Any kind of flying was madly precarious 100 years ago, let alone flying in combat. In all the various nations’ fledgling air forces, ‘only’ 50,000 or so aircrew died during World War I, a tiny fraction of the nine million lives lost in the fighting overall. Nonetheless, airmen shared with the infantry a 70 per cent chance of injury or death. The most famous of them was German. And when Manfred von Richthofen (second right) — known as the Red Baron for his provocatively daring habit of having his aircraft painted red — was finally shot down in April 1918 with a record 80 ‘kills’ to his name, it wasn’t just his own people who mourned.

Original Article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-3101317/They-splattered-mid-air-blood-enemy-life-expectancy-just-3-weeks-adoring-public-WWI-flying-aces-rock-stars-skies.html
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