The deadly error of Lt. Werner Voss

[passat54]

(The related thread is overladed with other topics that I feel free to present my time consuming notices in an own thread)

Passat54

If the opponent of a German aviator crosses the lines into German territory with signs of surrender, he was treated by a German aviator like a war prisoner.

Signs of surrender were easy to recognize in that time of slow flying aircrafts when remember the motion picture "The Blue Max".

To illustrate the behavior of German aviators, some excerpts from the combat reports of the most successful are given here.

Noteworthy that the downed airmen were even not attacked by Manfred von Richthofen, when burning their aircraft on ground. But some records of other German aviators telling the opposite - they shot.

When in trouble, in all likelihood Lt. Werner Voss trust in this rule beeing a war prisoner, gliding low with a dead engine deeper into British territory, with all signs of surrender. The sun stood bright and low nearly exact West. No mistake about orientation.

It was a deadly error by Lt. Werner Voss to trust in this unwritten rule of merciness, may be the British doesn't know it or don't want to know it, but they participate of it, a lot of their airmen owe their life to it.

It would be interesting to read some British combat reports with the same topic as the following.

Regards,
Rudol


From the combat reports of Manfred von Richthofen

12th Victory
"I singled out one machine and after a short curve fight I ruined the adversary's motor and forced him to land behind our lines near Mercatel. Inmate not seriously wounded."

18th Victory
"After a long fight I forced adversary to land near Vimy. The intimates burnt plane after landing."

30th Victory
"After a long fight I managed to hit the adversary's tank. The propeller stopped running. The plane had to go down. As the fight had taken place above the trenches, adversary tried to escape, but I managed to force him to land behind our lines near Givenchy."

31th Victory
"After only a very few shots, the enemy's propeller stopped running. The adversary landed near Tilley upsetting his plane thereby. I observed that some moments later the plane began to burn."

35th Victory
"I personally singled out the last machine which I forced to land after a short fight near Lewarde. The occupants burnt their machine."

36th Victory
"After a rather long fight the adversary surrendered. I forced him to land near Quincy. The occupants burnt their machine to ashes."

61th Victory
"After a while I forced it to land near Bousbecque. I was absolutely convinced to have had a very deft opponent who did not even surrender in 50 meters height, but kept on shooting. Even before landed he fire at our columns and finally smashed his machine - intentionally - against a tree."

64th Victory
"The observer had only fired high up in the air, had then disappeared in his seat and had only re-begun shooting shortly before the machine landed. During the fight we had been driven off to Le Catelet. There I forced my adversary to land and after doing this both inmates left their plane."

69th Victory
"At first the adversary tried to escape by deft flying. From a distance not more than the length of a plane I shot him to flames."

[JFM]

The horse comes back to life...

I should not bite the hook, but I'm reminded of the cliche "was artillery fair to the infantry?"

[Flute]

What a shame the wrong folk won the war. Tell you what, why not line us all up against the wall and shoot us? Make you happy?

This topic serves no purpose and typifies the reason I rarely post on this otherwise excellent forum.

Git.


Paul Thompson. My real name.

[Old Man]

The young man fought well. He died. So did millions of others whose names none of us will ever hear. None of them wanted to.

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

[Yeoman]

Actually Passat you and other desktop heroes seem to be getting mixed up with your definition of people who have just surrendered. To help in sorting out your confusion I would like you to read the following so in future you may know what you are talking about.

Roll of Honour - Regiments - Royal Norfolk Massacre - World War 2

Or

Dec. 17, 1944 - Massacre at Malmedy

Now compare with Voss. End of story.

[passat54]

As far as knowing, there will be a new publication about Lt. Werner Voss in the next time. May be this here will influence it.

Not the last publication - as long as Aviation History is written the Voss fight will be discussed and nobody can stop it.

So what's about some British combat reports we all can compare with the unwritten rule of German aviators?

Let's talk about Aviation of WWI.

Regards,
Rudol

[FOKKERJ]

Originally Posted by passat54

As far . %.%as knowing, there will be a new publication about Lt. Werner Voss in the next time. May be this here will influence it.

Not the last publication - as long as Aviation History is written the Voss fight will be discussed and nobody can stop it.

So what's about some British combat reports we all can compare with the unwritten rule of German aviators?

Let's talk about Aviation of WWI.

Regards,
Rudol

Hi Rudol and others,

From my experience, it would appear next to impossible to discuss the Aviation of WWI without one or several bringing in their knowledge of WWII to the table, where in approximately 99.999% of the cases it has absolutely no place in this Forum's exchange of information and would be better served and more welcome on a site about WWII. WWI is part of the history of WWII, but not the other way around as it had not yet happened during the time that most of us focus our studies.

Thank you for letting me indulge my complaint on your thread and state my opinion.

Very Best Regards, Jay

[Germanophile-1]

Originally Posted by Flute

What a shame the wrong folk won the war. Tell you what, why not line us all up against the wall and shoot us? Make you happy?

This topic serves no purpose and typifies the reason I rarely post on this otherwise excellent forum.

Git.


Paul Thompson. My real name.

What a novel concept, using your own name. You are to be commended and I hope more people follow your good example.

Peter Kilduff

[Flackjacket]

Originally Posted by passat54

unwritten rule of German aviators?

For the most part unwritten rules go unheeded.

[Old Man]

Originally Posted by passat54

As far as knowing, there will be a new publication about Lt. Werner Voss in the next time. May be this here will influence it.

Not the last publication - as long as Aviation History is written the Voss fight will be discussed and nobody can stop it.

So what's about some British combat reports we all can compare with the unwritten rule of German aviators?

Let's talk about Aviation of WWI.

Regards,
Rudol

This an odd mixture of spiritism, claims of telepathy, and trying to candy-coat two bullets through a liver or the impact of earth on a body moving at 120 mph or a bath in burning gasoline. It has nothing to do with aviation in the Great War; it concerns only attachments to romance, sentimentality, and silent-picture melodrama with card-board cut-out heroes sporting bright, square-jawed faces and villains twirling mustachios and waving Little Nell's mortgage about.

Your extracts from von Richtofen's combat reports, which everyone, even those like myself whose principal interests are in the early period of the air war, and in observation machines and their operations, are wearily familiar with, do not even come close to demonstrating an 'unwritten rule' observed by German airmen in air fights that the unfortunate young Herr Voss must have been relying on, but that the English ignored. They simply show what everyone knows already, that von Richtofen, like just about everyone else, did not strafe enemy airmen on the ground in his own territory, and that, as a careful man, when he had the upper hand in a fight and knew it was safe to do so, he did not waste bullets on an aeroplane he was certain he had already shot down.

Only one of the reports you cite indicates an acceptance of a surrender in the air, and the text you provide, "After a rather long fight the adversary surrendered. I forced him to land near Quincy. The occupants burnt their machine to ashes," does not jibe with the text provided in "Under the Guns of the Red Baron" by Franks, et al, which reads "After having put the first adversary near Lewarde out of action, I pursued the remaining part of the enemy squadron and overtook the last plane above Douai. I forced him to land near Cuincy. The occupants burnt their machine to ashes." The accounts of the English fliers included in the volumn make no mention of surrender, and indicate their machine was already in serious trouble when they were attacked by von Richtofen, with their main fuel tank pierced and the pilot's gun hopelessly jammed in an early portion of the formation engagement. This was, of course, the well-known debut engagement of the early model Bristol Fighter, in which out of six in the formation, four were crashed and one wrecked on landing.

Opening the above volumn at random, I come upon this report by von Richtofen, of his 58th victory, on his first patrol after his head wound: "At about 0755, accompanied by four aircraft of Staffel 11, I pursued a small flight of Nieuports. After a long chase, I attacked an opponent and after a short fight I shot up his engine and fuel tank. The aeroplane went into a tail spin. I followed right after it until just above the ground, gave it one more shot, so that the aeroplane crashed south-west of Houthulst Forest and went right into the ground. As I was about 50 meters behind him, I passed through a cloud of gas from the explosion that made it hard to see for a brief moment." The English pilot, one William Harold Trant Williams, was pulled from the flaming wreckage by German soldiers, so he definitely spun down behind German lines, and he died after six days of agony in hospital from his injuries, which must have included severe burns. He had been a pilot at the front no more than a fortnight; he was nineteen years old.

Is anyone going to chew endlessly over whether 2nd Lt. Williams was relying on some 'unwritten rule' of chivalric mythos to keep him alive as he rode the Nieuport down in the spin, doubtless trying with the best of what skill he could muster to right the machine and at least land it, and certainly hoping above anything he was going to live, and go on living unmaimed? Are you, Mr. Passant, going to denounce von Richtofen as a vile traducer of the 'unwritten code' of Germany's Flying Knights for following down the spinner he was certain he had crippled, and putting in the final burst at the last moment when a skilled pilot, at least, might have managed to right the machine and glide to a dead-stick landing? You will not find me doing either thing: both these lieutenants died in combat; von Richtofen made sure of the kill, as did Rhys Davies.

The thing has nothing to do with the study of aviation in the Great War. The business of aviation in the Great War was giving eyes to the staffs and gunners. The determining factors were were the skills of engineer designers of airframes and motors, the facilities of production, the skilled carrying through of the routines of operating cameras to produce panoramic maps, of counting locomotives and rolling stock on railways, of timing the flight of shells and working a Morse key, of reading ground-cloth signals and employing flare codes and air horns. The bold young men in their fighting machines, and their individual fates, are ornamentation, chrome polished on a motor rather than its push-rods and cams and crankshaft, and of no more or less signifigance than the individual fates of anyone else who ended up caught in a shell-burst or buried in a dug-out or dropped on the wire before a trench.