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THE REDFIGHTERPILOT
BY MANFRED VONRICHTHOFEN
 
THE RED FIGHTER PILOT
BY MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN
This is an edition of Manfred von Richthofen's 1917 book
Der Rote Kampfflieger 
is based on the English language version originally translated by J. Ellis Barker and published in 1918 under the name
The Red Battle Flyer 
.The book was published while World War One still raged and sufferedsomewhat from the propaganda and censorship of the time. UnfortunatelyCaptain von Richthofen, famously known as The Red Baron, did not survive thewar, and so this is the only work of its kind directly attributable to him. His ownopinion of his book was that it was too insolent, and before his death wrote thathe was no longer that kind of person.The original 1918 English edition preface by C.G. Grey is also interestingreading. It reveals much about attitudes which had changed little during four bloody years of war. The concept of honorable death at the hands of a "worthy"opponent was still very strong, even toward the end of the war.
 
Preface
SOME time ago a Naval Officer who was engaged on particularly hazardousduty was discussing calmly the chances that he and his like had of surviving thewar, assuming that it continued for several more years and that his particular branch of it increased its intensity. He wound up his remarks by saying, "Thechief reason why I particularly want to survive the finish is that I'm so keen oncomparing notes with our opposite members in the German Navy."That is the answer to those who ask, as an important official gentleman askedrecently, why this English translation of Rittmeister von Richthofen's bookshould be published. It gives our flying people an opportunity of comparingnotes with one of Germany's star-turn fighting pilots, just as that excellent bookby "Contact" gives the Germans the chance of gathering the atmosphere of theRoyal Flying Corps as it was in 1916 and 1917."The Red Battle-Flyer"¹has evidently been carefully censored by the Germanauthorities. Also it has possibly been touched up here and there for propagandist purposes. Consequently, although the narrative as it stands isextraordinarily interesting, the book as a whole is still more interesting onaccount of what one reads between the lines, and of what one can deduce fromthe general outlook of the writer. There is, perhaps, little to learn of immediatetopical interest, but there is much that explains things which were rather difficultto understand in the past, and the understanding of such points gives one a lineof reasoning which should be useful to our active-service aviators in the future.When one makes due allowance for the propagandist nature of the book, whichgives one the general impression of the writing of a gentleman prepared for publication by a hack journalist, one forms a distinctly favorable mental pictureof the young Rittmeister Baron von Richthofen. Our old friend Froissart iscredited with the statement that in his age of chivalry it was always impossibleto inculcate into the German knights the true spirit of knightliness." Whichseems to indicate that the practical German mind of those days could notunderstand the whimsicalities of the Latin ideas of chivalry, which - for example- bade a knight against whose shield an opponent "brake his spear" haul off outof the fight till the lance-less enemy unsheathed his sword and "drave into thecombat" again. Probably the Hun of those days proceeded to stick his opponentin the midriff-wherever it may be-and so finished the fight.In the same true spirit of knightliness an Englishman knocks a man down andthen stands back so that he can get up and have another chance, whereas amore practical person would take excellent care that his opponent never got uptill he had acknowledged himself beaten. It is all a matter of the point of view,and largely no doubt a matter of education. However, making due allowance for the point of view, one finds surprisingly little Hunnishness in von Richthofen'smanners or methods as set forth in print.It is one of the accepted facts of the war that the German aviators havedisplayed greater chivalry than any other branch of the German services. It was
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