An American documentary, The Death of the Red Baron, on the Discovery Channel series Unsolved History, which aired yesterday, concluded that Roy Brown did not kill the legendary German aviator during a First World War dogfight, as history books say.
it wasn't Carleton Place ace Roy Brown, but an Australian machine gunner.
The Red Baron was a dashing 25-year-old German aristocrat who flew his bright red Fokker Triplane at the head of the notorious Flying Circus. He was the deadliest aviator of the First World War, responsible for shooting down 80 Allied planes. The filmmakers found it was probably an unheralded Australian machine gunner, Snowy Evans, who brought down Manfred von Richthofen near the French village of Vaux-sur-Somme on April 21, 1918.
They based their findings on a computer simulation of the brief engagement between Mr. Brown and the baron, a re-enactment of the battle using lasers for machine guns, and the expertise of former Hamilton forensic pathologist Dr. David King.
The film's host, Daniel Martinez, said the case will never be nailed down conclusively. Much of the evidence was looted by souvenir hunters after the baron's plane landed in a sugarbeet field.
"All we know is it was not Capt. Roy Brown who shot down the baron," he said in the show. "It was the Australian infantryman."
"There will never be a solution to this," said Mrs. Harmon, who married an American and has lived in the United States for 51 years. "They'd have to have the body and the bullet and the gun.
