Testimony from First Lieutenant Lampel
Event ID: 581
02 April 1918
Source ID: 55
“How Richthofen shot down his 75th. By Lieutenant Lampel
By Lieutenant Lampel (From the ‘Liller Zeitung’ newspaper dated 1 May 1918)
‘Please take a seat,’ said Cavalry Captain Baron von Richthofen to me when I reported to him in the mess hall: ‘Orderly, lunch.’ There I was, suddenly sitting in the middle of the famous circle of Fighter Squadron 11, surrounded by the big guns, and feeling quite intimidated. The mess hall was a round corrugated iron barrack in which one could just stand upright, with two small window slits providing the necessary light. These are the living quarters of the English pilots, who left the place in a hurry. The Richthofen squadron has only recently moved in here. The cavalry captain is sitting at the table. He is wearing his yellow-brown leather trousers, his leather waistcoat and a wool waistcoat unbuttoned over it, and his neckerchief untied. He has just returned from a combat mission with the gentlemen of his old squadron. There is a lot of activity in the air out there. When one squadron returns, the next one takes off to relieve it. None of the gentlemen are wearing their high decorations. They sit there simply in their grey coats; one quickly feels at ease in their company, they are all modest and amiable, despite their great successes. The most modest of them all is the cavalry captain himself. He looks very young, not at all as stern as I had imagined him from the pictures, and when he speaks to you, something amiable glides over his features. He says nothing for a while, then simply remarks: ‘I shot down my seventy-fifth earlier.’ Wow – I venture a very timid congratulations, and now the cavalry captain tells his story. ‘Funny,’ he said, “the last ten I shot down all caught fire. Today’s one too. I saw it, at first it was a very small flame under the pilot’s seat; when the aircraft then overturned, I saw that the floor under the pilot’s seat had already been completely burned away. It continued to burn very gently as it curved downwards, and when it hit the ground there was a tremendous explosion, the likes of which I had never seen before. It was a Bristol fighter, a two-seater, and it put up a tough fight.‘ ’We were already terrified,‘ said Lieutenant Gußmann, looking at his commander with a slightly reproachful expression. ’Captain, you got incredibly close.” ‘Yes,’ said Richthofen, “I had to get right up close to him. The observer was a tough, seasoned flying ace. A brave fellow. I had to get within five metres of him before he fell, even though I had already hit him several times with my machine guns. And even then, he still flew towards me for a few steps. The slightest movement of the controls was enough to prevent us from colliding.‘ At that moment, the adjutant entered the room. ’My sincere congratulations, Captain…” He was holding a telegram in his hand. We are all breathlessly excited. ‘His Majesty the Emperor has graciously deigned to award the cavalry captain the Order of the Red Eagle, Third Class, with Crown and Swords. On the occasion of his seventieth aerial victory, cavalry captain.’ And now the seventy-fifth has just fallen! We all jump up, the cavalry captain shakes our hands. He has almost turned red, quite simple and modest. ‘Children,’ he says, ‘I don’t have the Red Eagle Fourth Class yet.’ As he drives off to inspect a new airfield close behind the front – things are moving forward at the front – he turns around again and looks halfway into the door. ‘So, children,’ he says, ‘when I’m standing up there and you’re flying,’ – he cups his hand around his eye – ‘then I’ll see if you’re brave.’ When the gentlemen take off afterwards, they shoot down three more Tommies. Lieutenant Weiß gets his fourteenth, Lieutenant Wolff his fourth, and with that, the 250th for Fighter Squadron 11. Another young squadron gets its hundredth today. Both squadrons belong to Richthofen’s wing.”
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