Death of Oswald Boelcke

On the afternoon of 28 October 1916, over the front on the Somme, Captain Oswald Boelcke was killed. He was the commander of the fighter squadron Jagdstaffel 2 and at the time the most successful fighter pilot in the world. He was not shot down by the enemy. In the heat of battle his Albatros collided with the aircraft of one of his own pilots. Boelcke was 25 years old and had 40 confirmed victories, half of which he had scored in less than two months over the Somme.

For him it was another day of constant flying. His squadron, formed at the end of August to his own plan, had within a few weeks of its first fight taken away the British freedom of the air over the Somme, and Boelcke himself was flying several times a day. In the afternoon he led six pilots, among them Erwin Böhme and Manfred von Richthofen, against two British single-seat Airco DH.2 fighters of No. 24 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, flown by Lieutenant Arthur Knight and Second Lieutenant Alfred McKay and patrolling the front near Pozières. Soon several other German machines joined the fight.

Boelcke and Böhme pursued Knight, and Richthofen McKay. At one moment McKay, fleeing from Richthofen, cut across between Knight and his pursuers. Boelcke and Böhme pulled up their machines and, screened by their own wings, did not see each other. The undercarriage of Böhme’s aircraft grazed the upper wing of Boelcke’s Albatros. “The machines merely touched one another,” Richthofen wrote later, “but at such a speed the slightest contact has the effect of a violent concussion.” Boelcke drew away from his opponent and descended in wide curves, as if in control of the machine, but in the clouds the damaged wing broke up. The aircraft fell near a German artillery battery in the area of Bapaume. The impact was not very violent, but Boelcke was wearing neither a helmet nor a fastened belt and was killed on the spot. Böhme managed to land. An inquiry cleared him of blame, but for a long time he could not come to terms with what had happened. Both British pilots, according to the British official history, returned safely to their aerodrome after a quarter of an hour of fighting.

For Germany the loss was comparable only to the death of Immelmann four months earlier. Boelcke was a national hero, but above all he was the creator of German fighter aviation: he wrote down the first rules of air combat, known as the “Dicta Boelcke”, and brought about the formation of separate fighter squadrons. On 31 October a memorial service was held in Cambrai Cathedral, and on 2 November he was buried in Dessau, where he had grown up. His opponents showed him respect too. A British aircraft dropped over the German lines a wreath inscribed “To the memory of Captain Boelcke, our brave and chivalrous opponent”.

The British official history of the air war, The War in the Air, did him justice, if without exaggeration: it noted that he flew an aircraft better than anything he fought against, and over his own troops, but that he was a determined, resourceful and gallant foe, and that his spirit lived on in the German air service. And so it did. In December Jagdstaffel 2 was named after Boelcke, and his pupils, led by Richthofen, fought by his rules for the next two years.