Fite History Brian Burke and Mark Silvers

Hunting trophies are the ultimate proof of a hunter's triumph and reminders that cunning, patience, and marksmanship won the day. Most hunters hang the heads of deer, moose, and bear forever frozen in their last fight. Manfred Von Richthofen was a hunter with an entirely different set of trophies; in his room hung serial numbers cut from the tails of airplanes, machine-guns torn from wrecks, salvaged propellers, and dozen of little silver cups each with a unique inscription. In this episode we explore the early life and career of Richthofen, setting the stage for him to become "The Red Baron."

Lanoe Hawker looked across the circle at the German pilot. After thirty minutes of turning, looping, and diving neither pilot had been able to best the other. It had become obvious that this was no ordinary dogfight. Hawker had finally found a German who could match his skills in flight. Continuing to look across the circle, Hawker gave the German a little wave, and Manfred Von Richthofen, better known as "The Red Baron" waved back. This episode explores the life and contributions of Lanoe Hawker, who is often referred to as "The British Boelcke" due to his outsized impact on the British Air Force during World War I and beyond.

In late June of 1916, Oswald Boelcke found himself on a train racing away from the war on the Western Front. Deemed as too important to lose after the death of Max Immelmann, Boelcke was left with no battle to wage. Instead, he turned his energies into distilling the lessons learned from two years of fighting. This distillation led to the "Dicta Boelcke," the first codified set of air to air tactics. Combined with daily flight briefs and debriefs, Boelcka unknowingly set the standard that all air forces use more than 100 years later.

In February 1916, along the west bank of the Meuse, a hell unlike any ever known to man descended upon the French fortress of Verdun. Over 1,000 German heavy guns fired a combined 1,000,000 shells - in just the first 9 hours. A French officer who survived the bombardment wrote “Forevery 5 defenders, two are buried alive, two are wounded, and one is waiting.” The Germans had just begun their latest offensive and the largest battle ever fought by mankind to that point. Above this churning hell, the air war of World War 1 ignited as both sides committed to stopping the other from observing the huge movements of men, supplies, and guns needed to feed the fire. In this comparatively miniscule but no less important battle for the air one man above the rest was feared and respected. The mentor to the Red Baron, the Father of the German Air Force, and to some the Father of all Air Combat, Oswald Boelcke fought against a rising tide of allied planes to bring victory to the German army.

Much has been said about “the right stuff” that separates fighter pilots from everybody else.People have tried to define the fighter pilot archetype as aggressive, type A, and arrogant. They aresupposed to be playboys and hard partiers, and certainly, many fighter pilots have fit that mold. MaxImmelmann wasn’t one of them. Small, quiet, a vegetarian and tee-totaler, not many would expectImmelmann to be the aviator to strike fear into the hearts of British pilots on the Western front.Nicknamed the Eagle of Lille, not by the German propaganda machine, but by those very same Britishpilots, Immelmann, was not the typical fighter pilot.

We specialize in Air-to-Air Combat. Everyone else in our squadron specializes in Air-to-Air combat. We all secretly dream of becoming fighter Aces, and so it is surprisingly that none of us had heard of the world’s first fighter ace – Adolphe Pequod. It’s time to remedy that.