The Red Battle Flyer (Illustrated)

Book Synopsis: •The best-selling true story of the Red Baron, by the man himself, Manfred von Richthofen, the First World War’s undisputed ‘Top Gun’.•Newly illustrated with 22 contemporary colour and black and white images.•Includes many of the Red Baron’s 80 combat reports, contemporary interviews with a selection of his surviving victims and an extra chapter on the death in combat of von Richthofen.•Has sold over 3 million copies.

THE RED BATTLE FLYER is the memoir of the undisputed top gun of World War 1’s aerial war, Captain Manfred von Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron,’ who shot down 80 Allied aircraft. Originally published in German in late 1917 as DER ROTE KAMPFFLIEGER (THE RED BATTLE FLYER), it was a runaway bestseller. The English language edition followed in 1918 without any official deal with the German publishers as it was argued that Richthofen accounts of combat against the Allied air force aircraft provided valuable intelligence to use against the enemy. Originally a cavalryman, Manfred transferred to the Imperial German Army Air Service in May 1915, and quickly distinguished himself as a fighter pilot. During 1917 he became leader of Jagdgeschwader 1, better known as the ‘Flying Circus’ because of the bright colours of its aircraft and because the squadron moved from place to place as a self-contained unit, in the manner of a traveling circus, so that it appeared wherever the fighting was thickest. It would be operating at Verdun one week. The next week it would be north of Arras. A few days later it would be down on the Somme. Richthofen was a brilliant tactician although his modus operandi was as simple as it was deadly. Typically, he would dive from above to attack with the advantage of the sun behind him (the victim would not see him coming blinded by the glare), with other pilots of his flying circus covering his rear and flanks. By 1918, he was regarded as a national hero in Germany and held the country’s highest honour, the ‘Blue Max’. Richthofen was well-known in the Allied countries and a respected advisory of military aviators.

THE AUTHOR
Manfred von Richthofen was born in 1892 in Kleinburg near Breslau, Lower Silesia to a prominent Prussian aristocratic family. He wrote his life story in six weeks whilst convalescing after sustaining an injury in aerial combat in July 1917. Richthofen had been ordered to write the memoir by the German Supreme Army Command because of its huge impact on morale on the home front. He returned to active duty in October but was shot down and killed on 21 April 1918 aged just 25.

THE EDITOR
Jonathan Reeve has been a history book publisher for twenty years and has been responsible for publishing several memoirs by fighter pilots including SCRAMBLE! by Tom Neil ('Enthralling' THE DAILY MAIL), SPITFIRE PILOT by Roger Hall ('No-one has written more vividly about air combat' THE SUNDAY TIMES) and SPITFIRE ACE by Gordon Olive ('Ever wonder what it was like to fly a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain? No account captures it quite so nerve shreddingly as this new book by a hero who flew 193 sorties' THE DAILY MAIL). He is also the editor of BATTLE OF BRITAIN VOICES ('A valuable contribution' BBC WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE MAGAZINE).