100 year old film of the Red Baron

[buckwheatpaul]

FW: 100 year old footage of the Red Baron during WWI



You will notice the strap that looks like it holds his hat on, it doesn't. When he is getting dressed for flight, he takes off his hat and hands it to one of the crew, but the strap is still there. It is holding something else on his head. Strange. Interesting Video.

100 year old footage of the Red Baron during WWI

Notice them squirting oil … on the valve stems I would guess, prior to spinning the prop.

The following is a very rare piece of film, 100 years old. It shows Baron Von Richthofen, doing an external prior to a mission, as well as his putting on a flying suit prior to flight in cold weather. If you look close you will notice Hermann Goering.The Baron was shot down on 21 April 1918 by Roy Brown of the Royal Navy Air Services, a prelude of the R.A.F.. The Aussies also claim that one of their machine gunners on the ground shot the Baron down UK & Aussie Doctors, after the autopsy stated that the fatal bullet was shot from above.The author of this has been very involved as a Director of the Roy Brown
Museum in Carleton Place, the home town of Roy. Many letters have been written over the past 3-4 years and finally Roy Brown was inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame on 4 June 2015…To think this film is almost 100 years old! If you're interested in history or aviation, you cannot miss this footage. It was just posted online, and I've never seen anything like it. It's from 1917, and it's an up-close and personal look at the most legendary combat pilot who ever lived, the infamous Red Baron, Manfred Von Richthofen. Watch the extremely rare, extremely old footage and re-live history. ULTRA-RARE footage of the most famous fighter pilot ever.

https://shar.es/12Ag7e

[osteodoc08]

Interesting video.

[redhawk0]

I think the strap was for his goggles...they cut quickly from his hat to him putting on the flight helmet at that point he then puts on his goggles and the strap looks the same. He may have kept the goggles under his hat to keep them from getting dirty or possibly foggy...just a guess.

really cool old video.

redhawk

[Bent Ramrod]

I think what the crewman was doing was priming the cylinders with “petrol”. That Le Rhône rotary engine design used the block as a “carburetor” and only had the exhaust valve (“the monosoupape principle,” I think they called it.). The cylinders were open at the bottom and the partial vacuum from the pistons at BDC sucked the mixture in.

So it was “Switch off!” and prime the cylinders; “Contact!” and spin the propellor. Notice the circle of cylinders spins with the propellor. The crank was fixed to the front of the fuselage, and everything else whirled around. The oil went up through the system by centrifugal force and was flung out into the atmosphere. Pursuit pilots didn’t have a very good chance at a long lifespan, but they had no trouble whatsoever with irregularity.

That’s a great video—even had his Dreidecker in it. Thanks for sharing it.

[DCP]

What a piece of history

[Beagle333]

Pretty cool video. Thanks!

[Hardcast416taylor]

I read in an aviation magazine a few years back that had an article about the rotary engines used by both sides. The article said the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker Tri plane `s engines produced such torq that the pilots were constantly fighting their craft to keep it on an even keel. More pilots were killed trying to fly these planes or land them than were actually shot down.Robert

[Walla2]

I had read earlier that he suffered a severe head wound that kept him from flying for some time. The picture I saw showed the left side of his head bandaged. While he could not fly the German's sent him on a moral boosting tour. He toured among other places the front line aerodomes of Germany. Perhaps the strap is for the bandaging on the left side of his head.

[abunaitoo]

I had read earlier that he suffered a severe head wound that kept him from flying for some time. The picture I saw showed the left side of his head bandaged. While he could not fly the German's sent him on a moral boosting tour. He toured among other places the front line aerodomes of Germany. Perhaps the strap is for the bandaging on the left side of his head.

That's what I was thinking.
Maybe some kind of pad to keep the cover from rubbing on the wound.

[rancher1913]

guess my sound is broke :mrgreen:

[Finster101]

Wow, seeing them roll that plane out, it's not much more than a motorized box kite. Those guys were gutsy on both sides. I understand that back then captured pilots were treated well and generally regarded as gentlemen.

[Fishman]

Pretty darned cool. It is amazing how much more deadly our weapons are in only 100 years’ time. Where will we be in another 100?

[DigBig]

An interesting, albeit unsettling, fact from the annals (pun intended) of history: the lubricating oil in WWI airplane engines was castor oil, a fast acting diuretic. In radial engines planes, large quantities of the lubricant would flow back in the slip stream and be ingested by the crew. For the untimely and the unlucky this often led to gastrointestinal accidents, perhaps giving rise to the immortal combat phrase "OMG, I think I ---- myself." While fart-joke amusing in hindsight it was a genuine health issue at the time as long time exposure to castor oil intake often leads to the opposite, very uncomfortable problem.

[Thundarstick]

I didn't realize that castor oil was used in these early radial engines. I use to build and fly model RC planes that used large glow fuel engines that burned a methanol castor oil blend, we burned the methanol at least, the castor oil just lubbed and cooled the engine. It just passed through the engine and out the exhaust and left a nasty greasy mess all down the side of the model.
I was looking at the way the engine on the baron's plane is cowled to send all that mess out the bottom of the cowling and across the bottom of the plane.

[Thumbcocker]

Silk scarves weren't for show. Kept your face and neck from getting rubbed raw on the wool coat as you kept your head on a swivel.

[kenyerian]

Thanks for sharing

[glockfan]

Thanks for sharing

+1..tried to read his eyes along the vid.....was looking extremely confident and wise.you can see how people were kind of admirative and submitted around him. confidence is everything on battlegrounds.

[snowwolfe]

The Red Baron was very superstitious about being photographed before a mission. He went up one day after being photographed and a bullet grazed the side of his skull. He was apparently never the same after that, and would flip out if he saw a camera. Then like a year or two later, it happened again, and that was the day he was shot down and killed.

[Blackwater]

Thanks, Paul. I sure am glad we got that guy! Great man, as far as his talents and dedication to his purposes went, but very bad for his fellow man. It's a shame such talent and ability has to die, in order for folks to be free.

[wv109323]

Was the last part of the video an examination of a downed plane? Maybe shot down? It is obviously a different engine
.

[Hardcast416taylor]

Up until when there was getting to be a shortage of silver metal during the latter part of the war the Baron would commission a jeweler to make a small silver cup to mark each of his victories. He couldn`t get cups made for the final 10 or so planes shot down. To him it was like bagging a game animal by making those cups. After the war the body of the Baron was supposedly exhumed and returned to the family` estate and re-intered. His brother Lothar revealed years later that only his head was returned and interred in the family vault.Robert