The Many Deaths of the Red Baron: The Richthofen Controversy 1918-2000

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

Ever since the renowned air ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen was shot
down over France on 21 April, 1918, aviation buffs have fiercely debated
who actually shot him down. For over 80 years, there have been countless
books, magazine articles, documentaries, and symposiums about the “Red
Baron. Now at last, historian Frank McGuire examines the various
conflicting accounts of von Richthofen’s death with a sharp
investigative eye. Exuding a healthy skepticism, he unerringly spots
contradictory statements and dates and distinguishes folklore from fact.
To deduce the direction of the fatal bullet, he makes perceptive use of
the original medical reports of von Richthofen’s single gunshot wound.

Capt. Frank McGuire is well qualified to write this treatise. He was a
staff writer with the Army Historical Section in Ottawa, having served
as a frontline rifleman in Italy during World War II and historical
officer of the Canadian Infantry Brigade in Korea. At the end of The
Many Deaths of the Red Baron, he does not pronounce a final verdict; he
leaves it to readers to consider all the evidence and draw their own
conclusions.