Another "Red Baron" Article

[alien01]

Here's a link to another article about the "Red Baron". I haven't read it closely, but it looks like rubbish at first glance.
www.newscientist.com/article/dn9637-famous-flying-ace-no-hotshot-after-all.html

[Stephen]

The biggest fault in the article is that it presents common knowledge as something new.

Certainly the Germans had technical superiority in early '17 when MvR went on his initial string of successes. Obviously the key to aerial combat was surprising an enemy with a better airplane with better performance and refusing him the opportunity to shoot back... government wars are, after all, nothing more than organized murder. The idea is to slaughter the other guy without giving him a chance. That's why there was indeed a "Hun in the sun."

Mvr was certainly lucky. A bullet in the head should have killed him in July of '17. Without a better airplane and a favorable wind, Lanoe Hawker would have killed him several months before that.

The authors of this article seem to think that MvR wasn't really skilled... he just found weaker opponents, took them by surprise and used a better airplane than they did. Well, that IS skill in aerial combat. That's the whole point! Skillful pilots used better airplanes against weaker airplanes and took them by surprise. Duh.