The photos included in this piece are beautiful and full of such stories. Unfortunately there is little text that accompanies the photos so you don't really learn more about the Red Baron.

Manfred von Richthofen continues to fascinate aviation buffs more than a century after his death. Clearly an outstanding fighter pilot in the first war to feature aircraft. But, flying a series of aircraft painted a distinctive red color is part of the allure. Equally, his transition from the cavalry, a military arm largely extinguished by modern war, to the air force, a distinctly modern arm, is also part of the story.

Unfortunately, a photographic album sates none of our desires to know either more about von Richthofen or his aircraft. Treadwell clearly benefits from improvements in photo handling technology and is able to create clear shots of von Richthofen culled from group photos. But, many of these photos are repetitive and add little to the story. Moreover, the captions and associated text are weak and offer little explanation for the significance of the photo. Still, the images are presented in a quality better than those in, say, Nowarra and Brown's "Von Richthofen and the Flying Circus".

For the aircraft buff, there are few clear images of the aircraft unlike Greg VanWyngarden's "Richthofen's Circus" for Osprey.

The one long block of text that Treadwell provides concerns von Richthofen's death, but he has little to add here.

The aviation buff might well add this volume to the growing shelf of books about von Richthofen, but other works will take pride of place.

My thanks to Netgalley for a review copy of this book.

This was an engaging and brief look at the prowess of the Red Baron. Filled with sepia pictures of him enjoying the company of his dog, family, friends, and fellow pilots. A must read for any Red Baron fan. The main sections cover a bit about his flight training and how he managed to qualify as a pilot, a chronological look at his last dogfight, and an analysis of the post mortem reports and who may have made the kill.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book to read and review. The opinions expressed here are my own honest opinions written voluntarily.

I really enjoyed this book, I loved the different pictures that were chosen to tell the life of The Red Baron, they really helped bring the story to life.

I have read a fair few nooks on the Great War and knew of The Red Baron before I picked up the book but after reading the blurb it was a book that I knew I wanted to read and I had read it from cover to cover within days of it landing on my Kindle- I thought that it was great!

The story is easy to follow and I liked the lay out. I liked the different photos used to show him with his family, his flight squads and also his dog when he was more at ease.

He was quite clearly a menace to the British when he was in the sky but the book tells more than just his flight career and number of “kills”, which achieves a staggering 80 in the end (assuming that they were all genuine that is!).

The book tells you about the injury he received and despite it being serious he was able to carry on flying but it does read as though it changed his outlook and personality and he stopped following the rules that he gave to his own pilots… which ultimately caused him to lose his life.

It was a really addictive and easy read for me, I loved the photos chosen and it is one that I will be very highly recommending as it shows there was more to The Red Baron.

A great look into a well known figure from WW1. The author brought out facts about the man I had not heard before. A great read.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A convoluted arrangement of crisscross treaties malevolently kicked in when Gavril Princip, a Bosnian Serb member of Young Bosnia – in seeking an end to Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina – assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the Archduke’s wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Thus, began the first, and what then was the greatest bloodbath in the history of the 20th Century – World War I. There were incredibly brave protagonists who immortalized themselves by virtue of their unbelievable valour and gallantry, none more than the ace fighter pilot, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen. Popularly known as “The Red Baron”, for he painted parts of his fighter plane red, Richthofen, terrorized the Allied Forces with his heroic feats in the air. When his much feared Fokker Dr.1 Triplane was brought down, on the 21st of April 1918 – while giving chase to a Sopwith Camel piloted by a green eared Canadian pilot, Arthur Roy Brown – and the Red Baron himself fatally wounded, he had notched up a mind boggling eighty kills. He was all of twenty five years old.

In “Red Baron”, author Terry Treadwell, regales his readers with a very moving and nostalgic pictorial tribute to this incredible man, who even today is not just talked about in awestruck wonder but also literally revered and worshipped by every aspiring young airman thirsting to make a mark and carve out a nice for himself or herself. While neither a panegyric nor a biography that extolls the prowess of Richthofen, this small yet engaging compilation captures the various shades of the ace pilot in the form of sepia tinted lens. While the pictures are punctuated by a brief history of the illustrious life of the German, there are detailed appendices depicting his scalps in chronological order and also the various honours and awards that were bestowed on him.

Hence, there are pictures of a vibrant and confident Richthofen posing elegantly near his various flying machines, engulfed in spontaneous joy with his Great Dane Moritz and the ace pilot showing off some of his kills. The book also contains snippets that are extraordinary in their revelation. The Red Baron underwent a near death experience when, on one of his brave forays, Richthofen suffered a serious head injury wound on 6 July 1917, near Werwick, Belgium. A bullet hit the back of his head and gouged a small hole. He was pitted against a formation of F.E.d two seater fighters of No.20 Squadron RFC. The impact triggered disorientation and even temporary partial blindness. It was only a miracle that enabled the Red Baron to land his aircraft in a field. Multiple surgeries had to be performed for the splinters to be extricated from the region of impact.

A great part of the book is dedicated to examining in critical detail the exact cause of the death of the War’s greatest combat fighter. This is a matter of rousing debate and intense deliberations even to this day. Richthofen perished as a result of a violent chest wound, courtesy a solitary bullet, entering his visage from the right armpit and exiting next to the left nipple. Even though, theories speculate that the bullet might have been fired by Brown, in whose pursuit Richthofen was intensely involved, Brown’s attack was from behind and above, and from Richthofen’ s left.

The most credible theory however is the one that attributes the kill to gunner Sergeant Cedric Popkin. Popkin, an anti-aircraft machine gunner with the Australian 24th Machine Gun Company, was using a Vickers gun. On two occasions he let loose at Richthofen’ s flying machine. The first burst was released as the Red Baron came hurtling straight at his position, and subsequently from the left of the aircraft.

Richthofen was such a prize scalp that everyone wanted to possess a share of the glory pie. Conjectures and surmises on that one eventful bullet have at their centre, multiple protagonists. While a documentary on Discovery Channel put forward the scheme that Gunner W. J. “Snowy” Evans, a Lewis machine gunner with the 53rd Battery, 14th Field Artillery Brigade, Royal Australian Artillery, a few other theorists credit Gunner Robert Buie, from the same Battery as Evans for the shot. The pedestal upon which the young German pilot was placed by his opponents could be gauged when following his death, a lone British aircraft dropped canisters over German territory containing the message, “Rittmeister von Richthofen was fatally wounded in aerial combat and was buried with full military honours.”

The book also contains rare pictures of Richthofen with his mentor and ace German fighter pilot Oswald Boelcke, who not only fueled The Baron’s ambitions but also took him under his tutelage. Very soon, the protégé, broke the record of his master. Unfortunately for Richthofen, Boelcke died during the course of a combat causing devastation to the morale of the young gun.

(Red Baron: A Photographic of The First World War’s Greatest Ace, Manfred Von Richthofen – Terry C. Treadwell will be released by Pen & Sword Books Limited on the 31st of March 2021)

256 pages

4 stars

Deaths in the German Army Air Service numbered some seven thousand during WWI. Total deaths were in the millions.

Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen is the Red Baron. More has been written about him than any other German First World War participant. He was just twenty-five when he succeeded in downing at least eighty combatants in just twenty months.

This book has many fascinating photographs of von Richthofen and his colleagues.

I freely admit that I have been a Red Baron “junkie” for many years ever since I read about him as a child. I was so very excited to see that a book – with photos! - was written about him!

The book gives a brief history of von Richthofen's training and flying career. It has post mortem results (such as they were), and has other end notes. It also lists the eighty confirmed “kills” he is said to have accrued.

This is a plain telling of von Richthofen's life. There is nothing fancy, or fanciful, about the book. I would call it very straightforward. The pictures are great.

I want to thank NetGalley and Pen & Sword/Air World for forwarding to me a copy of this interesting little tome for me to read, enjoy and review. The opinions here are my own.