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On January 30, 2004, I received a very interesting email message from Mr. Jeff Riley, Melbourne, Australia!
Mr. Riley was so kind to send my two scans from his original
English edition of Manfred von Richthofen's book "The Red Air
Fighter" because the first owner of the book had added some
handwritten annotations to it. After these annotations it was
Anti-Aircraft-Artillery (also known as "Archie" in the
soldier's slang) that took Oswald Boelcke's aircraft down. If this was
true, then history has to be re-written since the official version of
Boelcke's death was that he died in a crash that followed a midair
collision with his close friend Erwin Böhme. In the following text you
will find my personal reflections on this new information. If you want
to discuss this topic with me please feel free to contact
me. Please scroll down for scans,
explanations and maps!
Until this day we all
believed that Oswald Boelcke died after his aircraft went down in
consequence to a slight midair collision that happend between him and
his dear friend Erwin Böhme - a touch of Böhme's landing gear with
Boelcke's upper wing. The wing broke and Boelcke's aircraft went down in
circles, apparently breaking up even more as it went through clouds
which could be the result of turbulences that usually happen within clouds. So
far so good - but what are the sources this information comes from? Are
they reliable? After my own sources, it was nobody else but Professor
Johannes Werner, a friend of the Boelcke family, who wrote about this in
his 1932 biography of the life of Oswald Boelcke. If one compares the
letters published by Werner with the original Boelcke Field Reports, one
can clearly see how the German censorship altered the textes that had
been published with the Field Reports in early 1917, which was common
practice at times of war, thus the material published in 1932 seems to
be credible. Now what about the truth regarding Boelcke's death? He was
Germany's greatest hero. After he died, the Germans didn't get tired to
point out in countless speeches and publications that he, the master of
airwar, fell undefeated. Undefeated was the magic word! Undefeated
because he had not been vanquished by an enemy pilot in the air! But
what if he had in fact been "accidentally" hit by an anti-aircraft-shell?
I say "accidentally", because AAA hits in WW1 happened by
chance rather than markmanship. He certainly fell undefeated from the
point of view of the man-to-man fight in the air, but if he died by a
AAA hit he had been had by the enemy nevertheless, and he had been had
in a way that was not the end the German propaganda machine wanted to
have for Germany's greatest hero - still undefeated in fight, but with a
dark spot on his white shield of invincibilty. So the speculations arise
to me that in fact Boelcke could have been killed by Archie (AAA).
Because this kind of death was not heroic enough to the German
leadership, they released an official propaganda version of the midair
collision to let Boelcke die in a cleaner and undefeated way for the
people. My speculations find even more sustenance in the questions that
arise to me regarding the different reports about Boelcke's crash:
-
Erwin Böhme wrote about the event in his letter to his girlfriend
Anne-Marie from October 31, 1916: ...Boelcke
and I just had an Englishman between us as yet another, chased by friend
Richthofen, cut in our way... But again, that letter had
been published by none else than Prof. Werner in his book "Erwin
Böhme - letters to a young girl". Was the letter true or was it
setup by Werner himself to give the report about Boelcke's death more
credibility? I always doubted the information provided by Böhme who
said that his aircraft flipped over on landing because of the broken
landing gear but that he himself didn't even notice it because he was
still so shocked by Boelcke's crash. I wonder how he came out of from
the wreck unharmed. Wouldn't he have been at least slightly injured on
his head and/or neck after a his aircraft turned over?
Böhme also wrote:...After a few hundred
meters I managed to regain control of my machine so I could follow the
one of Boelcke which I saw heading to our lines in a gentle glide,
hanging only slightly to one side. Only in a cloud layer in the lower
regions his aircraft banked more and more due to strong gusts of wind
and I had to watch how he couldn't level it out before landing and how it
crashed near our batterie position...
-
But Richthofen wrote:...At the front, we
saw two daring Englishman already from a distance, who apparently
enjoyed the bad weather this time. We were six, on the other side were
two... ...The usual struggle begins. Boelcke tackled the one and I the other. I had to break because I had been disturbed by one of our
own. I turn myself and see Boelcke settling his victim at about
200m beside me.... ...Close to Boelcke flies a good friend of his. It was an
interesting fight. Both men were shooting. It was likely that the Englishman
would fall at any
moment. Suddenly, I noticed an unnatural movement of the
German flying machines. Immediately I thought: Collision!... Manfred
von Richthofen did not mention an aircraft that crossed the path of
Boelcke and Böhme! Also his report differs in yet two other important
points from Böhme's:
-
He said that he had been disturbed by
one of their own, not by a British aircraft and
-
he wrote:
...I had not the feeling that he was falling but when I saw him
descending below me I noticed that part of his planes had broken off. I couldn't
see what was happening afterwards, but
in the clouds he lost an entire plane... which is
quite a difference from the "gentle glide" and the
"increased bank in the clouds" that Böhme talked about!
Manfred von Richthofen's book "The Red Air Fighter" is no
reliable source for historic research because most (if not all) events
depicted by the author (either MvR himself or a ghostwriter) had been
falsified by German censors. These are facts that can be proven, at
least when it comes to MvR's time as a Uhlan on the Western Front. I
will provide a detailed comparison about the truth and the fiction in
MvR's book at a later time, but when thinking about this it is almost
clear to me that MvR's story about Boelcke's death could be a wrong
story too.
Now, regarding the man who made these annotations in his book: Sadly, no
name had been found inside of the book, Mr. Riley said, so it will be
almost impossible to find out who the owner was. However, it is not
impossible to find out what British units had been stationned in the
sectors mentionned by the man. I will investigate on this and post any
new information on this page as soon as they will become available
indeed! Questions that arise to me regarding the annotation are:
- Wouldn't
the British have proudly announced the death of Oswald Boelcke if he
had been shot down by their AAA units, falling behind their lines?
- Did
Boelcke maybe fall into no mans land where the writer of the
annotation could access the wreck before the Germans?
- Did
the British retrieve Boelcke's body, handling it over to the Germans?
- How
could the writer of that annotation be sure it was Boelcke? Boelcke's
Albatros D.II/D.III apparently had it's engine hood painted green and
its wheel covers painted light blue - was this known to the British?
- Did
they identify his flying machine by its markings or did they identify
Boelcke by checking his papers?
- If
they identified Boelcke's body they sure retreived him - why didn't
they bury him, like they later did with the dead Manfred von
Richthofen?
- And
how could the whole story be covered then by the Germans to allow a
propaganda story?
With many thanks to Mr. Jeff Riley for sharing the information with me.
In the meantime I purchased the book from Mr. Riley who kindly sold it to
me.
Please scroll down for scans and maps!
Gaston Graf, webmaster
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"Boelcke
was brought down by my battery .K. Anti Aircraft Battery at
Aveluoy (???) Wood, Somme, 28th Oct. 1916 & not
as recounted by Richthofen. I was one of the first to reach his
aeroplane, the fuselage of which was in flames." |
I checked the maps of the
region for Aveluoy using MS Route Planer 2002 and found a village
or town with the name Aveluy so I guess the man who wrote that
annotation only made a spelling error. He may have written in after it's
pronounciation which sounds indeed like Aveluoy. Please refer to
the map below to see where Aveluy
2 is. The route marked in green is the route from my home
in Luxembourg 1
to Aveluy which is 356,3km or 221.3miles.
The following map shows you
where Lagnicourt
3 is, as well as the near region of Aveluy
2 . Jasta Boelcke had its airfield near Lagnicourt at
the time Oswald Boelcke got killed. Please notice that neither the name
of Lagnicourt nor Aveluy are mentionned on the map due to scale
limitations.
The second scan shows
another annotation regarding the loss of Schäfer as mentionned in
Manfred von Richthofen's book. It reads:
"I
was gassed at Monchy (Monchy-sur-Bois) on
this date & presonally saw the descend of the plane
piloted
by Schäffer (an albatros iii)" (Albatros
D.III) |
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Monchy-au-Bois is
located some 25km or 15.5 miles from Aveluy as you can see on the
map below:
Now let's have a look at the
last map: 1
Aveluy, 2
Flers, 3
Monchy-au-Bois, 4
Lagnicourt-Marcel.
1) The unknown soldier who made the annotation in MvR's book claims that
his AAA battery shot down Boelcke near Aveluy.
2) Erwin Böhme mentions in his letter from October 31, 1916, that they
soon met British single seaters near Flers.
It was in the ensuing battle that the incident happened.
3) Monchy-au-Bois is the
location where the unknown man had been gassed and where he saw the
aircraft of Schäfer going down to land behind his lines.
4) Lagnicourt (today:
Lagnicourt-Marcel) is where the airfield of Jasta Boelcke was.
Yet another question arises to me: Böhme mentionned in his letter that
Boelcke was going down in a gentle glide, heading to the German lines.
If you look at the map below and if the unknown soldier was right with
his annotation, you will find Aveluy West of Flers. I still have no maps
at hand of the front as it was on that day, but assuming the Germans was
in the North and the East it seems unlikely to me that Boelcke was
heading North if he really came down near Aveluy. Apparently Böhme was
wrong in his statement, intentionally or not.
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