Zaragoza on July 1, 2024
Yes, it sounds like an anachronism, but it is just as you read it.
Let's put ourselves in situation. We begin the 20th century with an invention that will revolutionize communications and transportation, but first, like many other inventions, it had to develop, grow and be perfected at a speed that even the screenwriters of Fast and Furious, from the first to the last of its sequels, would envy. For that, unfortunately, nothing accelerates that process like a war. That invention was Aviation.
Let's remember. On October 17, 1903, Orville Wright managed to fly his Fly-1 for 12 seconds, covering 36 meters (even I would dare to tie him running). That's a start.
Only about 10 years later, during the so-called Great War (far from imagining that there would be a later and much bloodier one), aviation was part of the weapons used against the enemy, for the time being without much weight in global operations.
At the beginning of the war, between Germany (100 aircraft), France (140) and England (110) there were barely 350 combat aircraft. And let us understand "combat". They were "fighters" without machine guns where the co-pilot shot the enemy with a shotgun, or "bombers" where the bomb was dropped by eye and where it fell. This is how the French did it with a German industrial complex which they hit quite well, by the way. It was promising.
All the opponents saw that the potential of aviation was at its maximum. The legend had begun, the war in the skies, the mystique of combat in the clouds.
Therefore, at the end of the war in 1918, more than 150,000 aircraft had been used during the war. The evolution and growth, both technical and operational, was exponential in only 4 years, going from being an almost anecdotal weapon to become the decisive weapon it later became.
And yes, the pilots were officers, but above all, gentlemen. Crazy men in jalopies who flew literally defying death in every mission (two out of three of them "saved" the trip back to their base). Like medieval warriors dueling to the death with an equal to meet sooner or later in their particular Valhalla for pilots.
They constituted an elite in each of the contending armies and a halo of greatness, heroism and superiority enveloped them, arousing the admiration, fear and, what now seems incredible to us, the respect of their own enemies.
Their rules of combat resembled those of medieval knightly contests. Fighting to the death knowing that one of the two opponents will not see the light of a new day and accepting defeat if the gods of war were not propitious and enjoying the victory otherwise, but always showing respect for the adversary far from hatred and pettiness that suffered so much in infantry operations for example.
The philosophy was clear: you fight for your honor and your country. Just like the enemy. One day it's their turn and another day it could be yours. Terms such as ethics or honorability were iron codes engraved with fire in a world that today would be difficult to understand: that of the military men from the old European nobility who were part of the newly created air forces. Those first pilots were the living image of the historical type of medieval knight; a sort of 'heroes' envied by their comrades in the Army and Navy.
And within the latter new knights of the air, the greatest myth of them all (there were more worth talking about) was Manfred Von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
Born in 1892, son of an aristocrat and decorated military officer, in what would now be Polish territory but then belonged to Prussia, which dominated Europe for a good part of the 19th century. You were not risking much if you bet that this blond boy, if he could, would enter the elite Cavalry School of the Prussian army, and so it was. At the age of 11 he entered the Academy to the pride of his family and at 20, young Manfred was a brand new cavalry lieutenant. Now it was time to earn honor and glory for the family's pride, just as his ancestors had done.

And the opportunity came. In 1914 the Great War began, the war of the "cousins" (the King of England, the Czar of Russia and the Kaiser of Germany were first cousins and difficult to distinguish if they were put together in a photograph) where it was demonstrated that horse charges with modern weapons were no longer effective but rather useless suicides.
The cavalry officers, most of them of noble origin, sought other accommodations and, after a brief stint in the infantry, in 1915 the young baron entered the air training school where he showed a natural predisposition to become a pilot. His teachers tell that he had a murderous, penetrating look, that eagle look in hunting mode. He was a typical German, blond with blue eyes, but he could have passed for a British lord because he had the bearing and distinction that corresponded to his lineage. Besides, he was hungry for victories, for glory. He wanted to taste the sweetness of triumph. He performed unthinkable maneuvers with those "jalopies", he always wanted to give one hundred percent to his airplane, to give one hundred percent to himself. He always challenged himself. He was always looking for a point more than the others. The seed of the legend of the Red Baron had sprouted.
In case anyone still hasn't figured it out, the nickname Red Baron comes from his noble birth, of course, and the fact that he painted his planes red so that the enemy would not have the slightest doubt as to which plane he was flying.
I will only tell a small anecdote, before he became famous, that clearly reflects why he became a myth.
On September 17, 1916, in one of his combats, he faced the feared Major Hawker, the most daring pilot of the English aviation. After several maneuvers that, seen from the ground, looked like an aerobatics contest, always seeking to get on the enemy's tail, the Red Baron, firing his machine gun at the same time he made a pirouette in the air with his Albatros (the Fokker triplane came later, almost at the end of the war), hit the body of the British pilot, wounding him to death.
Both knowing how it was going to end, Manfred Von Richthofen gave a military salute with his hand to his temple to Commander Hawker, who politely returned the salute and crashed after a few seconds. But he did so some 50 meters outside the German lines. The way of counting the Teutons' validated shoot-downs did not allow to verify the certainty of victory in planes that fell behind their lines and, therefore, to assign the shoot-down as such.
So, neither short nor lazy, the Red Baron landed his plane in a hostile zone, risking being taken prisoner by the enemy infantry and losing a plane (I remind you that they were not exactly in surplus) and, after verifying that the English colleague could no longer read the Times if he did so when he was alive, he dismounted the machine gun from the enemy plane and loaded it in his own as irrefutable proof of the aerial victory achieved. What should have been grounds for arrest by his superiors for landing so recklessly in enemy territory just to score a victory, became the beginning of his legend.

As his number of victories (he reached 80 in 22 months of combat) increased week by week, his figure, well exploited as a war hero by the German military leadership, grew and grew until he became a living myth.
But like all myths, it had such great lights and shadows behind it that it has endured as such to this day.
Perhaps that is a topic for another article in this blog.
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