A casualty of war, shot down by The Red Baron

Stephen Liddell

Almost everyone has a family member who died in a 20th Century war, most of us unfortunately have several whether we know their names or not. I know of several, mostly from WW1. During a trip to my parents house last week we unearthed an old newspaper report of a relation who was killed in action having been shot down by the Red Baron.

Air warfare was in it’s infancy in WW1 with planes at first often seen as an expensive folly and not as reliable as air-ships and in WW1 some English cities were bombed by both planes and airships although nothing like in the scale of WW2.

Initially planes were used for reconnaissance until someone had the bright idea of starting to drop heavy steel darts and shrapnel on ground troops and to fire at passing enemy pilots with hand pistols. Obviously things developed quickly and soon the…

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