Special Guest Blogger: Manfred von Richthofen

I was the first world war's ace of aces, and if you only know one thing about World War I (that's the non-Hitler one), it's probably something to do with Germany's most notorious fighter pilot, with 80 confirmed kills to his name and that name is the Red Baron.
We usually think of fighter pilots as kick ass gladiators of the sky, but in WW1 airplanes themselves were new and experimental and we sat in rickety frames of plywood wrapped in flammable fabric, next to large tanks of highly combustible fuel. Then we took to the skies and tried to kill each other.
I may have been an actual Baron of a prominent Prussian aristocratic family but i started out like a lot of Luftstreitkräfte pilots, young, brave and parachute-less which could be a problem when you're flying a machine held together by string and best wishes but i quickly became Germany's leading ace and was awarded command of my own elite squadron with the best of the best pilots, Jagdgeschwader 1, which eventually became known as the Flying Circus because of the wild colors we painted our Fokker machines and in the camouflaged world of WW1 grey, my decision to paint my plane entirely red (and earn the nickname the Red Baron), was a bold declaration of confidence.
One of my favorite method of attack was to play air chicken with my opponent. Air chicken is just like regular chicken, the difference being that instead of two people driving at each other in cars, it was two planes heading toward each other at a combined speed of nearly 300 mph while pouring machine gun fire into each other's aircraft. The loser generally died in a cascading hellish fireball.
I became such a pain in the ass for the British that they hatched a cunning plan to dispose of me, coordinating a massive aerial raid on my home and it shows much of a badass you have to be when the Brits consider you scary but as usual they missed the target but i wasn't the only von Richthofen shooting down British planes, my younger brother was probably better than me but he tended to crash land quite a bit so due to spending much time in hospital, he only racked up 40 confirmed kills.
They did get me later though, i sustained a serious head wound during combat over Belgium and suffered temporary partial blindness which never improved after several operations and after convalescence i returned to active service months later, refusing to accept a ground job and despite my continuing sight problems, off i went that day looking for a few quick kills and back sucking sausages in Berlin by teatime.
I would like to say my end came after in a meeting with a gentleman fliers, two men of honour jousting together in the cloud-strewn glory of the skies, but it came after i misjudged the height above the banks of the Somme and a Canadian bullet fired up from the ground hit me in the chest and if that hadn't killed me then the mess i made of the landing would have done and by mess, i mean plowing into the ground at 125 mph. Yep that certainly would have done it.