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The Third Medical Examination

Event ID: 789

Categories: 

The Red Baron's Last Flight - Norman Franks - Alan Bennett

22 April 1918

49.95364549447138, 2.3132999619283954
Poulainville

Source ID: 39

The Red Baron's Last Flight - Norman Franks - Alan Bennett p.  93 

ISBN: 9781904943334

Below are excerpts of Norman Franks’ and Alan Bennett’s book ‘The Red Baron’s last flight’. The book contains much more detail than below, and remains the ultimate reference on the subject.

“Colonel Barber and Major Chapman arrived at the tent hangar just as the medical orderlies were cleaning up after the examination by Colonels Sinclair and Nixon. The story of what happened next is best described in Barber’s own words in a letter to CEW Bean 17,5 years later.

October 23rd, 1935

My Dear Bean,

With reference to your letter of Oct. 14th, I was inspecting this Air Force unit and found the medical orderly washing Richthofen’s body, so I made an examination. There were only two bullet wounds, one of entry and one of exit of a bullet which had evidently passed through the chest and the heart. There was NO WOUND of the head but there was considerable bruising over the right jaw which may have been fractured. The orderly told me that the Consulting Surgeon of the army (the Fourth Army) had made a post mortem that morning. I asked him how he did it as there was no evidence. The orderly told me that the Consulting Surgeon had used a bit of encing wire which ha pushed along the track of the wound over the heart. I used the same bit of wire for the same purpose. So you see the medical examination was not a thorough one and not a post mortem in the ordinary sense of the term. A bullet hole in the side of the plane coincided with the wound through the chest and I am sure he was shot from below while bankingt. I sent a full report to General Birdwood at Australian Corps and I have often wondered what became of it.

With kind regards.

Yours sincerely

George W Barber

P.S. Of course a proper PM might have been made after I saw the body but I never heard of it and do not think so….

 

…In a letter to a Britisch Militery Publication circa 1930, Major General Barber supplid information identical to that given above but with one addition:

The report that it (the body) was riddled with bullets is absolutely incorrect. There was one bullet wound only and this was through the man’s chest. I formed the opinion that it had been fired from the ground and struck the airman as he was banking his machine, because the exit of the bullet was three inches higher than the point of entry.”

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