pilot. The noble von Richthofen praised his defeated enemy and ordered a silver cup engraved in his memory.
It was a habit that von Richthofen continued as he racked up victory after victory –he stopped at 60 because of a shortage of silver. He was credited, eventually with 80 victories, earning him the title Aceofaces. In 1918, as the war was reaching its end, von Richthofen was hit in the chest as he pursued a Sopwith Camel.
It may have been another pilot that fired the shot, or a soldier on the ground, but whoever fired it, the shot proved fatal.