Richthofen wounded

On 6 July 1917, over Flanders, near Wervik on the river Lys, Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen, the most successful fighter pilot of the war, was seriously wounded. A rifle-calibre bullet grazed his head and blinded him for a moment. Richthofen regained control of his aircraft a few dozen metres above the ground and managed to land on the German side of the front. At the time he had 57 victories.

For a few weeks he had been commanding a new unit. After the Bloody April over Arras and a May leave in Germany, in June he took command of Jagdgeschwader 1, the first German fighter wing, made up of four squadrons (Jastas 4, 6, 10 and 11), with its headquarters near Kortrijk. The Germans had brought it to Flanders, where after the battle of Messines the British were preparing a great offensive from Ypres, and in the air above the future battlefield fierce fighting was already under way.

According to the British official history of the air war, The War in the Air, on 6 July six two-seat F.E.2d aircraft of No. 20 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, flying an offensive patrol, were attacked by Richthofen at the head of his formation and then by further groups of German fighters, some forty machines in all. Four naval Sopwith Triplanes came to the aid of the British. The crew of one of the F.E.2ds, Captain Donald Cunnell and Second Lieutenant Albert Woodbridge, fired on an all-red Albatros, which went into a spin. Woodbridge did not claim it, because he did not see the aircraft crash. The pilot was Richthofen. As he later described it, “something struck him in the head” all of a sudden. For a moment he was paralysed and could see nothing, and his Albatros fell from a height of about 4,000 metres. His sight returned at about 800 metres; he levelled out just above the ground, landed in a field and collapsed beside the aircraft. Some researchers allow that he may have been hit by a stray bullet from another aircraft, even a German one, but the British official history and most works attribute the wound to Woodbridge’s fire.

The wounded man was taken to Field Hospital No. 76 in Kortrijk. The bullet had not penetrated the skull, but it left a long wound in which the bone was exposed. The doctors diagnosed a severe concussion and removed bone splinters. They advised him not to fly until the wound had healed. Richthofen, however, discharged himself from hospital after less than three weeks, on 25 July, and returned to his wing with his head bandaged. He was back in combat in mid-August. Captain Cunnell was killed on 12 July, six days after the fight with Richthofen, hit over Wervik by German anti-aircraft fire.

The wound never fully healed. Richthofen complained of headaches and nausea after flights, and his mother and acquaintances noticed that he had become taciturn and depressed. In the autumn he was given a long period of sick leave. Some researchers believe that the effects of this wound may have influenced the decisions he took in the air in the last months of his life.