Australian troops present arms for the funeral of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.

The Royal Flying Corps official became its own branch, the Royal Air Force, in 1918. It is the oldest independent air service in the world.

April 20, 1918 – Red Baron Scores his 80th Victory

PIctured – Richthofen stands in front of his red Fokker triplane. His 80 victories stand as the highest tally of the war, making him World War One’s “Ace of Aces.”

Manfred von Richthofen entered the cavalry at an early age, like a good Prussian junker. But when the trench war began, the young nobleman found his horse regiment dismounted and used as runners and telephone-cable layers. Bored, he transferred to the Imperial Air Service in 1915.

Originally an observer in a two-seated plane, Richthofen was chosen by German ace Oswald Boelcke to join a new fighter squadron forming for the Western Front called Jasta 2. Along with his brother Lothar, Richthofen began amassing an impressive tally of victories. Boelcke died in the fall of 1916, but soon Richthofen would make his mark as an even more impressive pilot. In January 1917 he became commander of Jasta 2, which British flyers began to call Richthofen’s Flying Circus on account of the bright colors of its planes, and how it seemed always to be moving from place to place.

Richthofen painted his own Albatross D.III fighter bright red. Allied pilots knew him as the “Red Baron,” “the Red Knight,” or the “Diable Rouge.” By April 1917 Jasta 2 had become a feared name and Richthofen had over 50 kills, making him Germany’s top flyer. Unlike his brother Lothar, who achieved 40 victories with risky, aggressive tactics, Manfred fought with a set of conservative principles devised by Boelcke. He was a calculating tacticitian who relied on suprrise and his wingmen, preferring to swoop down on unsuspecting enemies from above. A Prussian nobleman to the core, he had silver trophies made after each of his kills (when Germany ran out of silver, he preferred to stop rather than accept trophies of a base metal). He also collected wreckage from downed enemy pilots, with which he morbidly decorated his room like a hunting lodge.

On April 20, 1918, Richthofen achieved his 79th and 80th kills. Flying with six wingmen in Fokker Triplanes over the Somme, he downed two Sopwith Camels from the RAF’s 3 Squadron. 80 kills was a number no other flyer in the First World War surpassed, making the Red Baron the war’s ace of aces. 

The Coming Army: A Punch cartoon mocks the British government’s new conscription rules. Desperate for manpower Britain has decided that all men up to 56 years of age must serve, and extended conscription to Ireland.