It is the most recognized name in the history of aerial warfare, if not for his 80 victories in World War I, (the most by any airman in that struggle), then certainly for his duels with Snoopy.  But that was about World War I and this is about World War II.  That was the Red Baron - Manfred von Richthofen. This is Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen!
    Before his death in April 1918, Manfred von Richthofen had accumulated more aerial victories than any flier would during the Great War. At the time of his death, he was the commander of a squadron that was known as the Flying Circus, because of their brightly painted planes. After the Red Baron’s death, his brother, Lothar, assumed command.  Lothar was also a great ace. He notched 44 victories, before he was sidelined by injuries, in August of 1918.
    Just before the death of the Red Baron, his 21-year-old cousin, Wolfram, joined the famed Flying Circus. Before war’s end, he had achieved eight victories, enough to earn him the title of “Ace.” He had earned the “Iron Cross” while serving with the infantry in the first month of the war.
    Although Baron Wolfram von Richthofen is not as well known as his illustrious cousin, the Red Baron, his impact on the development of air power was far greater.  He was “...the Luftwaffe’s foremost expert on close support tactics.”    These were the tactics - the close support by the Luftwaffe of German Panzers and infantry - that came to be known as “Blitzkrieg.” Wolfram von Richthofen was an able administrator, and an excellent and courageous leader. As the British said, in 1943, “...with his good name and appearance, brutal energy and great personal courage, he is the German ideal of an Air Force General.”  He has been recognized as the best tactical air commander of World War II. If one looks closely, von Richthofen and his units can be found at the site of almost every Wehrmacht success: Poland, France, the Balkans, Crete, Russia, Crimea, and the Caucasus.
    After the Great War, he earned a doctorate in aeronautical engineering. In November 1923, von Richthofen rejoined the military. From April 1929 to October 1932 he served as air attaché in the German embassy in Rome. While in Italy, he became fluent in Italian. In October 1933 he joined the Reich Air Ministry, which became the Luftwaffe two years later. There, he was very involved in research and development. In May 1935, Major von Richthofen proposed building a rocket-powered interceptor.
    In 1936, Lt. Colonel von Richthofen went to Spain as chief-of-staff of the Kondor Legion.  The Kondor Legion was Germany’s contribution (primarily air force) to Francisco Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. While in Spain, he learned the language, which endeared him to the Spanish troops. While serving as chief-of-staff, he planned, and directed, the infamous raid on the Basque town of Guernica, immortalized in a painting of the same name, by Pablo Picasso. Promoted to Major General, Baron von Richthofen became commander of the Kondor Legion in November 1938.  While in Spain, he was able to experiment and refine the tactics of close air support with infantry and armor.
    Following the lessons learned in the Spanish Civil War, the Luftwaffe consolidated more than half of its Stuka dive bombers into a Nakkampfdivision (“close battle division”), under the command of General von Richthofen.
    By the time Germany went to war with Poland, von Richthofen was a Lt. General commanding Fliegerkorps VIII.  Just prior to the invasion, he had established his headquarters at Schönwald Castle in Silesia, six miles from the Polish border.  The task of his planes was to support the Tenth Army under the command of General Walther von Reichnau. But for von Richthofen, his headquarters were too far from the front and from von Reichnau.  So he asked the Tenth Army’s commander if he could share his headquarters. General von Reichnau gladly agreed.
    To improve coordination between the services, von Richthofen sent Luftwaffe liaison officers equipped with either signal vans or portable radio sets, into the front line. By 11:00 a.m. on the first day of the invasion, von Richthofen was conducting his own aerial reconnaissances in an unarmed Fieseler Storch, almost getting shot down in the process.
    General von Reichnau acknowledged that von Richthofen’s forces had, “...led to the decision on the battlefield.”  After the Poles refused German demands to surrender Warsaw, von Richthofen was given the task of bombing the capital into submission. The next day it surrendered.
    When the fighting shifted to France, in the spring of 1940, Fliegerkorps VIII was assigned to support Panzergruppe Kliest in its advance through the “impassable” Ardennes Forest, crossing of the Muese River, and subsequent race for the English Channel, which split the Allied Armies. Von Richthofen’s planes performed superbly.
    When the Army was ordered to stop at Dunkirk, to allow the Luftwaffe to finish the British Expeditionary Force, von Richthofen called the Luftwaffe chief of general staff and said, “Unless the Panzers can get moving again at once, the English will give us the slip!  No one can seriously believe that we alone can stop them from the air.”  Of course, he was overruled and told that Luftwaffe Chief Field Marshal Hermann W. Göring thought that the Luftwaffe could, indeed, “...stop them from the air.”
    Fliegerkorps VIII didn’t fare so well during the Battle of Britain. Its slower Stukas were decimated by the quicker and more agile British Hurricanes and Spitfires.  Following that debacle, and a period of refitting, it participated in the lightning conquest of the Kingdoms of Greece and Yugoslavia.
    The Wehrmacht’s airborne invasion of Crete began on May 20, 1941. It quickly became a test of German air power versus British naval power. By the end of the month, von Richthofen’s planes had sunk the British light cruiser Gloucester and destroyers Fiji, Kelly, Hereward and Rashmir while damaging the battleship Warspite and cruisers Ajax and Orion. The work of Fliegerkorps VIII drove the Royal Navy from the seas surrounding the island of Crete, and allowed a small, but elite, group of German paratroopers under the command of General Kurt Student, to take the island from a numerically superior Allied force. For this, Baron von Richthofen was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross.
    Of course, the next assignment for General von Richthofen and Fliegerkorps VIII was Operation Barbarossa.  Fliegerkorps VIII was assigned to support Army Group Center under the command of Field Marshal von Bock. Its initial assignment was the destruction of the Red Air Force (VVS). By the end of the first day, this had been accomplished. Most of the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground. By the second day, Fliegerkorps VIII switched to supporting the Army. At the end of July, it was switched to Army Group North, and in September, participated in the assault on Leningrad.
    During the Soviet Winter Offensive, Fliegerkorps VIII was transferred back to Army Group Center and provided outstanding support of the Army during that crisis. On February 1, 1942, von Richthofen was promoted to Generaloberst or Colonel-General.
    In the spring of 1942, Fliegerkorps VIII was transferred to the Crimea and was ordered to support the 11th Army’s assault on Sevastopol. This teamed two of the Wehrmacht’s most talented commanders, Erich von Manstein and Wolfram von Richthofen. Their coordination and cooperation were excellent and showed in the results. Von Manstein said, later, that, “Baron von Richthofen was certainly the most outstanding air force leader we had in World War II.  He made great demands on his units, but always went up himself to oversee important attacks. Moreover, one was always meeting him at the front, where he would visit even the most advanced units to get a clear picture of the possibilities of providing air support for army operations. Our cooperation, both at Eleventh Army and later at Army Groups South and Don was always excellent.”
    Before the Wehrmacht could launch its assault on Sevastopol, it had to eliminate the Soviet presence on the Kerch Peninsula.  Its effort was successful in the face of prepared defensive positions manned by a numerically superior enemy.  As General von Manstein said, “Fliegerkorps VIII contributed decisively to this successful outcome.”
    By 5:45 a.m., on June 2, 1942, von Richthofen was in the air over Sevastopol.  Fifteen minutes later, 1,300 German guns opened the final battle for the city. By the time the city fell, a month later, his planes had flown 23,751 sorties and dropped 20,258 tons of bombs. After its capture, Baron von Richthofen was given command of Luftflotte 4. He was also awarded the Romanian Order of Michael, by Romania’s Conducator, Marshal Ion Antonescue.
    Luftflotte 4 was tasked with supporting Operation Blau (Blue) as the Wehrmacht’s summer offensive was called.  Its objectives were the capture of Voronezh, on the Don River, Rostov-on-Don, Stalingrad on the Volga River, and the oilfields in the Caucasus region. The Baron established his headquarters at Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, on July 20.  He directed Fliegerkorps VIII to assist in the assault on Stalingrad, while Fliegerkorps IV assisted in the invasion of the Caucasus.
    By August 11, 1942, with the capture of Maikop and Krasnador in the Caucasus, he began concentrating his forces to Stalingrad. When the Red Army launched its counteroffensive on November 19, von Richthofen withdrew all of his support for the forces in the Caucasus, and concentrated on the Soviet breakthrough on either side of Stalingrad. On November 23, the Soviet pincers snapped shut near the town of Sovetskii, twenty kilometers southeast of Kalach. Inside the trap were the Sixth Army, portions of the Fourth Panzer Army, two Rumanian divisions, a Croat brigade, and various specialist, auxiliary signals units.  A Luftwaffe Flak Division, a fighter wing and 3 Reconnaissance Groups were also caught in the pocket.
    When the decision to supply the trapped Axis forces was being made, von Richthofen told everyone, including Sixth Army’s commander Frederick Paulus and the Luftwaffe’s commander Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, that it could not, “...be accomplished, because the necessary transport resources are not available,” and that it was, “Impossible even to imagine such a thing!”  As everyone now knows, von Richthofen was correct, but his views were ignored.  Consequently, on November 26, he reorganized Luftflotte 4 and directed that its primary focus was no longer on combat operations in support of ground forces, but rather supply operations and the protection of the supply planes and bases.
    Of course, as von Richthofen had predicted, the Luftwaffe did not have the ability to mount the size operation necessary to supply the encircled troops. On February 1, 1943, the tattered and starving remnants surrendered to the Red Army.  Two weeks later, von Richthofen was made the Wehrmacht’s youngest ever German Field Marshal, at age 47.  Luftflotte 4 was crucial to Field Marshal von Manstein’s successful spring counteroffensive, which captured Kharkov for the third time. The British said that, “The main factor behind von Richthofen’s success was extreme flexibility, coordination and concentration....”
    After that campaign, Field Marshal von Richthofen was given command of all Luftwaffe units in the Mediterranean theater.  He was now under the command of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, with whom he had never gotten along. By now, the Allies had obtained air superiority.  Consequently, von Richthofen did not enjoy the same success as in earlier years. However, he did achieve two triumphs.
    The first was at Salerno, when, with the use of newly developed guided bombs, the Luftwaffe, in a week of night raids, badly damaged the cruisers USS Savannah and HMS Uganda and battleship HMS Warspite. However, the new bombs were difficult to use and the Field Marshal was unable to replicate the Salerno success. The raid on the Italian port of Bari was von Richthofen’s most spectacular success of the Italian campaign. Scrapping together almost every bomber in the Italian Theater, the Luftwaffe, in a raid meticulously planned by the Baron, hit the harbor on the night of December 2, 1943. The port was packed with Allied shipping. Sixteen Allied merchant ships were destroyed and eight others damaged. The port facilities were inoperable for three weeks. Naval historian Samuel Morison described the raid as, “...the most destructive air attack since Pearl Harbor.”
    After serving about a year in the position, he took sick leave in October 1944, after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Two operations were unsuccessful. He died, in a U.S. P.O.W. camp, on July 12, 1945. He was 50.
    The Baron had kept a very detailed diary, which is widely used as a primary source by WWII scholars.

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.