Victory 38
Event ID: 185
Categories:
Under the guns of the Red Baron, Norman Franks, Hal Giblin and Nigel McCrery
08 April 1917
50.36687244598704, 2.8263657722761133
Near Farbus
Farbus
Source ID: 13
Under the guns of the Red Baron, Norman Franks, Hal Giblin and Nigel McCrery p. 102
ISBN: 9781898697275
“Combat Report: 1140 hrs, near Farbus. Sopwith two-seater. Occupants: Lieutenant Heagerty, wounded; Lieutenant Heath-Cantle, killed. Details of plane not to hand, as plane is lying in shellfire and is also dashed to pieces. With three of my planes I attacked three Sopwiths above Farbus. The plane I singled out soon made a right-hand curve downwards. The observer ceased shooting. I followed the adversary to the ground where he dashed to pieces. Weather: fine but cloudy.”
source: Inside the victories of Manfred von richthofen – Volume 1, James F. Miller, Aeronaut Books, 2016
Heagerty stated in a post-war interview with Gibbons that after Richthofen’s first attack the combatants entered a spiraling dogfight until the Strutter’s flight controls were shot away, apparently in the same burst that incapacitated or killed Cantle. Heagerty noted: “From a glide, we went into a dive. All the way down the red machine, or some machine, kept right in back of me, ripping bursts after burst of machine-gun bullets into the plane from the rear”. Most likely another example of Richthofen’s no-quarter Modus Operandi to continuously attack descending and/or disabled aeroplanes if they were still airborne.