Citation Needed - The Red Baron

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (German: [ˈmanfreːt fɔn ˈʁɪçthoːfn̩]; 2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), known in English as Baron von Richthofen or the Red Baron, was a fighter pilot with the German Air Force during World War I. He is considered the ace-of-aces of the war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

But if Netflix adds commercials, isn't that just TV? Well, it's TV that you get to decide when it starts. But I do get to decide when TV starts. That's a remote control. You know what? Never mind Tom. Hey guys, what is up? Not much. Usually you're waiting inside with some kind of comedy shenanigans related to the

episode comedy shenanigans related to the episode. That's right. I am usually doing that. And that is what I was planning this week. But it turns out that when you Google how to run a plane into a building. Oh, yes, no good. Right. So long story short, the FBI is here, but

like, don't worry. I explained to them that you guys are in charge. So they just want a quick convo and we're good to go. What? Really? Not you, Tom. I was talking to Noah and Cecil. Nice. Did they mention what they want to talk to us about. Yeah, are we going to enjoy this conversation? I mean, do you like having your ball shocked? I mean, a little, I think, you know, a little bit of money, quite a bit of money for people to do that, yes, before. Oh, well, then you're going to love it. Dibs, dibs.

Mother, fucking, now the clamps are going to be all warm, sucks. Sure, warm clamps is stupid. But, mother fucking, now the clamps are gonna be all warm, sucks, sure. Heat warm clamps is stupid. Yeah, I could be in charge of the show. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, a podcast where we choose a subject. We're a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath, call sign, Dove Handles as a pilot. It's So good.

Yeah, it's accurate. I don't like war and I have prominent that going and I'm joined by my trusty wingman. First up, we have Tom, call sign bread baron and Eli call sign tango nectar. Bread baron. A ride joking deed. He's so big hooch. And we also have Noah, of course, Carl Sine, need for weed and Cecil, Carl Sine, something out Italian.

Yes. And look, it's not my full aim. A high is an ambiguous slogan. Okay. I can't fly and talk with my hands at the same time. Yeah, I got it. I don't really do anything now, right? It's just all like the computer. I don't think they do stuff. I don't think they do stuff. So Tom, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event?

Are we going to be talking about today? Today we are going to be talking about World War One dogfighting. All right. So what is that? But don't tell us right away. Start with like a pretty long preamble. Yeah. Like a couple paragraph as a catch an on. It's like my thing. All right. All right. Fine. All right. Like the other day I took my son to the movies and I discovered much to my poor and amusement. We will get that we have 30 minutes to cover. This is the fluff at the mid this. Look, I want to know what double spacing of this paragraph. Okay. You said you went to see a children's movie. Please tell us about it. Tell us what horrified you about your son. Go on. Well, listen, I learned, I learned a top gun too is coming soon to homo, rhotic volleyball

of course. Yeah, really excited about that. And who is silly is that movie will certainly be it actually is less silly now than I would have thought it would be just a few months ago. You see, until a few months ago, conventional military wisdom held at the era of the aerial dogfight. That's a fighter jet to fighter jet twist and turn shoot them up. It's pretty much over. Like modern fighter jets.

It has been long argued are just too fast, too well armed and too sophisticated to require the kind of Maverick level roller coaster buffoonery depicted in top gun in order for them to complete their missions. But the murderous illegal barbaric invasion of Ukraine by the incompetent armed forces controlled by the morally bankrupt and inept leadership of Vladimir Putin has quite startlingly proven otherwise because against all odds, the Ukrainian Air Force has actually engaged in active aerial dog fighting with modern fighter jets. And even more incredibly, they are winning denying Russia free reign over Ukrainian airspace.

I know sometimes jokes get dated by the time the show comes out because we release a couple weeks ahead of time. I really hope this isn't one of those times. Right. Right. Oh, right. Either way, I'm hearing the top gun anthem, but like with a Tetris feel, you know, I'm saying. And all of that got me to thinking about the original era of aerial dog fighting. This is the Snoopy versus the red barren era of dog fighting from World War One.

And as I read more about the topic, I realized that it contains so many elements of the absurd and the fascinating that there is just no way not to tell you guys about this. Guys, I just the Snoopy is a dog, air go dog fighting connection never occurred to me before this instant. And I don't think I'll ever live down that shame. We will have a dark house. I got so obvious. So this is usually the part where I would offer several pages of context before telling you much of the story, but you will either be delighted or thrilled to learn that the

atrascans had no hand whatsoever in this story. It's not what took. And unlike many stories, which have and his arch contributes to the Bernoulli effect of it in there. It's in there. Thank you. So I didn't like to go into all of it, but QED. Unlike many stories, which have an extensive historical context, what is perhaps most remarkable

here is that this story is exactly the opposite. The Wright Brothers first flight was in 1903. World War One followed only 11 years later, beginning in 1914. So to call this technology new is at this point a rather bold understatement. In fact, the airplanes that were used in World War One were so new and so rudimentary by modern standards that their original use had nothing to do with fighting at all. Yeah, the best they could hope for was like a three-stages-ask-smack-some-one with the wing and the back of the head when they were looking. Yeah. They can't go through of

someone like through the air if there's people holding glass between them and walking across the street. Originally, they were going to do Victorian flappy flap machine fights, but it's hard to aim and cycle at the same time. Oh, I'm sure that's hard, but that should be the new rules of engagement for all modern warfare right there. Flapy flaps only. That's how it's happening.

That or like chest or something. I don't know. Let's make a rule. So the primary use for airplanes in warfare in the 19 teens was for reconnaissance. Maybe it's not chest. It's a problem with Russia right now, but yeah, you got a good call. Combattance to gain a huge advantage if they knew an advance about their enemy's troop strength, positions of the enemy lines, placement of artillery, supply line details, et cetera, and using aircraft to get a better view. That was nothing new. Hot air balloons were, in fact, used during the Civil War as a kind of observation tower.

So it was only natural that the airplane would serve essentially the same purpose with the added benefit of not being a stupid fucking balloon, bobbing helplessly up and down, waiting for bored soldiers to shoot holes into. Yeah, doesn't it seem like the balloon idea would have got the kai Bosch during the planning phase somewhere along right? It feels like an idea jar scenario and nobody wanted to shoot it down. Nobody want to let all the air out of it. Incidentally, I just, I have to say to him, nothing sells the, and I'm not going to offer

a bunch of context claim, like seven minutes of context. That's, um, okay. I said not multiple pages. Oh, okay. No, that's fair. There are graphs. It's, all right. I think it's like better than a balloon is a pretty low bar.

And even still, the initial planes used in World War One barely crawled over that bar. You need to understand a few things about these airplanes. First, at the start of the war, reconnaissance planes did not have radios in them because radios were heavy and bulky and planes were at this point held in the air basically by luck, magic, and a pilot who always had to go, room, keep it up there. There's no way that I'm doing that all the time. If you're a pilot, you're making that up. I don't know if that is all the time.

Now, the computer can't go room. That's what they have before. I do the same thing with my penis. Yeah. Is that work? No. Not at all. So these airplanes, they were made of canvas stretched over a wooden

frame. It's not unlike a box kite with a lawn mower engine on the front of it. Add to this that even military planes, they were not initially armed. The goal of the pilot was not to engage other planes in combat, but to fly up and over enemy positions and then a hustle back land and tattle on the bad guys. Yeah. So until they had machine guns planes were just up their plane manhunt. Yeah. Now, to the pilots credit, though, I feel like those rickety fucking toothpicks and napkins constructions are only slightly more terrifying once there's guns shooting at you. The reality is that the first planes are just not up to the task of carrying the weight of any real armament. These things had the load carrying capacity of, well, like Eli at the gym. I mean, they were not impressive or fast, but they didn't cry

while listening to audiobooks on the treadmill. So what I'm saying is your comparison is an insult to plane kites. So the first planes used at the start of the war had a top speed of 50 miles an hour. Really? That's it. Though by the end of the war, top speeds had doubled. If they really pushed it, they can hit 100 miles an hour. So to's it. Though by the end of the war, top speeds had doubled. If they really pushed it, they can hit a hundred miles an hour. So to give you a point of comparison, 30 years later, World War II jets were moving at more than 500 miles an hour and modern jets, such as the F 15, they fly up more than 3000 miles an hour. World War I planes feeling all scrawny shooting winds

to roll into their wings to get more force out. And cars were going like 120 at this point or almost. So spy planes were trying to fly home at some point and they got a little too low and enemy jeeps were just like following along in third gear and like pulling them over at the end of the whole thing. That's good. We said, imagine my surprise to read that the first documented aerial dog fight occurred before then the start of World War one. In fact, the first episode of hot plane on plane combat occurred during the Mexican revolution in 1913, though neither of the pilots were Mexican. Instead, two American soldiers for hire each on opposite sides of the conflict met in the air. Each had orders to kill, except neither of them had any interest in killing the other guys. So instead, according to an account written by one of the pilots, they just flew nearby one another, took out their pistols, shot at each other while intentionally missing

until they ran out of ammo and then waved each other goodbye. All right. This was fun. Let's do it again in a couple of years on Christmas. Right. Okay. I'll see you there. Okay. I'm not saying this isn't true, but like if I had a whole guns worth of ammo to take down an airplane made of popsicle sticks and saran wraps and I failed to do so. But like, I would be telling you, oh, no, we were intentionally missing each other, man. Hell, we're just polite. It was the politeness. Well, when World War One broke out the next year, the new fangled airplane was used immediately for intelligence gathering by all sides, which led to some very strange first encounters. Initially pilots really couldn't do much when they encountered enemy aircraft other than literally shaking

their fists at one another and then speeding off at the same top speed as a startled wildebeest, hoping to deliver their intelligence before the other guy delivered his. Yeah. Suddenly, German is really regret having all those 23 syllable words, right? I really hate your programming. A fairly quickly pilots realized they needed to stop the flow of information that enemy planes carried.

And soon pilots were carrying with them bricks, grenades, and even rope. They were so it's actually sillier than last sewing because the idea was that if they saw an enemy plane, then they would be able to fly quickly or somewhat less slowly, I guess above the enemy plane. And then they would just try to drop shit on the plane or tangle up the propeller with the rope and then send the plane and it's cargo of precious knowledge plummeting near. I was sticking to their spokes. That was it. Okay, okay, okay. You guys can fight, but you can only use murder weapons from the board game clue to do that.

So I can't all stick in their fucking I know they say all deaths in war are heroic and all that, but like, I feel like if you get Tom and Jerry to death, there should be an asterisk next to your name on the memorial, right? Like,'s true. The thing is, every war is an arms race. And this was no different pilots quickly realized that if ropes and brick were good, then guns would be great. And they started bringing pistols and rifles into the cockpit with them. The initial aerial gun fights were basically guys flying kites around in slow motion, holding like the yoke with their knee. Well, trying to look through those funny aviator goggles down the barrel of a rifle that

you're pointing at another barely airborne man flying around to what would today be a C minus engineering project. I mean, do you want to just land and have like a duel? I don't know. You know, first, I don't care. Picture these guys flying with their feet. Look like if, if taking a shot at the other guy is as dangerous for you as him, you might as well just stick with bricks and candle sticksicks. The first of these World War I aerial gun fights took place in August of 1914 when a

Serbian pilot with an unpronounceable name encountered an Austro Hungarian pilot with an unpronounceable name. And at first, the two guys waved at each other, as was I guess customary, but then the austral Hungarian pilot pulled out a pistol and fired at the Serbian. And he missed, but the upshot is that everyone got scared. And within weeks, everyone was figuring out how to get machine guns under their airplanes. Okay, guys, I did a little recon. Turns out paper doesn't really cover rock. That's nothing. That's just what I'm saying. I tried to drop paper is super dumb. So here's the thing, have we considered fucking guns? It's where we haven't tried

guns yet, right? Because we had it. We had it. We had it. We had it. We had it. We had it at all before we got into this thing. I will tell you all about that because it's fucking bonkers, but I also have to quote something now right from the wiki, which is this quote, in August of 1914, staff captain, piator nesterov from russia became the first pilot to ram his plane into an enemy spotter aircraft. First, like there's a lot of there's a lot of line of, because yes, no, I see it's on the same thing. The construction of that sentence pretty much implies that for at least some pilots

playing bumper planes seemed like a good idea. It's fine, but then you got a fucking hot glue gun, you're fucking airplane wing back on. You're like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, wind the rubber band back up. We're not going to go anywhere unless you wind up the rubber band. Where's the good glue, the good glue? This is not, and of course, most pilots weren't trying to smash their planes into other

planes because that kills both planes. Yeah. Instead, everyone was trying to figure out how to put machine guns on the god damned airplanes. The problem, as you might imagine, is that there wasn't sophisticated anything yet. So to aim any kind of gun effectively, you had to be able to look down the barrel of the weapon. But if you mount a machine gun in your sightline, you'll also be pointing the machine gun

right at your own propeller, which is rather bad for the airplane. Now Wikipedia says that a French aviator by the name of Roland Gerro solve this problem by quote, mounting steel deflector wedges to the propeller and quote of his airplane. Feels like a bad idea. Yeah, far be it for me to argue with Wikipedia, but solving the you'll shoot your foot off problem by wearing steel toad boots does not really solve the problem with a lot of shape Tom. The wedge shape. I should have thought it. Though to his credit, Roland did shoot down three enemy planes before he was forced down behind enemy lines due to engine failure. Yeah, it also helped that Roland's English name was Clark Kent. So,

so is he banking these bullets off his propeller and hitting guys with tricky billiard shots or something? Also, fun fact, they named it tennis stadium after him. That's where the French helmet is played. French helmet is Roland Garros. Yeah. Oh, after a good job with that dumb fucking thing. I don't know, tennis, you get tennis.

Well, because of the main shock, because he's volleying those things on. His service, the killer, after landing, Roland actually tried to burn the plane. So nobody would reverse engineer his bullet proof propeller wedge idea. But the burning didn't take and the plane and roll in were both captured. The Dutch engineer who examined the plane decided that the machine gun, good idea, but there had to be a better solution than bolting some steel onto the propellers and hoping that swatting away the bullets to hit the thing, keeping you aloft. It's a stupid idea.

It could be improved. So and guys, this is 100% true. The machine gun was then rigged up to the timing of the engine. The machine gun was still pointed directly through the propeller path. But so long as everything went perfectly, the bull to the fire exactly and only between the times when the rapidly spinning propeller wasn't in the way. Amazing. If a guy can't figure out how to light a canvas and wood plane on fire, I am pretty sure

his engineering secrets getting uncovered is not a big deal. That's not nobody cares. I feel like that's correct. Plus we were just about to invent, you know, the side and all the other places that aren't through the compiler as a constant. I don't remember if you got the good app. Well, to that point, there were less common configurations heath for mounted guns. Some guns were mounted on the wings, for example, or on flexible mountains. Yeah. In at least one instance, I love this one. The guns were mounted pointing not forward, but straight up with the idea that the pilot

would fly under the enemy and then shoot them from below. So people are top guns, some people are bottom guns, I get it. But what direction do those people think that disabled aircraft go? You break real hard in the air. Get in a good flat. I don't know you. Yeah. Yeah. You hit that bridge. You're going zero miles an hour in the air though.

Like these things are not cruising. But don't look down. That's the other gun mounting options included guns near the cockpit, but then like can't it out at an angle? And the problem with these alternative designs is the pilot was also the gunner, which meant that flying around and pitching and banking will also shooting accurately at something that you aren't looking straight on at is crazily difficult. Okay, guys, we're making this harder than it has to be. Here's what we do. We fly two planes next to each other in pairs all the time. You got a teammate, one guy in one plane holds up like a like a pocket Bible, but at a billion shot before I feel like we

could use that, right? So unsurprisingly, the synchronized forward firing machine gun was a hit. And so were many enemy planes until rather swiftly, all combatants figured out the placement and timing issue. Technological advancements rapidly seesawed who had the advantage in the sky, sometimes favoring the Germans, sometimes the British. By 1916, air combat tactics began to be developed, and the Dicta bouquet was written, an air combat document that is still in use today. Concepts for winning the battle the skies include surprise attacking your enemy.

By, for example, hiding a thick cloud cover, turning to meet your enemy. And finally, using the sun to conceal your position. The toughest part about using the Dictabulco today is that you got to find a cloud that's going three thousand miles and a whole and that she got to find a cloud that's going 3,000 miles in power. And that's hard to do. I just, I like that facing your enemy rose to the level of tactic for these people, right? So you feel like ground forces figured that out right? Like, you know, everybody's facing left and they're like, guys, this isn't going to

fucking work at all. What if we invent side? Like, we know that side yet? Reconocence craft began to require increasingly large numbers of fighter plane support to have any hope at all of surviving their mission. And so then the idea of error formations was created. At this point, most of the planes in use were wooden biplanes, cruising at 75 to 100 miles per hour, and pilots who were successful at shooting

down enemy planes gained enormous cultural prestige. You see, since the ground war of World War I was such a meat grinder of endless bloody stalemates, governments on both sides of the trenches decided these sexy, high-tech pilots needed to be lionized to keep the public and the troops from becoming demoralized. The idea of the World War I flying ace was now born. A generally speaking, an ace was a fighter pilot who had five or more confirmed kills in the air.

Though really nothing about that was set in stone. The mythology of the flying ace was more important by far than the military worked they were actually able to accomplish. But I don't say that to detract from the real heroism and bravery of these guys. I want here to quote directly from the wiki, which offers this first hand account from none other than Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the red baron. Quote, I was extremely proud when one fine day, I was informed of the airmen whom I had brought down on the 23rd of November 1916 was the English equivalent of Imelman. First, we circled 20 times to the left and then 30 times to the right.

Each tried to get behind and somebody was like, really, really, really, I just get you to say a bunch. Do you think it's really keeping track? I don't think it's keeping track. I don't think it's keeping track. Passengers were freaking out in the back. Come on. I'm going to land it in Dallas by now. Hate LaGuardia. Each tried to get above and behind the other. Soon I discovered that I was not meeting a beginner. He had not the slightest intention of breaking off the fight. He was traveling in a machine which turned beautifully. However, my own was better at rising than his,

and I succeeded at last in getting above and beyond my English waltzing partner. The impertinent fellow was full of cheek, and we had gotten down to about 3,000 feet. He merrily waved to me as if he would say, well, how do you do? The circles which we made around one another were so narrow that their diameter was probably no more than 250 or 300 feet. I had time to take a good look at my opponent. When he had come down to about 300 feet, he tried to escape by flying in a zigzag course during which, as is well known, it is difficult for any observer to shoot.

That was my most favorable moment. I followed him at an altitude of from 250 feet to 150 feet firing all the time. The Englishman could not help falling, but the jamming of my gun nearly robbed me of my success. My opponent fell, shop through the head 150 feet behind our line." I'll never forget his last words. Oh my God, I was good. I spent my whole week watching Snoopy clips. I'm throwing that out there. I want to the things that has to be noted about these battles were the insane altitude changes that marked these exchanges. Plains at this point maxed out at around 17,000 feet and most battles began between 11

and 12,000 feet up. But as the fighters bobbed, weaved, rose and plunged, these pitched battles frequently descended to levels that strike me as a modern reader as impossibly low with some battles being fought a hundred feet or less above the ground. Yeah, one pilot just gets closed lined by a guy on a ladder. No fair. Come on. All right. Well, it seems like the move would be just flying dummy plans with no pilot into the general area of the other team and watching them all murder each other with anvils or whatever they're doing. Let's see how it goes after a quick break for some opera pove, nothing.

You're doing it. For the last time, no, that's dumb. Johnson, Smith, what seems to be a problem? Steve won't get in the fucking plane. What, you get in the plane? What's the hold up, Smith? Your intel is vital in winning the war against the Germans. Is it though? Is it, they're in a trench right over there.

I can see it with my eyes. Look at their eyes. Come on, soldier. We need to know how many horse they have, how many men, where they camp? Come on. It's over there. I can see it with my eyes. Look at your eyes, soldier. We need to know how many horse they have, how many men, where they camp. Come on. It's over there. How is this going to change anything either way? Look, look, we put a gun on your plane. You're going to be fine. Oh, really? We put a gun. You're excited about that. Tell the Colonel about your so called gun and how it's a good idea. It shoots between the propellers. Okay. You hear how crazy that sounds, right? In between the propellers. No, it's a good idea. It shoots between the propellers. Okay, you hear how crazy that sounds, right?

In between the propellers. No, it's a, think about it like a, like a syncopated jazz song. You know, it's like, it's very technical. It seems like it's not gonna work. Smith, you're going up there and that, because you know that, that's the end of it. Fine, fine, fine. Oh, and Smith, yes, sir.

If you see another guy while you're up there, shoot him with your syncopated jazz gun. Just seriously? Smith! Come on, man. Yeah, yeah, just think of a second, maybe a jazz gun. Yeah, I got it.

I will jazz gun it. Yep. We're so hard on that. And we're back. When we left off, both Air Force teams were trying to count like dotted eighth note triplets across bars while flying a lawnmower tight at 12,000. What's next, Tom? Well, no essay about World War I dog fighting could possibly be complete if we didn't tell the story of the most famous flying ace of the time.

The aforementioned Manfred von Richthofen or the Red Baron. The Red Baron became a fighter pilot quite by accident. After a chance meeting with Oswald Bolke, the guy who literally wrote the book on air combat tactics I mentioned before, Manfred decided he wanted a fly. And he enrolled in training in February of 1916. He was, he was not a natural. In fact, he was so bad, he crashed his plane on his very first flight. Oh, what I'm hearing is I might have a bright future as a fighter. Island.

But considering which way your microphone was pointed for the first year that you did this job, he's at least saying you could be the next like the red bearer of podcast. I love it. The need for bleed. Right. Rectally. I did mean rectally. But a German war machine needed pilots and he didn't die when he crashed the first

time. So they gave him another plane and another chance and Manfred skills quickly improved by April of that year. He was flying a mission over Verden when he downed his first opponent, a nice achievement which he followed up by flying into a thunderstorm and almost killing himself. In August, bouquet, the tactician recruited Manfred to join Germany's first squadron of fighter planes, after which bouquet promptly died after colliding in midair with another plane. Manfred actually watched that collision, that killed his mentor, which may have played a part in transforming Manfred into the cool tactician

and rule follower that he became. I'll never forget his last words to me. Ah. This is scoring his first officially recorded victory. Manfred decided to honor the occasion by purchasing a little silver cup, which he had engraved with the date and the type of airplane he had shot down. Now, making yourself a, like a little murder token is kind of fucking weird.

Yes, it is. It is. It's super fucking weird. Is it? But what's even crazier is that he had 60 of these things made. Jesus. And he only stopped because the supply of silver had become two pressures. Hey, bud, maybe we could show like a mole skin instead. He's a nice for each one. He's just got like so many tears on the side of his

eye. It's just it's taking up too much space. He's in black face by accident. But I'm in the world where one times. Well, some of the airmen, including Manfred's own brother, used aggressive, even flashy maneuvers and tactics to try to defeat their opponents, Manfred was a by the book kind of guy following the tactics prescribed by his mentor exactly, preferring to hide his approach in the sun and then to pounce from above. One other thing that I thought was fascinating is that in these battles, they were aiming not for the airplanes, but they were literally aiming for and hitting the actual pilots and gunners themselves. In fact, when Manfred was offering his advice on tactics

to attack a two-seater fighter plane, Manfred's suggestion was to shoot and kill the gunner first and then circle back around to take out the pilot once he was defenseless. In January of 1917, Rick Holtvin earned the poor Lamarit after his 16th confirmed kill. And he also assumed command of just the 11 and elite cadre of German fighter pilots, including in their ranks his own brother. It was at this point that the red Baron was born when Rick Toffin decided to paint his plane red. Soon others in just a eleven began painting parts of their planes, some with red, others

with just whatever they decided. And I just, I enjoy thinking of a time when you could be in the military in the middle of war just to decide, you know what? This tank needs a new fresh coat of paint. You know, if you're trying to hide in the sun, you're what, this take needs a new fresh coat of paint. You know, if you're trying to hide in the sun, you're about five billion years early painting your plane. Right. Yeah. It doesn't seem like a balanced color. I feel like I'd go with cloud color. Right?

Right. The Jasta 11 squadron and Richthofen in particular were enormously successful in April of 1917 alone. The Red Baron shot down 22 enemy planes himself. He was promoted then to be commander of a larger fighter wing, which came to be known as the flying circus. So named because the group traveled with tents and equipment, setting up mobile staging and runway areas wherever needed, allowing the elite squad to be mobile, both on the ground and in the air.

In July of 1917, Rick Toffin suffered a serious head injury finding over Belgium. The injury caused him to become disoriented, lose part of his site as plane began ahead into a spin. He was able to gather his wits, pulled the plane out of the spin and land, despite the very serious injury. He conves less than hospital for 20 days before finally re-entering service. No, I get it. We gave Noah two whole weeks off when he had all the teeth ripped out of his head. So yeah, a whole week is a bit of an exaggeration, but yeah, business weeks, business weeks. On April 21st, 1918, Manfred, studious and ever constant teacher and promoter of the

tried and true tactics of his mentor abandoned his training and his typical methods. In a pitched battle above the psalm, Rick Hulvin was chasing a novice Canadian pilot at very low altitude. When he saw that his cousin was also being pursued and attacked. Giving up on his own quarry, Richthofen flew off to assist his cousin, a furious battle ensued with Richthofen single-mindedly pursuing his cousin's attacker. That single-mindedness sometimes referred to as target blindness caused the red baron to fixate on his aerial opponent while losing track of his position relative to the ground below.

Flying over enemy lines, he was struck in the chest by an anti aircraft gun and he was killed immediately. His plane quickly lost altitude and he crashed and at his death, the red baron had shot down more than 80 planes before being killed in combat. The war ended in November of that same year. All right, Tom, if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? The moment we invent something awesome, we pretty much immediately figure out how we can use it to kill each other. Yeah, we do. All right. Are you ready for the quiz? So us. If not, I guess I've

been shaking my fist at the sky all this time for nothing. All right, Tom. Tom. Yeah. What's the best nickname for your sky rival? A launch padversary. Opponent. Opponent. Opponent. Or C or C. This was what the joke was written for air foil, air foil. I like air foil. I like air foil. Air foil is correct. Because you are the one who gets to choose. So air foil is it pretty much. And that is what I picked. All right. I got one for you here, Tom. Yeah. This is very related to your topic. What is the best thing to do with a red baron brand frozen pizza?

Okay. Hey, hurl it at an enemy pilot. Be crash a plane into it. That's fair. See, feed it to a Chicago and that doesn't know what pizza is supposed to taste like anyway. Oh, outrageous. Or D, cook it in a brick tofen. Oh,

right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. It is actually her little Alright Tom. Yeah, how does that machine gun propeller thing work? Hey, the gun is black and the propeller is white so they never on the same beat B the bullets are made out of me and the propeller is made out of my weight loss Or C it doesn't that shit shoots itself all the fucking time Or see, it does it that shit shoots itself all the fucking time. See it did a lot of mishaps. Incorrect. Ely wins.

Ely is the winner. That's right. I'm not wanting to say from Noah next week. Not really, but thank you for saying that. All right. Noah's up next for Tom. Noah Cecil and Eli on Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today.

We'll be back next week. And by the end, we'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear, Noah Cecil and Eli on Heath, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, we'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Distance, and you can hear Eli knowing myself on God Offal Movies, the Skating Atheist, the Skeptcrat, and the Edmine ists. And if you'd like to support very serious journalism, you can also make a perhaps a donation to us at patreon.com slash citation pod. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media or take a look at the show notes, check out cetationpod.com slash citation pod. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media or take a look at the show notes, check out

CitationPod.com. Oh my God. Let me back. I made him. Damn it Smith. That was some ace flying up there. Just a major. Truly here. Rolex way you loop the loop and then you shot him in the head. It was just magnificent. Right. Yeah, I guess I appreciate that. So tell us what you saw.

What did you see up there? Okay, so they're all, they're all dug in. It's like a big trench right over there. I did it. It's right there. Excellent. Let's stay here and shoot them with the machine guns if they try to come here. Let's just plan ourselves.

You killed a guy. 100% killed a guy. Let's stay here and shoot them with the machine guns if they try to come here. Let's just plan ourselves. You killed a guy. 100% killed a guy.