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Eighty enemy aircraft were shot down by the skill of this legendary pilot, a hero of the German Air Force respected and feared by his enemies alike, before being beaten on the morning of April 21, 1918 near the Somme River, in the northern France.
However, today's story is not based on the skill of this pilot, but on a strange episode related by Nigel Watson, a researcher of the UFO phenomenon who managed to break the silence of one of the Red Baron's companions, also a German pilot, Peter Waitzrick.
In his book, entitled “UFOs of the First World War”, Watson tells us how Waitzrick would wait until 1999, with 105 years of age, to tell a little less than unusual story about an epic encounter in the skies, between the Red Baron and a device that was not of this world.
In the spring of 1917, the Red Baron was on a routine mission with Waitzrick in the skies over Belgium. It was early morning and they were flying over a conflict zone, when it suddenly appeared before them what the latter described as a silver artefact, covered in hundreds of flashing orange lights.
Aware that it was a strange aircraft, unknown to him, Freiherr approached the unusual object, which remained immobile, until he was within range. The Red Baron, given the enormous uncertainty of the moment, in the middle of a battle, did not hesitate to machine-gun it.
Waitzrick recalled that they were terrified because they had never seen anything like it before, to go on to tell that: "the baron opened fire from his triplane and lowered it like a rock, breaking the branches of the trees and crashing into the forest."
The German hero's companion stated that he clearly saw how, after hitting the ground, two crew members immediately left that object and were going into the thicket.
At first, they thought they were American devices, but over the years they became convinced that it was something without a doubt much more mysterious.
"I have no doubt that the Baron shot down some kind of spaceship from another planet and that those little individuals could be aliens," Waitzrick said in the book.
While it is true that anything can be possible, other researchers have cast doubt on history, pointing out, for example, that those admirable triplanes would not be put into service until August 1917, several months after this encounter.
While the detail may be a slight blur of memory, what could be a war hero's interest in distorting an event of this nature?
And, on the other hand, in the midst of so much barbarism and cruelty, there were many civilians and soldiers who reported about strange phenomena, of a paranormal type, that historians and experts have tried to explain over time.
Episodes that even today, after more than a century of history, continue without receiving any explanation. Leaving a door open to uncertainty, which may never be closed.
