He painted his aeroplane red so the enemy would know exactly who was coming. By the time Manfred von Richthofen fell from the sky on 21 April 1918, he had destroyed 80 enemy aircraft — a record that stood as the highest confirmed tally of any fighter pilot in the entire war. He was 25 years old. The legend of the Red Baron had already outgrown the man.

A Cavalry Officer Who Learned to Fly

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen was born on 2 May 1892 into a family of Prussian aristocracy. His early military career had nothing to do with aircraft — he was a cavalry officer, riding horses on the Eastern Front in the opening months of the war. When the trenches made cavalry obsolete, he transferred to the Flying Corps in 1915, first as an observer, then as a pilot.

He was not a natural pilot. His first solo landing ended in a crash. But in the air, when it came to hunting, he proved to have an almost predatory instinct for positioning — always attacking from out of the sun, always pressing to point-blank range before firing, always breaking away before the enemy could respond. He would later describe his approach as simple: get close, aim carefully, shoot once.

The Making of an Ace

His first aerial victory came on 17 September 1916 over the Somme. By the end of that year he had 15 kills and had been awarded the Pour le Mérite — Germany’s highest military honour, popularly known as the Blue Max. In January 1917, at just 24 years old, he was given command of his own fighter squadron, Jagdstaffel 11.

What followed was a period of almost uninterrupted dominance. In April 1917 — remembered by British pilots as “Bloody April” — the RFC lost 245 aircraft and 316 aircrew in a single month. Richthofen personally accounted for 21 of those kills, one of the most lethal individual performances in aerial warfare history. His squadron flew red-painted aircraft, partly for morale, partly so that friendly ground forces could identify them. The colour became his personal trademark.

The Fokker Triplane and the Flying Circus

In the public imagination, Richthofen is inseparable from the Fokker Dr.I triplane — the triple-winged fighter with its remarkable rate of climb and tight turning circle. In reality, he scored the majority of his victories in the Albatros D.III and D.V. The triplane came late, in late 1917, and he flew it for only a few months. But the image stuck: the bright red triplane, diving from altitude, became the defining visual of WWI aerial combat.

By 1917 he was also commanding Jagdgeschwader I — a larger formation of four squadrons that the Allies nicknamed the “Flying Circus,” because of the bright colours of its aircraft and its habit of moving between sectors by railway. It was not mere showmanship. Coloured aircraft allowed pilots to identify each other in the chaos of a dogfight, and concentration of force in breakthrough sectors was sound tactics.

The Last Flight

On 21 April 1918, Richthofen was in pursuit of a novice Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid May, over the Morlancourt Ridge near the Somme. He was lower and closer to the front lines than he should have been — something his own rules of combat forbade. A single bullet entered his chest from the right side and exited on the left.

His Fokker Dr.I landed itself almost intact in a field behind Australian lines. Ground troops ran to the aircraft expecting to take a prisoner, and found instead a dead man still strapped in his seat. He had survived long enough to cut the engine and bring the aircraft down — a last instinct of the professional pilot. He was 25 years old and had been flying in combat for less than three years.

Who fired the fatal shot remains one of the great controversies of the war. The most likely candidate is Sergeant Cedric Popkin of the Australian 24th Machine Gun Company, who fired at the aircraft twice from ground level. Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown was officially credited at the time, but subsequent medical and forensic analysis suggests the bullet’s trajectory was consistent with ground fire rather than aerial fire.

The Enemy Buries Him With Honours

The Australian Flying Corps buried Richthofen with full military honours at Bertangles, France. They placed a wreath on his grave with the inscription: “To Our Gallant and Worthy Foe.” The RFC and RNAS dropped a note over German lines informing them of his death and burial place. Even in industrial-scale killing, there was a code.

The German military had been careful to manage his public image throughout the war, restricting his flying duties after he suffered a serious head wound in July 1917 (from which he may never have fully recovered). He was simply too valuable as a symbol to risk losing. When they finally did lose him, the blow to German morale was significant. His death was front-page news across Europe and North America.

Eighty victories, officially confirmed. The actual number was likely higher — not all claims could be verified in the fog of war. He remains the highest-scoring ace of the First World War from any nation, and his name is still the most recognised in the history of air combat. Not because of the number, but because of the image: the red plane, the aristocratic hunter, the man who chose to be seen.

Sources: RFC Combat Reports, Imperial War Museum; Richthofen’s own memoir Der Rote Kampfflieger (1917); Norman Franks & Alan Bennett, The Red Baron’s Last Flight (1997); Australian War Memorial records.