THE HANGING JUDGE, ISAAC CHARLES PARKER

11/17/1896 - On the third Tuesday of November, the man that does more than any other single individual to bring law and order to the American frontier while serving for 21 years as the first United States district judge for the District Court for the Western District of Arkansas (including the Indian Territory that will one day become the state of Oklahoma), Isaac Charles Parker, dies in Fort Smith, Arkansas from Bright's disease (a kidney problem characterized by swelling of the organ, albumin in the urine, and high blood pressure) and heart degeneration at the age of 58.

Parker

The man who will become known as "The Hanging Judge" of Fort Smith, is born on October 15, 1838 in Barnesville, Ohio into the Methodist family of farmer Joseph Parker and his wife, Jane Shannon Parker, the well-educated niece of Ohio governor, Wilson Shannon (he also has relatives that fought in the American Revolution, served in the United States House of Representatives, and crossed the country with the Lewis & Clark expedition as it's youngest member).  He grows up in Belmont County, Ohio the edge of America's western frontier at the time and an agricultural region.  Raised on his parent's farm, he finds little fulfillment in toiling on the land.  Instead, encouraged by his mother, Parker throws himself into his education when not doing farm chores, first attending the Breeze Hill primary school, before then moving on to the Barnesville Classical Institute.  A private school, he pays for his classes at the institute by teaching at one of the county's primary schools.  Direction chosen for his adult life, at seventeen Parker decides to become a lawyer.  Combining apprenticing with a local Barnesville barrister and studying a myriad of law books, four years after making his decision, Parker passes his bar exam in 1859.  Wanting to spread his wings and not compete with other Ohio lawyers for clients, at 21, he takes a steamboat west and begins practicing law in the bustling Missouri River port town of St. Joseph (part of the Ninth Missouri Circuit Court), helped on considerably by joining the law firm of his maternal uncle's (D.E. Shannon) and his uncle's partner (H.B. Banch) the local law firm, Shannon & Banch.  Gaining valuable experience and community recognition working in the region's municipal and county criminal courts, in 1861, he opens his own law firm, marries a local lass, Mary O'Toole (they will have three sons, Charles and James, and a third that dies in it's infancy), and as a Democrat, runs for the part-time post of St. Joseph city attorney.  Winning the office (a one year term, Parker will also win the post in 1862 and 1863), four days later the American Civil War begins and the young lawyer reevaluates his political beliefs. dropping his Democrat ties and joining a Union home guard unit, the 61st Missouri Emergency Regiment, reaching the rank of corporal by the conclusion of the conflict.  Finally officially changing his political affiliation because of his staunch opposition to slavery, he joins the Republican Party in 1864 and is elected to the post of county prosecutor for the Ninth Missouri Judicial District and as a member of the state's Electoral College, votes to reelect Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.  Four years later, in 1868, Parker wins election to a six-year term as a Twelfth Missouri Circuit judge.  He will not however complete his term as judge. 

Governor Shannon

St. Joseph

Backed by the Radical faction of the Republic Party, on September 13, 1870, though he already has a job, Parker is nominated to represent Missouri's 7th District in the 42rd U.S. Congress.  A position he sees as a springboard into politics, Parker quickly resigns his judgeship and puts all his energy into winning the office, and achieves that goal when two weeks before the election takes place his opponent withdraws.and he then defeats a replacement candidate.  In his first term in Congress, Parker helps secure pensions for the veterans of his district, campaigns for a new federal building to go up in St. Joseph, sponsors legislation to create a territorial government for the Indian Territory, and has legislation defeated that would enfranchise women and allow them to hold public offices in United States territories.  Running and winning again, during his second stint in Congress, Parker stands up for the fair treatment of the Indians residing in the Indian Territory and makes speeches in support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  In 1874, Parker is the caucus Republican Party nominee for a Missouri Senate seat, but believing it is unlikely that the state legislature will elect him to the senate, he instead seeks a presidential appointment as judge for the Western District of Arkansas (though he is already in line to replace James Bedell McKean as Chief Justice of the Utah Territory), which President Ulysses S. Grant gladly nominates him for on March 18, 1875 after the previous office holder, federal Judge William Story resigns under threat of being impeached by the Senate for corruption.  Parker is confirmed by the Senate the next day.  Parker will be responsible for a jurisdiction that includes the thirteen counties that run north and south along the western border of Arkansas, all of the Indian Territory (a swath of more than 70,000 square miles of land), and a 50-mile strip of Kansas on the state's southern border   Overseeing the law there for an annual salary of $3,500, it will be Parker's job for the next 21 years. 

McKean During The Civil War

Story

A month and a half after being confirmed as the judge for the Western District, without his family yet in tow, the youngest Federal judge in the West at the time, the 36-year-old Parker shows up in Fort Smith, Arkansas (founded in 1817 as a federal military post and incorporated on December 24, 1842, the city is located on the border of the state of Arkansas and the Indian Territory, now the state of Oklahoma, at the confluence of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers) on May 4, 1875.  Six days later, on Monday, May 10, 1875, Parker, with court prosecutor William Henry Harrison Clayton in support (he will be the Federal prosecutor for fourteen of Parker's 21 years on the Western District of Arkansas bench), has his first day in his new position and sentences eight men, found guilty of murder, to hanging by the neck until they are dead, with the sentences set to take place on September 3, 1875 (six will go to their end as sentenced, one will be killed trying to escape the Fort Smith jail, and one, because of his youth, will have his sentence commuted to life in prison by Arkansas Governor Augustus H. Garland), and just for good measure, he also finds time that same day to confirm the hire by U.S. Marshal James Fleming Fagan as one of his Deputy U.S. Marshals, of the legendary black lawman, 37-year-old Bass Reeves (the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi River, a former 6'2" Arkansas slave, fluent in Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek languages, who while make over 3,000 arrests during a career of 35 years of enforcing the law, also sees him kill twenty men in the line of duty without once being wounded, though he does lose a hat and a belt to outlaw slugs fired his way).

Recreated Parker Courtroom In 1966

Prosecutor Clayton

Confederate Fagan During The Civil War 

Bass Reeves

  From 1875 to 1889, Parker's court is the final jurisdiction over Federal crimes committed in the Indian Territory and his decisions can only be appealed to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.  Hoping to lighten the judge's workload, 1889 sees Congress make changes to the court system that allow capital case conviction appeals to be decided by the United States Supreme Court in Washington D.C., a decision Parker does not like as the court allows 30 of the 44 death penalty cases he oversees to get overturned and have a retrial ordered.  And he also doesn't like that his court also loses the power of concurrent sentencing.  Ninety-one defendants will come before the court in its first eight weeks, and in all, there will be 13,490 cases tried in Judge Parker's court during his tenure, and of that total, more than 8,500 will have the defendant in question plead guilty or be convicted during their trial (his duties also sometimes require him to testify before Congress, substitute for other Federal judges in the region, and to oversee important civil cases).  In 160 cases, Parker sentences guilty convicted defendants to death, and of that unlucky total of convicts, 79 will actually be hung by the neck until dead (35% will be American Indians, 33% will be white men, and 18% will be African-Americans), while 81 others either died during their incarcerations, were pardoned, or had their sentences commuted.  With a worklog and backlog of cases that never seems to grow smaller (though Congress will make several attempts over the years to lighten Parker's workload), the busy judge and husband also somehow finds time to serve as a member of the Fort Smith School Board, become the first president of the local St. John's Hospital, and at Parker's urgings, in 1884, the judge gets the Federal Government to donate almost 300-acres of military reservation to the city to help fund the Fort Smith public school system, and the jurist also somehow also finds time to appear with his wife at local community social events.  

Then

Now

But at least there is no record of anyone trying to shot, stab, or choke to death the overworked judge, unlike the men that keep his courtroom constantly filled by murderous miscreants in need of stern medicine from Judge Parker, the United States Marshal and United States Deputy Marshals for the Western District of Arkansas.  The job of U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Arkansas in the 1880s and 1890s is only $90 a month for orchestrating the activities of roughly 200 deputy marshals through over 70,000 square miles of lawlessness, and it is even rougher on the men that are sent out to bring in the outlaws of the region and period.  There is no fixed salary for the deputy marshals, make arrests, make money, go bust looking for law breakers and you eat jerky from a shoulder bag when you are lucky.  For each deliver of a court summons or wanted culprit delivered to the Fort Smith courthouse. a marshal would receive a tally of $2, with an additional bonus of six cents for each mile that is spent for traveling with a killer or the carrying official documents (though not always available, the court is also expected to provide prisoner transportation in the form of an arrest team that includes a cook, chuck wagon, barred prison wagon, and extra horses and mules).  Able sometimes to collect railroad and business rewards, the men of the Western District spend massive amounts of time sleeping out under the stars and when there is a shootout with a death involved, they are required to pay the burial costs of the badman croaked.  An extremely hard road to walk, during the judge's tenure on the bench, 109 of his men will be killed in the line of duty.  Among the famous (and infamous) lawmen that ply their craft for the Western District of Arkansas are the legendary "Three Guardsmen of Oklahoma" comprised of Henry Andrew "Heck" Thomas, Chris Madsen, and Bill Tilghman that will help strike down both the Dalton Gang and the Doolin-Dalton Gang (directed by U.S. Marshal Evett Nix), Frank Dalton (killed at the age of 28 while helping make an arrest of a whiskey runner and horse thief), Grat Dalton (before his fall into outlawry after the death of his brother Frank), Bob Dalton (before his fall into outlawry after the death of his brother Frank), Seldon Lindsey (one of the lawmen that sends Bill Dalton to eternity in 1895, the aforementioned Bass Reeves (believed to be the real-life model for the fictional character, "The Lone Ranger"), quick draw artist Frank Boardman "Pistol Pete" Eaton, Cal Whitson (the real-life one-eyed lawman that will become the model for Rooster Coogburn in the Charles Portis novel, "True Grit") and James Patrick Masterson (Bat's brother, James is the one that gets outlaw Roy "Arkansas Tom Jones" Daugherty to surrender at the Battle of Ingalls in 1893 by threatening to blow the outlaw out of his perch in a window of the O.K. Hotel with a handful of sputtering dynamite sticks).  Among the desperadoes the deputies deal with during the Parker years are Blue Duck, Belle Starr, Henry Starr (he will have his death sentenced commuted for helping catch killer Cherokee Bill when the convict tries to escape the jail in Fort Smith), Cherokee Bill (alias Crawford Goldsby), the Bill Cook Gang, Bob, Grat, Emmett, and Bill Dalton, and the Oklahombres of Bill Doolin, William "Tulsa Jack" Blake, Dan "Dynamite Dan" Clifton, Richard "Little Bill" Raidler, George "Red Buck" Waightman, Oliver "Ol" Yantis, outlaw turned politician Al Jennings, The Rufus Buck Gang, Indian lawman turned outlaw Ned Christie, and Nathaniel Ellsworth "Zip" Wyatt.             

Marshal Nix

Whitson

Not all United States deputy marshals created equally, one absolutely must be mentioned in any telling of Parker's tale, so entwined in the story of the judge that he is like a super-hero sidekick of other times, the "Hanging Judge" (despite the name, the judge is actually against capital punishment) will have a helper beside him for 19 years of his 21-year tenure ... the official executioner for the federal court of the Western District of Arkansas (also known by a nickname of its own by this time, "Court of the Damned"), "The Prince of Hangmen," U.S. Deputy Marshal George Maledon (oh, and the Fort Smith jail will be called the "Hell on the Border" jail).  Born in Germany on June 10, 1830, Maledon immigrates to the United States when he is a small child, settling with his family in Detroit, Michigan.  When he is eighteen, Maledon moves to Fort Smith, Arkansas and begins working there as a police officer (after a brief stint working in a Choctaw Indian lumber mill), a job he will hold until the American Civil War begins in 1861 when the boy enlists in the 1st Battalion of the Arkansas Light Artillery.  At the war's conclusion, when Maledon returns to Fort Smith and takes a position as a night guard with the local Federal jail he stands 5'5" in his stocking feet, has dark eyes and hair, a fair complexion, and a long beard, is quiet by nature, rarely smiles, and almost always dresses in all black attire.  In 1871, Maledon works as a Fort Smith Deputy Sheriff and also becomes a turnkey at the jail and takes over duties involving condemned men's executions.  In Maledon's career, carrying two guns while on-duty, he will hang 79 men using a specially made hemp fiber from St. Louis, Missouri, 1.25 inches to 1 inch in diameter, treated with a special oil to prevent slippage (then the ropes are stretched out using two-hundred pound bags of sand) on a gallow with a single trap door sixteen feet long by three feet wide to accommodate up to eight individuals with a single lever pull (the most Maledon will hang at once will be six), hemp Maledon twists and ties into a knot the condemned wear right behind the ear to induce an instant broken neck, the preferred method of death over having a condemned man slowly choking to death on the gibbet for the entertainment of an audience of thousands (between 5,000 and 7,000 people attend one of the multiple hangings Maledon oversees, later a wall will go up around the gallows and witnesses will be kept to a lower total of around 50 folks).  When not a part time jury member or executioner, Maledon is also an excellent jail guard, five times drawing his revolver and putting slugs in five outlaws attempting to escape from the Fort Smith jail, killing two of the men.  

Maledon

Maledon's Revolver    

Only once will Maledon refuse an execution assignment from Judge Parker that pays $100 per neck stretching, and it is one of the events that contributes to Maledon's retirement from execution duty.  A fellow U.S. Deputy Marshal and friend, Barney Conneley, is convicted of killing another deputy marshal, Sheppard Busby, when Busby tries to arrest Conneley for adultery.  His friend sentenced to be hung by the neck until he is dead, Maledon refuses the execution assignment and the fee for the duty and the job instead goes to U.S. Deputy Marshal G.S. White.  In 1895, Maledon sees up close and personal how dangerous the West can be when news reaches him that his 18-year-old daughter, Annie, has been murdered by Frank Carver, the man she has been dating since meeting him while he is in Fort Smith being tried for whiskey running (Annie is killed when she travels to Muskogee, Oklahoma to be with him and instead discovers he is already married to an Indian woman, the fight that ensues ends with Carver shooting and mortally wounding Annie, returned to Fort Smith for treatment, she dies three weeks later).  Devastated by his daughter's death, Maledon rides an emotional roller-coaster as his daughter's killing leads to a guilty verdict and sentence of death before Judge Parker himself, that then is appealed to the Unite States Supreme Court, which in turn leads to Carver's sentence being changed to life in prison ... a decision Maledon finds so repugnant that he retires from the deputy service and begins running a grocery store in Fort Smith when not on the road displaying a tent show he has put together from souvenirs he has kept as the official executioner of Judge Isaac Parker ... photographs of some of the nation's most notorious desperadoes, an assortment of hanging ropes, pieces of the gallows' beam, and other ghoulish relics.  In 1905, Maledon's health begins failing and he enters an old soldier's home in Humboldt, Tennessee, where he will remain for the rest of his life.  Maledon dies from natural causes at the home at the age of 81, on May 6, 1911.  He is buried at the Johnson City Veterans' Memorial Cemetery in Washington County, Tennessee. 

Connelley & Busby's Tombstone

Maledon

According to the court policies of the United States Congress, Judge Parker's court is to meet four times a year, in February, May, August, and November but once the Western District of Arkansas proceedings begin, they basically don't stop (with Parker usually working six days a week for ten hours or more) and in 1883, Congress reduces the jurisdiction and the territory of the Western District, giving southern and northern Indian Territory borderlands to Federal courts in the adjacent states of Texas and Kansas, but with increased numbers of white settlers moving into the region, the judge's caseload does not decrease, but actually gets larger.  In 1889, trying to help again, Congress make changes that allow capital cases to go to the United States Supreme Court on appeal ... a decision that causes even more work for the judge as now he must sometimes try cases more than a single and time and has to answer to someone other than the President for his decisions (of the cases that go to the Supreme Court, two-thirds of Parker's decisions will be upheld).  And finally, in 1891, Congress passes the Judiciary Act of 1891, which sets the Indian Territory up with it's own court system outside of Parker's rule (effective as of September 1, 1896).  Too little, too late, the judge's workload literally destroys his health and as the court session for August of 1896 begins, Parker is bedridden with Bright's disease and too ill to preside over his court (it is the first time in his career that he misses a day of work) when newspapermen show up at his home to interview him about his feelings about the removal of the Indian Territory from his jurisdiction and discuss his overall career, they have to interview the famous jurist while Parker lays in bed.  Looking like a man several decades older than he actually is, Parker dies on 2:45 in the morning of Tuesday, November 17, 1896 at his Fort Smith home of Bright's disease and heart degeneration at the age of only 58.  His massive contributions to Western jurisprudence and well being of the Fort Smith community noted, the flag at the Federal courthouse is lowered to half staff after the judge's death and Parker is buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery after his funeral is attended by the biggest crowd to that time in Arkansas (Parker's grave will be covered by chrysanthemums, roses, and other blossoms found on the region's prairies ... with General Pleasant Parker of the Creek Nation placing a cross of yellow chrysanthemums with a circle of a variety of pure white flowers at its center, while another flowered cross that is placed at the foot of the grave comes from a friend of the jurist in St. Louis, meanwhile, a choir featuring several women sing a number of beautiful hymns), literally thousands of citizens of the state show up for the event (his obituary will run in the Fort Smith Elevator under the banner: THE END OF AN ABLE, BRILLIANT, PURE AND USEFUL LIFE).  

Old Man

Parker's Grave

Statue Of Judge Parker In Fort Smith's 

Gateway Park

Thousands of cases tried over the years, perhaps the Hanging Judge's most infamous customer can be found in the person of Crawford Goldsby, better known as the murderous Indian Territory killer "Cherokee Bill."  A mixed blood of African, Indian (Sioux and Cherokee), Mexican, and white ancestry, and the product of growing up on America's western frontier in a broken family, by the time Goldsby is a teen he is associating with unsavory characters, drinking liquor, and revolting against authority while living with his mother and an elderly black lady known as "Aunty" Amanda Foster, at the Indian School of Cherokee, Kansas, before moving in with a Fort Gibson man named Bud Buffington, and then camping out with his sister Maud and her husband in Noweta, Oklahoma.  Thinking he'd killed a man in Fort Gibson over trouble at a local dance, Goldsby flees retribution and heads into the Indian Territory where he joins the outlaw gang of mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, Jim and Bill Cook.  Small potatoes at first selling whiskey and stealing horses, his criminal rampage through the region begins in earnest on May 26, 1894 when he robs the T.H. Scales Store of Wetumka, Oklahoma of a grand total of 35 cents, before quickly escalating when he and the Cook brothers shoot their way out of posse ambush, killing Tahlequah, Oklahoma Deputy Sequoyah Houston.  On July 4, 1894, trying to steal a ride on a Kansas and Arkansas train near Fort Gibson, Goldsby kills brakeman Samuel Collins and a tramp also trying to score a free ride that unfortunately gets in the way.  Two days later, he kills Mississippi Railway station agent A. L. "Dick" Richards while robbing the man.  Still in July, Goldsby then joins up with the Cook Gang in robbing a San Francisco bound train near the town of Red Fork.  He kills again on July 30, 1894, when illegally withdrawing $500 from the Lincoln County Bank of Chandler, Oklahoma, gunning down J. B. Mitchell for not following his orders quickly enough.  Hiding out with his sister and brother-in law, Joseph "Mose" Brown, he gets in an argument with Brown over some hogs on the farm and in the blink of an eye makes his sister into a widow by putting a bullet into the back of Brown's head.  August sees Goldsby and other members of the gang escape a posse fourteen miles west of Sapulpa in a shootout that severely wounds one lawman and kills two gang members (outlaw Ad Berryhill is also captured)   In September, the gang takes $600 out of the J.A. Parkinson & Company store of Okmulgee, a crime they follow up on by holding up the train depot for the Missouri Pacific Railroad of Claremore on October 10, 1894 ... and two hours later, the gang robs the railroad agent of the town of Chouteau.  Ten days later, on the 20th of the month, the group hits the Kansas City and Missouri Pacific express five miles south of Wagoner.  Goldsby follows up that railroad job two days later by robbing, along with three other members of the gang, the post office and general store of Watova, Oklahoma, a town fifteen miles south of Coffeyville, Kansas.  During the robbery Goldsby kills again, placing a rifle bullet just under the eye of a painter named Ernest Melton who is observing the heist from across the street while eating a meal in one of the town's restaurants.

Goldsby And His Mother

Wanted Poster

The hunt for Goldsby ends as so many criminal chases do ... with a woman involved and the betrayal coming from individuals thought to be friends.  Reward for his capture increased by the authorities fto $1,300 (worth $47,496.58 in 2024 dollars) following his murder of Melton, it is a total that can no longer be ignored for some of the killer's friends.  Wanting to see his girlfriend Maggie Glass for her seventeenth birthday, Goldsby accepts an invitation to her birthday party where he runs afoul of a former U.S. Deputy Ike Rogers, Glass' cousin, unaware that Rogers has been offered his job back (lost by the "lawman" for harboring the outlaws he is suppose to be chasing in his own home) if he helps bring in the notorious badman.  On guard during the party at Rogers' home, Goldsby grows suspicious when his girlfriend advises him to leave as soon as he can, but stays instead and avoids letting Rogers get the drop on him and not falling victim to the whiskey he is repeatedly offered that is laced morphine.  It is all a game to Goldsby until the next morning.  On January 30, 1895 (in January also, Bill Cook will be arrested and brought before Judge Parker, found guilty of bank robbery, he will be sentenced to 45 years at the Federal prison in Albany, New York, where he dies of consumption on February 15, 1900 at the age of 27), Goldsby allows his attention to wander briefly as he lights a cigarette from the fireplace in the home and is rewarded by being hit over the back of his head by Rogers with an iron poker and subsequently loses a knockdown brawl lasting over fifteen minutes with Rogers and a friend of his, Clint Scales (Goldsby almost gets away on the wagon ride to Nowata when he breaks out of his handcuffs, but has Rogers able to keep him in check compliments of a double-barrel shotgun he keeps trained on the outlaw ... and another attempt takes place when the train Goldsby is placed on stops in Wagoner and a local photographer asks to get a few pictures of the captive and his captors, and the killer uses the opportunity of posing for the camera to try and grab the pistol of the man he has been turned over to, U.S. Deputy Marshal Dick Crittendon).  Finally reaching Fort Smith, Goldsby is indicted for the murder of Melton on February 8, 1895 and goes on trial before Judge Parker on the 26th of the month.  Two weeks later, on April 13, 1895, Goldsby is found guilty of murder and Judge Parker sentences him to death by hanging ... Goldsby's only victory comes when his lawyer manages to postpone the date of his execution, giving the outlaw time to set up a new escape attempt, and sure enough, authorities discover a pistol hidden in a bucket that prison trustee, Ben Howell, has placed there for Goldsby.  Happy with themselves for thwarting the escape, the guards are unaware that a "Plan B" exists and another trustee at the jail, Sherman Vann (a black man serving 90 days for larceny), has gotten another gun into the jail, a Colt revolver, that he successfully manages to get to Goldsby (it is hidden behind a loose stone in Goldsby's cell). 

The Almost Escape Photo - Left To Right - Deputy Zeke

Crittenden With Badge Showing, His Brother, Deputy Dick 

Crittenden, Goldsby, Clint Scales, Ike Rogers, And

U.S. Deputy Marshal Bill Smith

At around 7:00 in the evening of July 26, 1895, just after a fresh compliment of jail guards go on duty, Goldsby goes into action when 49-year-old Lawrence Keating (married with four children and a ten year veteran of law enforcement in Fort Smith) and Campbell Eoff attempt to lock him in his cell for the evening.  Pulling his revolver, the prisoner yells for Keating to drop his gun, but instead, the guard draws his weapon and is shot first in the stomach and then in the back as he staggers away.  Before Goldsby can exit the cellblock though, other guards arrive, along with Marshal George Lawson, and open up on the prisoner, their fire driving him back into his cell and allowing Eoff to escape.  Pouring bullets into the area keeps Goldsby at bay, but does not allow the officers to gain control of the armed prisoner.  Bullets ricocheting (in the tradition of Cherokee warriors, Goldsby gobbles like a wild turkey after each shot he takes) about from the fire coming from both sides, after fellow captive, outlaw Henry Starr (a former confederate of Goldsby's, Starr is a distant relative of Sam Starr, the husband of infamous female outlaw, Belle Starr, and is incarcerated awaiting his execution after twice being sentenced to death by Judge Parker for the 1893 murder of U.S. Deputy Marshal Floyd Wilson ... after successfully getting Goldsby to give up his weapon, Starr will be rewarded by having his conviction changed to his being guilty of manslaughter with that sentence being washed away after 8 years when he receives a presidential pardon from Theodore Roosevelt ... eventually released instead of doing his scheduled air dance with Maledon, Starr will marry and have a son he names Theodore Roosevelt Starr, works in his mother's restaurant for awhile, starts up a new gang, gets arrested and spends five years at the Colorado state prison in Canon City, is paroled again in 1913, forms another gang which pulls off 14 daylight bank raids between 1914 and 1915, is wounded and captured trying to rob two banks at the same time with his gang in Stroud, Oklahoma when he is hit by shotgun blast from the gun of 20-year-old Paul Curry, is sentenced to 25 years behind the bars but with good behavior is out again by 1919, writes an autobiography about his life called "Thrilling Events, Life of Henry Starr," has the book made into a 1919 silent movie called "A Debtor to the Law" in which he plays a dramatized version of himself and gives roles in the film to the actual bank teller he robbed, Paul Curry, and other citizens of Stroud, but goes back to being a bandit in 1921 and is mortally wounded on February 18th trying to rob the People's Bank of Harrison, Arkansas by the bank's president, W. J. Myers, perishing on February 22nd at the age of 47)  is almost hit by a round, and volunteers to see if he can get Goldsby to surrender if the guards promise not to shoot him dead once they have him in captivity again.  And it works.

Keating

Lawson

Henry Starr

Finally realizing the dangerousness of the desperado they have in custody, Goldsby will be kept in his cell in shackles for the rest of his captivity in Fort Smith, watched constantly by at least one guard.  Three days after his escape attempt, Goldsby is in front of Judge Parker again, and found guilty (the jury takes only 15 minutes to decide the killer's fate for sending Keating to his doom), he is once more sentenced to be hung by the neck.  This verdict is appealed too (Goldsby's lawyer claims Judge Parker is prejudiced after the jurist says of the gunman that he is a "... bloodthirsty mad dog who killed for a love of killing ..." and describes the killer as " ... the most vicious ... " of all the outlaws in Oklahoma.  On December 2, 1895, the Supreme Court affirms Goldsby's sentencing and Judge Parker again sets an execution date, scheduling Goldsby's goodbye to take place on March 17, 1896.  Up until five days before his execution, Goldsby seems unconcerned about his sentence, but then begins accepting the religious advice of Father Pius of Fort Smith's German Catholic Church, whom he meets with daily, a friendship that results in Goldsby also reading the Bible each of his last days.  On Goldsby's last day on earth, St. Patrick's Day of 1896, he is up by 6:00 in the morning for his 11:00 hanging, has a light breakfast at 8:00 (compliments of a local hotel his mother is staying at), and sings and whistles as if he doesn't have a care in the world.  Later that morning, he is joined by his mother, brother, stepsister, Father Pius, and "Aunty" Amanda as his mother convinces the authorities to delay the execution until 2:00 so that his sister Gladys, due into town on an eastbound train at 1:00 in the afternoon can see her brother one last time.  Surprisingly, Fort Smith U.S. Marshal George James Crump, in charge of the execution with Maledon's absence, agrees while outside the jail, a crowd of 3,000 awaits the show (such a large gathering that a flimsy shed used by some of the crowd as an observation platform collapses and several people are injured), and shortly before Goldsby's now scheduled for 2:00 execution, in handcuffs and shackles, the killer, accompanied by his mother, Father Pius, and "Aunty" Amanda, and four guards of course, is brought up to the gallows.  At exactly 2:00, Goldsby's death warrant is read by Marshal Crump, and Father Pius recites a short prayer.  Stepping forward to the edge of the gallows, the outlaw known as Cherokee Bill tells the crowd, "Goodbye all you chums down that way," before allowing Crump to adjust his bindings, put a black hood over the killer's head, and then place a knotted rope around the neck of the condemned man.  Asked by Crump if Goldsby has any last words to say, the gunman snarls "I came here to die, not make a speech."  At 2:13, Crump springs the trap on the gallows and Goldsby drops six feet downward, snapping his neck and killing the outlaw instantly.  Goldsby is only twenty years old at his passing.  After the corpse dangles for 12 minutes, Goldsby is brought down, officially pronounced dead, has his bindings removed, and is then placed in a wooden gasket that is then placed in a larger box for train transportation by his mother and sister back to Fort Gibson, Oklahoma for burial at the town's Citizens Cemetery.  He is still interred there (interestingly, on April 20, 1897, his brother Clarence Goldsby will shoot to death in Fort Gibson the man responsible for Cherokee Bill's capture, the mendacious 47-year-old Ike Rogers). 

Bill Cook

Goldsby's Hanging

Ike Rogers

Goldsby death just another day meting out justice in the federal court district of Western Arkansas.  Though Judge Parker leaves in 1896, he is still well remember about Fort Smith and certainly within historian discussions of the closing of the American West.  In Fort Smith, Parker's grave can be found at the city's Fort Smith National Cemetery, the courthouse, jail, and gallows of the judge's times have been faithfully recreated near their original locations and now constitute a major tourist destination in the region that entertains over 120,000 visitors a year, and in nearby Gateway Park since October of 2019, a statue of the judge pondering a legal tome and papers before making one of his decisions looks out over the town ... and opened for business in 1937 and still operating, on South 6th Street and Rogers Avenue stands the Judge Isaac C. Parker Federal Building and Courthouse.  There are also a host of books and magazine articles dealing with Judge Parker, the folks that worked for the Judge's district, and the outlaws reeking havoc in the region during his tenure.  In the world of music, poetry, and literature (among titles about the judge are "Let No Guilty Man Escape" by Dr. Roger H. Tuller Ph.D, "Isaac C. Parker: Federal Justice on the Frontier" by Michael J. Brodhead, "Hanging Judge" by Fred Harvey Harrington, "Court of the Damned" by J. Gladstone Emery, and "He Hanged Them High" by Homer Croy), Judge Parker is mentioned giving out a death sentence in the Steve Earle song, "Tom Ames' Prayer" (Judge Parker said guilty and the gavel came down ...), and in the 1968 best selling novel of Charles Portis about a fictional boozy one-eyed U.S. Deputy Marshal named Rooster Cogburn (the role that wins John Wayne the sole Best Acting Oscar of his 179-long film career), Parker is a featured character.  On television, Judge Parker has been played by actor Carlyle Mitchell in a 1961 episode of "Death Valley Days," by Bill Rogers in the 2020 Arkansas PBS presentation, "Indians, Outlaws, Marshals and the Hangin' Judge," and by Donald Sutherland on the 2023 cable series, "Lawmen: Bass Reeves."  In  the movies, he has been portrayed thus far by screen actors James Westerfield (in the 1969 version of "True Grit"), John McIntire (the 1975 sequel to "True Grit," "Rooster Cogburn"), Jake Walker (in the 2010 remake of "True Grit"), and by Manu Intiraymi (in the 2019 film, "Hell on the Border") ... and playing Judge Adam Felton, a character based on Judge Parker, is the respected character actor Pat Hingle in the 1968 Clint Eastwood oater, "Hang 'Em High." 

Federal Building And Courthouse

Book

Westerfield As Parker

One of the larger than life characters in American History, Judge Isaac Charles Parker, passes away in Fort Smith, Arkansas at the age of 58 on this day in 1896.  Rest in peace, Sir!

Parker

       

 

 

                

        

  

INVENTING THE FIGHTER PILOT - IMMELMANN & BOELCKE

10/28/1916 - Blazing a path that many other "aces" will sadly follow in the years to come, the man known as the father of aerial combat for his sky battles between 1915 and 1916 during WWI, the victor of forty encounters with enemy planes (#1 in the war at the time of his passing) and the mentor of the leading fighter pilot of the war, Baron and Captain Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, 25-year-old Captain Oswald Boelcke, while dogfighting over Bapaume, France, suffers a mid-air collision with fellow ace and squadron mate wingman, Lt. Erwin Bohme, that causes Boelcke to crash and die from a fractured skull. 

Boelcke

With the assassination by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary,.and his wife, Sophia, the Duchess of Hohenberg, World War I begins in the city of Sarajevo on Sunday, June 28, 1914.  Many changes coming as the four year war that will kill over 17,000,000 individuals goes hot on August 2, 1914, the war not only opens up a new arena to combat, but also creates a unique type of warrior never seen before in military history, the fighter pilot.  Eleven years after Orville and Wilbur Wright demonstrate powered flight above the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in a heavier-than-air plane that they will name the "Wright Flyer," it quickly becomes obvious that observing military ground movements from above will give whatever country can master the unique battlefield a huge advantage in the war.  To prevent "aerial reconnaissance" from favoring one side over the other, planes begin trying to knock each other out of the skies, a progression that leads from pilots and observers for belligerent nations smiling and waving at each other in the air to planes firing on each other with pistols, rifles, and shotguns, throwing grenades at enemy planes, and even using grappling hooks and bricks (the first shot fired from the sky takes place in 1910, when Lt. Jacob Fickel of the U.S. Army hits a three-by-five target with a rifle from 100 feet of altitude, in 1912, U.S. Army Captain Charles deForest Chandler fires the first machine gun from the air.  Only a month into the war, the first aircraft shot down by another plane occurs on September 8, 1914, when Russian pilot, 27-year-old Pyotr Nesterov (the first pilot in the world to successfully fly a loop) in a French built Morane-Saulnier Type G monoplane rams an Austrian Albatros B.II observation plane carrying pilot Franz Malina and observer Baron Friedrich von Rosenthal over Lemberg, Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine).  Nesterov however is unable to celebrate his triumph, hitting the Albatros too solidly instead of just giving the fragile plane a glancing blow, both aircraft go down and all three men are killed (not strapped in, Nesterov falls out of his plane and dies the following day from his injures).

The Ramming

Nesterov

Ramming not the solution to aerial combat, the French are the next fliers to try to solve the problem of how to fire a machine gun through the turning of an airplane's propeller.  Lending his pioneering aerial prowess to the problem, Eugene Adrien Roland Georges Garros (flying since 1909, before the war begins Garros will set altitude records of 12,960 feet in 1911 and 18,410 feet in 1912, and in 1913 he becomes the first pilot to fly non-stop across the Mediterranean Sea, going from Frejus-Saint Raphael in the south of France to Bizerte, Tunisia in just under eight hours), has his mechanic, Jules Hue, put an armored propeller on his monoplane which deflects the occasional bullet which can't pass through the plane's whirling blades fired from a gas-operated Hotchkiss model 1907 French infantry machine gun designed by Connecticut engineer Benjamin Berkley Hotchkiss.  Using the new setup, flying for Escadrille 23 of the Aeronautique Militaire in single-wing Morane Parasol, on a cold and rainy April 1, 1915, Garros becomes the first pilot to shoot down an enemy plane when flying at 4,500 feet en route to bomb a railway station in Belgium, he spots an enemy Albatros about a thousand feet to his left, closes to a hundred feet and by firing a burst of 24 bullets (the Hotchkiss fires a bullet strip that contains 24 rounds ... Garros goes aloft with two strips in each of his boots) at it through a tractor propeller (a plane configuration with the propeller mounted in front of the engine in which the plane is "pulled" through the air) brings the German plane down (despite being hit by a bullet from the German observer's carbine rifle).  Afterwards, Garros will drive to the crash site to evaluate the kill.  Two more German planes go down before Garros' guns on the 15th and 18th of the month, but then Garros experiences a clogged fuel line that causes him to land behind German lines and become a POW until October of 1918 (escaping by way of the Netherlands and England, he will rejoin the French air force, but sadly, while piloting a Spad XIII on October 5, 1918, the 29-year-old will be shot down and killed by German ace Hermann Habich <seven victories during WWI> flying a Fokker D.VII a month before the war ends and the day before his 30th birthday).  Though known as the war's first ace (the designation denotes a pilot with at least five aerial victories to his credit and comes from the French term "un as" denoting a sportsman or a spectacular feat of skill), with only four verified kills, the honor of being the first fighter pilot ace actually goes to 26-year-old French flier nicknamed "The King of the Sky," Adolphe Celestin Pegoud (the first pilot to make a parachute jump out of a plane, thinking he is first, he will fly the second "loop" in an airplane 12 days after Nesterov accomplishes the feat), who downs six German planes between February 5, 1915 and July 11, 1915 (for luck, he carries a stuffed penguin along on missions), before being killed by one of his before-the-war flight students, Unteroffizier Otto Kandulski (still with us as is Garros and his tennis stadium, Pegoud will be honored by Malley Design of Minneapolis with a line of men's aviation watches bearing the first ace's name).       

Garros

Pegoud

Armored propellers not the long-term answer to aerial combat either (the steel wedges diminish the propeller's efficiency and bullet hits on the props put stress on the crankshaft of a plane's engine ... after a time, either the propeller or the engine fail and crashes ensue), the German's use Garros' captured plane (a quick thinking German infantryman prevents the full destruction of the plane and it's special propeller and machine gun are saved ... when he next receives his pay, the soldier will find he has been awarded a stipend of 100 marks, a sum equivalent to about six months of pay) to springboard forward in creating a successful firing methodology for dominating the skies over Europe.  Several engineers already at work on designing a synchronizer or interrupter gear (the first dates back to 1910) that will pause the flow of forward bullets when the propeller would be hit, 25-year-old Dutch aviation engineer, Anton Herman Gerald "Anthony" Fokker, rejects deflection as an answer after evaluating the propeller and gun (the cooper jacketed bullets that the French use will allow their propellers to survive for awhile, but the steel jacketed German bullets almost instantly eat up their props), and using existing advances by other countries and individuals, quickly comes up with an interrupter gear with a pushrod control mechanism for use in the planes (the newest iteration of the single seat Fokker Eindecker <"monoplane"> is the first aircraft to receive the upgrade) he is manufacturing for Germany (although not in the 48 hours he will claim, historical research after the war will show that his company was already working on a device for six months before Garros' plane is captured).  Before the Germans are willing to equip their planes with the new device though, they demand an aerial demonstration ... from Fokker himself, and for incentive, they find the engineer an oberleutnant's uniform, give him proper ID in case he is captured, and send him up over the town of Douai with orders to shoot something down (balking, he is told that if he doesn't go up, he will be drafted by the Germans and spend the rest of the war in the trenches of the Western Front).  Dutch and neutral, Fokker goes up, but not into being a warrior war and lacking any kind of killer spirit, he never is able to shoot anything down and by May the inventor manages to slip back to his aircraft factory in Schwerin, Germany.  The system nevertheless has a successful test.

The Rescued Prop

Fokker

Flying one of the five prototype single wing Eindecker fighters Fokker has designed with a Parabellum MG14 synchronized machine guns, on Thursday, July 1, 1915, 21-year-old Lt. Kurt Wintgens engages a French observation plane piloted by Captain Paul du Peury (in the observation seat is Lt. Louis de Boutiny) in the skies near the village of Luneville, France.  Though Wintgens' fighter will be hit by a rifle bullet from Lt. de Boutiny, the German pilot, using his forward firing machine gun will be able to put slugs in both men's legs and bring the French plane down (the 22-year-old Wintgens will have 19 victories before he is killed by French ace Alfred Marie-Joseph Heurtaux near Villers-Caronnet, France, service that wins him a Pour le Merite medal for bravery).  At the same time, also flying a Fokker single-wing with a synchronized prototype machine gun that comes to be called "The Green Machine" after it's unique coloring is Lt. Otto Parschu.  The future Pour le Merite winner, will be shot down over Grevillers, France on July 21, 1916 at the age of 25 by Royal Flying Corps pilot John Oliver Andrews (Andrews will survive the war and go on to become an Air Vice Marshal during WWII). but before he leaves he helps train other Prussian fliers at Feldflieger Abeteilung 62 in Douai, two of which will launch a time period of the war that becomes known as "The Fokker Scourge" (the planes shot down by the Germans also are bequeathed a nickname, "Fokker Fodder") ... Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke.

Wintgens Fighter

Wintgens

Parschau And Dog Pal

Born in Dresden on September 21, 1890, Max Immelmann has a rough childhood, losing his father, manufacturer Franz August Immelman, when he is only seven.  With the support of his siblings, a brother named Franz and a sister named Frida, and the guidance and tutelage of his mother, Gertrude Sidonie Grimmer Immelmann, Max grows into an intelligent young man that is fascinated by engines, motor vehicles, and flying machines, enters the Dresden Cadet School at 14, and has plans to make a career as a mechanical engineer.  When he is not studying or building models, Immelmann pursues various athletic endeavors and becomes an excellent athlete, along with devoting his free time to dancing, motoring about the countryside, and promoting the cause of aviation.  His mother also turns him into a vegetarian and non-smoking teetotaler, traits that don't sit well at first with some of his fellow squadron members (although he will eat meat in the field at the airfields he is assigned to).  Until the spring of 1916, he will write home to his mother every day.  He becomes a pilot in November of 1914, flying two-seater observation planes without much success (until he is almost killed when a English Farman MF.11 fires a machine gun at him for the first time, putting bullets in his right wing, through the engine bed, and one that nicks the main fuselage spar holding the entire plane together ... for getting his plane safely home, he will be awarded an Iron Cross) assigned to try out one of Fokker's prototype fighters, a change that results in the flier downing his first aircraft two weeks after Winthens initial victory, besting Lt. William Reid who fires a pistol at the German with his right hand while flying with his left hand.  It is not much of a defense when Immelmann counters by sending 450 rounds at the Englishman (the encounter lasts ten minutes, chiefly because Immelmann will have to keep unjamming his machine gun, a job requiring two hands), bullets that hit Reid in the arm four times and that knock out the plane's engine, causing it to crash land   Behind German lines, Immelmann will then land near the crash and shake hands with Reid, before declaring to the wounded pilot, "You are my prisoner," pulling the man out of the wreckage of his plane and rendering him first-aid.  With the victory, Immelmann is off and running and shoots down three more planes in September of 1915.  In October, he is sent to Lille, France and becomes known as "The Eagle of Lille" for his single-handed defense of the skies over the city.  With his successes, Immelmann will become the first German ace of the war and will invent what becomes known as the "Immelmann Turn" or simply an "Immelmann," a dogfighting maneuver in which after making a diving attack, the attacker climbs back up past the enemy aircraft, and just short of stalling, applies full rudder and yaw to his aircraft, is then able to put himself in position for another diving attack on his foe or go after a different opponent.  For such flying, Immelmann becomes the first German aviator to be awarded the Pour Le Merite, which because it is blue and given to Immelman first from then on receives the nickname, "The Blue Max."     

Max And His Mastiff Dog Tyras

Immelmann And His Fighter

On January 12, 1916, the same day as his friend, squadron mate, and fellow citizen of the Prussian province of Saxony, Max Immelmann, receives his Pour Le Merite medal for his eighth aerial victory, 24-year-old pilot Oswald Boelcke, also flying a Fokker prototype, shoots down his eighth plane too, and is also awarded a Pour Le Merite.  The son of a conservative schoolteacher Wolfram Boelcke and his wife, Kaitlyn Boarsh (the family also includes two older brothers, Wilhelm and Friederich), Oswald is born on May 19, 1891 in the town of Giebichenstein six months after the family returns to Germany from an Argentinian teaching job (the man is also the rector at a German Lutheran school).  At three, the youth catches whooping cough that leads to lifelong problems with asthma, but he deals with the affliction much like Teddy Roosevelt does, and throws himself into athletic endeavors that transform him into an accomplished sportsman who plays tennis, soccer, rows, ice-skates, runs cross-country races, swims and dives competitively, climbs mountains (an expert mountaineer himself, Wolfram Sr. will note that his son always heads for the steepest cliffs, "It was when danger threatened that his young soul leaped with joy"), skis, and is his school's best gymnast (in 1914, he also does well enough in the pentathlon to qualify to run the event at the 1916 Olympic Games scheduled to take place in Berlin).  When not enjoying physical adventures, he also enjoys squiring the local lovelies around.  And somehow he also manages to excel in the subjects of physics and mathematics.  As a young adult, Boelcke stands 5'7" in height on a well muscled frame, has blonde hair, is blue-eyed and maintains a easy-going demeanor that makes him popular with the boys, girls, and teachers at his school.

Boelcke

His love of flying begins when he is only four years old and his father moves the family to the town of Dessau, where a Junkers factory (the Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works) manufactures a variety of German aircraft and airplane motors which the youth gets to watch daily as the companies products are tested in the skies of Saxony.  Expected to follow his father into the teaching profession, Boelcke instead decides to pursue a career in the military and learn how to fly.  With that goal in mind, he writes a personal letter to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm, requesting an appointment to military school, and actually gets back a reply in 1911 in which the Kaiser approves Boelcke's appointment but asks that he "complete your grammar school subjects before you report."  Complying with the Kaiser's request, Boelcke graduates from Duke Frederick's High School with an Abitur honors degree in 1911.  Taking courses to become an officer at the War School in Metz, the youth gets "fair" grades on his written tests, "very good" marks on his oral questioning, and finds himself marked "excellent" for his leadership skills.  In July of 1912 he graduates from school, is commissioned an Ensign (very quickly upgraded to lieutenant) and settles into a routine of training recruit telegraphers and chasing after the local ladies (in 1913 while in Frankfurt, Boelcke is impressed when he witnesses an aerobatic flying performance by pioneer French aviator, Adolphe Pegoud), but bored, in June of 1914 he transfers to the Halberstadt Flying School and begins a six-week course to receive his certification as a pilot.  His first posting after graduation is to remain at Halberstadt and train 50 rookie pilots in mastering the German Aviatik B.I two-seat reconnaissance biplane.  When WWI starts in the summer of 1914, eager to see action, Boelcke connives his way into serving with Feldflieger Abteilung 13 watching over a sector of skies over the front running through the Argonne Forest near Varennes.  Working with his older brother Wilhelm as the NCO observer, the pair soon are out-performing the rest of the men in their unit, and both will receive Iron Crosses for successfully flying 40 missions ... Wilhelm with 61 and Oswald with 42 (by contrast in the squadron, the next highest number of sorties after Oswald's count is one active airman with 27 outings).  Not wanting the brothers serving in the same unit, let alone the same hazardous plane (and certainly not wanting them together after they outrage their superiors by bypassing the chain of command to argue the situation and threaten the command that if parted they will do no more flying), instead of being court-martialed or shot for refusing orders, Wilhelm is sent back to Germany for leave and Oswald is sent to the newly formed Feldflieger Abteilung 13 operating out of La Brayelle in Douai, France.  Less than a month later, becoming the most experienced pilot in his unit just with his transfer, Boelcke becomes a part of Kampfeinsitzerkommando Douai (Combat Single-Seater Command Douai), where he meets and becomes best friends with Max Immelmann.

Boelcke (With Griffin Football Haircut)

LVG C.II Observation Plane

Squadron Lunch - L to R - Lt. Ernst Hess, Lt. Albert Oesterreicher, 

Boelcke, And Immelmann

Boelcke and his observer make the unit's first kill on July 4, 1915, when they shoot down a French Parasol observation plane spotting for the artillery (after a chase of thirty minutes, the killing comes quite quickly after seven slugs are put in the pilot, and another three put the back seat gunner to induce their permanent sleep ... both victors will visit the graves of the French fliers and will be very impressed by the bouquets of red, white, and blue flowers that cover their foes' resting places).  The Fokker Scourge just beginning, the first and second kills for both Immelmann and Boelcke begin the first rivalry of aerial warriors to shoot down the most planes, and both the German military command and the German newspapers take note (the men, and subsequent fliers will be rewarded for their successes with medals, mentions in dispatches, and private conversations, lunches, and intimate dinners with German royalty and high-ranking military officers ... Immelmann will have dinner with the Crown Prince of Bavaria, the King of Saxony will commission a plate of Meissen china from the Royal Saxon Porcelain Works depicting the pilot attacking an enemy biplane, and he will receive personal congratulatory notes from the Kaiser himself, while Boelcke becomes a favorite lunch and dinner guest of the Kaiser's son, the Crown Prince of Germany & Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst).  With others in the race too to be the war's top fighter pilot (Germany's Wintgens will have three confirmed victories in 1915, France's Pegoud will be killed after his sixth victory on August 31 of 1915,  24-year-old British aerial innovator Lanoe Hawker will have seven victories before the year is out, three in one day for which he receives a Victoria Cross for bravery, and German pilot Hans-Joachim Buddecke, flying another single-winged Fokker has three kills during the year), Immelmann and Boelcke start the month of September with two victories each.  Boelcke goes ahead with #3 when he downs a Morane two-seater on the 9th, with Immelmann catching him with his third victory on the 21st, then Boelcke gets his fourth plane on the 25th, which Immelmann matches on the 10th of October.  Then Boelcke goes ahead with victory #5 on the 16th and #6 on the 30th, and Immelmann matches his rival with his sixth kill on November 7th (for their sixth victories, both men will be awarded the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern medal), downing a British Bristol Scout occupied by Captain Theodore Dowson Adams and Lt. Owen Vincent Le Bas (during his contest with Immelmann, Boelcke will also somehow find the time to also win a Prussian Life Saving Medal for the rescue a drowning French teenager while on leave).  In December, Immelmann is ahead of Boelcke by one plane, but Boelcke catches him again on January 5, 1916.

Immelmann's Seventh

Boelcke's Seventh

On the morning of January 12, 1916, Immelmann goes out on patrol and discovers a British observation plane at about 9,000 feet above the town of Bapaume.  Engaging the aircraft with a frontal pass, Immelman then extends the confrontation into a turning battle at which his Fokker is superior to the British Vickers.  One hundred scoring rounds later, wounded, his observer dead and his plane on fire, Lt. Herbert Thomas Keep manages to crash land and get clear of his plane.  Watching the Vickers burn, the pilot is surprised when just a short time later he is joined by Immelmann.  Kemp will have a short talk with the victor, "You are Immelmann?  You are well known to us.  Your victory today is another fine sporting success for you."  The Vickers is Immelmann's eighth victory of the war and he is the top fighter pilot in the world ... for a few minutes.  Unbeknownst to Immelmann, at about the same time northeast of Tourcoing, Boelcke gets into a dogfight that lasts over thirty minutes as the planes each maneuver to find the best firing position, a contest Boelcke wins for his eighth victory also (Buddecke is claiming nine planes shot down at the time, but four can't be confirmed).  That night at mess, both pilots will receive the first two Pour Le Merites of the war to be awarded to fliers (later in the war, it will take twenty kills to get the medal).  Both men become instantly famous and can't walk the streets in any town in Germany without a crowd gathering.

The Blue Max

For four months, though Boelcke has been sent to the Metz area in anticipation of the Battle of Verdun beginning, the Immelmann versus Boelcke rivalry for top aerial ace goes on as two days after being awarded the Max, Boelcke gets his ninth victory over a British B.E.2c near Flers.  February is uneventful for both pilots as rainy weather and an intestinal ailment keep Boelcke grounded, and Immelmann discovers that his area of the front is empty of opponents (unless they fly in a group of ten planes or more) because his abilities have filled the enemy with fear.  With new planes on both sides appearing at the front and a change in the weather, both pilots will have plenty of targets to fire upon in March as Boelcke becomes the first pilot in the war to down ten planes.  On the 13th of the month, the two men again draw even with each other at eleven confirmed victories, but Immelmann goes into the lead on the 19th when he has a victory in the morning and gets another in the late afternoon, a Bristol Scout and a B.E.2c falling to his guns (visiting one of the pilots in the hospital, Immelmann will be given a letter for delivery to the British flier's family and friends ... a letter that Immelmann flies across enemy lines to drop on the man's home airfield).  As March ends, both men have thirteen victories.

B.E.2c

Bristol Scout

Also in March, Boelcke is given command of Fliegerabteilung Sivry (Flying Detachment Sivry), a squadron of six fighter planes.  And he connects his squadron's activities to a nearby front line observation post establishing the first tactical air direction center.  The month will also find him submitting his evaluation of the new Fokker Eindecker, and he pulls no punches in describing the aircraft as having inaccurately mounted guns and a underperforming rotary engine.  On his own, he also submits a memorandum to his new friends in the German high command on how the country is misusing it's airpower, calling it "wretched."  Reacting to the air superiority of the Germans and soon ending the Fokker Scourge, in 1916, the French begin flying their new biplane single seat fighter, the Nieuport 11, while the British introduce aeronautical engineer Geoffrey de Havilland's latest fighter, the single seat pusher biplane, the Airco DH.2 that fires forward from outside the width of the propeller turning (and in turn, the Germans will replace the quickly growing obsolescent Fokker E.III with the Halberstadt D.II single gun and the twin gun Albatros D.1 biplane fighters).

German Captured Nieuport II

Airco DH.2

Halberstadt D.II

Albatros D.I

Meanwhile, Immelmann begins to allow the race with Boelcke and the constant danger of flying fighter missions to affect his nerves and judgment (a fellow pilot will describe him as being "a bundle of nerves" who only seems to find joy when playing with his pet dog, Tyras, who also sleeps nightly in the pilot's bed).  Becoming somewhat vain (in the air he wears an old tunic and equally ancient velvet trousers, but on the ground he is dressed immaculately), the pilot has multiple pictures taken of himself everytime he receives a new award as his squadron begin addressing him as "your exalted Majesty."  And the awards continue as Immelman takes over the top spot from Boelcke with his 14th victory on April 23rd, Easter Sunday of 1916, when he sends a British Vickers F.B.5 into the ground.  Thinking two easy kills will be his, two days later Immelmann attacks a pair of the new British Airco DH.2 fighters from the English No. 24 Squadron working in tandem (Lt. Andrews and Lt. Manfield) and is almost shot down when rounds hit the German's fuel tank, the plane's struts, the Fokker's undercarriage, and the fighter's propeller, escaping going into a nose dive of over 1,000 yards (Immelmann will describe the encounter as "not being nice business").  On April 28th, Boelcke catches Immelman with 14 confirmed victories, and passes his friend with his 15th kill on May 1st, sending a French biplane into the ground.  His 16th, 17th, and 18th victories all come in May too.  Out to increase his total once more, Immelmann in the company of two fellow FA 62 pilots, attacks a formation of five British two seat observation biplanes and two British Martinsyde fighters.  Flying the last variant of the Fokker single wing fighter, Immelman puts himself in position to down his 15th enemy aircraft, but instead, experiences a large jolt when he triggers the Fokker's twin machine guns.  The Fokker horribly vibrating, Immelmann cuts the fuel and ignition on his plane and discovers that a malfunction with the synchronizer gear has caused his own guns to shoot off half of his propeller, which in turn has wrenched the engine out of alignment.  Nose heavy, a moment later the plane begins a spiraling descent that barely allows Immelmann to crash land beside the Cambrai-Douai road.  On Sunday, June 18, 1916, flying with 15 victories (he shoots down a British Scout on 5/16/1916), Immelmann's luck will be even worse.

Immelmann

Leading a four plane patrol, Immelmann's bullets force down a British F.E.2b two seat observation plane of the 25 Squadron near the town of Arras.  His plane having taken damage to it's struts and wings in the dogfighting that results in Immelmann's 16th victory, and not yet repaired by the time another patrol is launched in the late afternoon, the flier borrows a reserve fighter at his base and takes off to join his comrades.  In the skies above northern France, Immelmann encounters a massive dogfight covering over 30 square miles of air, with four Germans mixing it up with four F.E.2bs, two more Germans to the northeast attacking another four British observation planes, while two more Fokkers head northeast too to even out the combat odds, and as if aerial confusion isn't intense enough, German anti-aircraft guns pump shell after shell into the melee of planes overhead.  Spying possible prey as he arrives at the scene of the clash, the man known as "The Eagle" spies his next target, sets off a white flare to tell the flak positions below to momentarily cease fire while he attacks, and then dives into an attack on the F.E.2b piloted by 2nd Lt. John Raymond Boscawen Savage.  Unleashing strikes on the British plane, Immelmann mortally wounds Savage (the observer will survive) and brings down his foe for victory number 17, then pulls away to look for another opponent.  Spotting a F.E.2b piloted by 2nd Lt. George Reynolds McCubbin (with Corporal James Henry Waller as his second seat gunner), Immelmann begins the upward turn maneuver he has made famous, but as Waller fires at him as he passes by, the German's fighter pitches up bucking and flapping as it stalls over its left wing, and then suddenly breaks in two behind the cockpit.  Plunging into a death dive, the wings of the plane tear off and the wreckage falls 6,000 feet to the ground.  There will be no 18th victory for Immelmann and the pilot is only identified by the initials embroidered on his handkerchief and by the Pour le Merite found around his broken neck.

Savage

Last Dogfight

The Remains Of Immelmann's Fokker

The ace gone at the age of only 25, the official cause of his death is different for the British and the Germans.  While several British pilots will claim the victory, the RFC's commanding officer, Hugh Montague Trenchard, examines the reports of the fight and gives credit for the kill to McCubbin, who is wounded in the arm during the air battle and is recovering in a British hospital (McCubbin will receive a Distinguished Service Order), while Waller will be promoted to sergeant and is given a Distinguished Conduct Medal (he is also awarded the Russian Medal of St. George, First Class).  Not satisfied that Immelmann could be killed in aerial combat, the Germans examine the wreckage of the ace's fighter and come to a different conclusion ... the synch gear on Immelmann's machine gun has failed and he has shot his own propeller off with disastrous consequences (the Immelmann family believes friendly fire from German anti-aircraft guns has done the deed).  Whatever the cause, the German nation is horrified at the loss of their star pilot as he receives a sombre state funeral in his hometown of Dresden.  Honor still to be found among the men battling in the skies, on the day of Immelmann's funeral, a British observation plane occupied by British pilot Allister M. Miller and gunner Howard O. Houp flies over the dead German's home field and drops a wreath on the runway which contains the message: "We have come over to drop this wreath as a tribute of the respect the British Flying Corps held for Lieut. Immelmann. We consider it an honor to have been detailed for this special work. Lt. Immelmann was respected by all British airmen, one and all agreeing that he was a thorough sportsman.

The Funeral

McCubbin Recovering

Funeral over, worried that he might lose his other ace, Kaiser Wilhelm II grounds Boelcke after the Prussian shoots down his 19th plane of the war.  The pilot is not happy despite the Kaiser disregarding army regulations prohibiting the promotion of individuals to Hauptmann until the age of 30 and making Boelcke that rank ten days after his 25th birthday for his twin victories, #17 and #18 on May 21st, the youngest captain in the entire German army.  The new captain's ire increases when he is ordered to share his aerial expertise at headquarters with the officer charged with reorganizing the German air service from the Fliegertruppe (Flying Troops) to the Luftstreitkraffe (Air Force), General Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen.  The results of their talk though and Boelcke thoughts about air combat result in his writing down his rules for fighter pilots, which become known as Dicta Boelcke.  Containing eight simple rules for aerial combat the ace has come to through hard won experience, the dicta are:

1. Always try to secure an advantageous position before attacking. Climb before and during the approach in order to surprise the enemy from above, and dive on him swiftly from the rear when the moment to attack is at hand.
2. Try to place yourself between the sun and the enemy. This puts the glare of the sun in the enemy's eyes and makes it difficult to see you and impossible for him to shoot with any accuracy.
3. Do not fire the machine guns until the enemy is within range and you have him squarely within your sights.
4. Attack when the enemy least expects it or when he is preoccupied with other duties such as observation, photography, or bombing.
5. Never turn your back and try to run away from an enemy fighter. If you are surprised by an attack on your tail, turn and face the enemy with your guns.
6. Keep your eye on the enemy and do not allow him to deceive you with tricks. If your opponent seems damaged, follow him down until he crashes to be sure he is not faking.
7. Foolish acts of bravery only bring death. The Jasta (squadron) must fight as a unit with close teamwork between all pilots. The signals of its leaders must be obeyed.
8. For the Staffel (squadron): Attack in principle in groups of four or six. When the fight breaks up into a series of single combats, take care that several do not go for one opponent.

Distributed throughout the German air force in pamphlet form (two years before anything similar is published by the French or British), Boelcke's rules become the world's first tactical air combat manual (at the same time, the ace promotes the idea of fighter schools for flying novices and a reorganization of fighter planes, pilots, and ground assets into squadrons).  Rules completed, Boelcke is then sent on a tour of the Balkans in July of 1916, just days after the British begin their Somme Offensive in which three million men will fight for over four months, with almost 900,000 becoming casualties, and the British challenging the German's air superiority (as the Somme Battle begins, the British will have air assets of 185 planes, while the French have 201 more, confronting them though, the Fokker Scourge over with, are 129 German planes, of which only 19 are fighter planes).     

Lieth-Thomsen

Whether an act or real, wined and dined by high ranking military officers and important politicians Boelcke appears to enjoy his time in the east as the ranking German war hero of the time.  A six week holiday mixed with a celebrity tour and dusted with military facility inspections (the ace will spend time with Turkish Ottoman Empire leader and military officer Enver Pasha and Ottoman Empire military advisor, German General of Cavalry, Otto Viktor Karl Liman von Sanders), Boelcke is joined on many of his revels by his good friend Oberleutnant Hans-Joachim Buddecke (a three day beach vacation at the ancient Greek town of Smyrna is very much appreciated and enjoyed by both fliers).  Germany to Vienna and Austria, then on to Budapest and from there a mail steamer takes him to Constantinople.  On July 30th, the fighter pilot visits the Gallipoli battlefield (during his visit to Turkey the ace also gets a tour of another new weapon in the German arsenal, receiving a walk through of an Unterseeboot, the submarine U-38), but when he returns to Constantinople he receives new orders to return home ... his absence from the front has been noticed by trench-serving Germans that have begun to grouse about why there only seem to be British planes in the skies over France.  Returning to France by way of Bulgaria, the Russian Front, and Germany, Boelcke gets to visit with his brother Wilhelm before receiving his latest orders, with all haste, form and lead by the principles he has established, a fighter squadron of the best German pilots available (it will be known as Jagdstaffeln 2, and still in operation decades later, will be called Jasta Boelcke).

Leaving Base For His Inspection Tour

L To R - Buddecke, Von Sanders, And Boelcke
    

In the reorganization of the German air force to regain air superiority on the Western Front, six existing Combat Single-Seater Commands are expanded into fighter squadrons, while a seventh is to formed from scratch by Boelcke, who is to lead the unit and can recruit pilots from other units.  Based on the recommendations of his brother, the ace's first choice is a Prussian aristocrat and former cavalry officer that will eventually supplant Boelcke in fame and aerial victories as the man becomes "The Red Baron," Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (though he doesn't survive, Richthofen will end the war as the war's ace-of-aces with 80 confirmed victories ... asking his commander directly how he has been so successful against the British, Boelcke will laughingly respond, "Good heavens, it indeed is quite simple. I fly in as close as I can, take good aim, shoot, and then he falls down.").  The commander's second choice is a  champion swimmer, an expert ice skater and skier, and a premiere alpinist of the time, along with being a civil engineer before becoming a flier during the war, Erwin Bohme (the former engineer for German East Africa's Usambara Railway will score 24 aerial victories before perishing in November of 1917 at the age of 38), Boelcke future friend, wingman, and inadvertent contributor to his mentor's death.  Boelcke starts with four empty buildings in the Velu Woods and a fledgling squadron of three officers and 64 other men of various ranks, but no aircraft.  By September 11th, there are eight pilots in the squadron and four planes.  As the squadron slowly comes to life, Boelcke begins transforming the unit into a likeness of himself (he sums up his leadership style by stating, "You can win the men's confidence if you associate with them naturally and do not try to play high and mighty superior.").  The men receive training on firing and trouble-shooting the machine guns that will be mounted on their planes, must attend lectures are given on aircraft recognition and the attributes of various types of planes being flown by the Germans' opponents, and they familiarize themselves with the fighters they will be flying.  Then the fliers begin learning aerial tactics covering the duties of a leader and a wingman, attacking in pairs, formation flying, spacing themselves no more than 65 yards from each other to prevent aerial collisions, and acting on the principles in Boelcke's Dicta.  Meanwhile, the squadron's commander flies solo missions in the morning and increases his victory total to 26, scoring double victories against the British on the 14th and 15th of the month.  On the 16th of the month, six new Albatros D fighters are received by the squadron (the biplane is faster, can climb quicker, and has a higher ceiling than anything in the French or British inventories, and it is equipped with two synchronized machine guns in its nose) and after a day becoming familiar with the planes, the squadron is ready for it's first mission on the 17th. 

von Richthofen

Bohme

The Albatros D.II

While each individual Boelcke picks for his squadron differs, the majority will bear certain traits that combine to make a fighter pilot.  Guts, the capacity to make quick decisions, aggressiveness, attitude, confidence, endurance, and "good hands" allowing the flier to fly and fight at the same time (the same attributes will be found in the ranks of French, British, Canadian, and American pilots, and in the fliers of other countries such as Japan as the century progresses).  As noted in a 1918 survey by Dr. T. S. Rippon and pilot E. G. Manuel of 61 English aviators, the typical combat flier of the time is an unmarried male youth under the age of 25 that has excellent eyesight, is in good health, is high-spirited, and has outstanding coordination with favorite pastimes being mixes of speed and movement like driving race cars, motorcycles, and horseback riding, along with playing a wide variety of sports, dancing, enjoying a riotous evening now and then, and of course, chasing women (natural history, music, and theater also prove to be reliable pilot amusements).  Not an occupation for everyone, the first fighter pilots of the war will have a higher casualty rate than individuals serving in infantry units, and the life expectancy of a pilot at the front is about two weeks ... and even the best and most experienced fliers are subject to falling as is reflected in realities such as these:

*Manfred von Richthofen (German) - 80 victories, dead at 25

*Erich Loewenhardt (German) - 54 victories, dead at 21

*Werner Voss (German) - 48 victories, dead at 20

*Fritz Rumey (German) - 45 victories, dead at 27

*Heinrich Gontermann (German) - 39 victories, dead at 21

*Max Ritter von Muller (German) - 36 victories, dead at 31

*Georges Guynemer (French) - 54 victories, dead at 22

*Maurice Jean-Paul Boyau (French) - 35 victories, dead at 30

*Edward Corringham "Mick" Mannock (British) - 73 victories, dead at 31

*James Thomas Byford McCudden (British) - 57 victories, dead at 23

*Robert Alexander Little (Australia) - 47 victories, dead at 22

*George Edward Henry McElroy (British) - 47 victories, dead at 25

*Albert Ball (British) - 44 victories, dead at 20

*Roderic Stanley Dallas (Australia) - 39 victories, dead at 26

*Francesco Baracca (Italian) - 34 victories, dead at 30

*Michel Joseph Callixte Marie Coiffard (French) - 34 victories, dead at 26

*Francis Granger Quigley (Canadian) - 33 victories, dead at 24

*Kurt Robert Wilhelm Wolff (German) - 33 victories, dead at 22

*Karl Allmenroder (German) - 30 victories, dead at 21

*Karl Emil Schafer (German) - 30 victories, dead at 25

*Samuel Frederick Henry Thompson (British) - 30 victories, dead at 28    

*Frank Luke Jr. (American) - 19 victories, dead at 21

Guynemer & Ball

On Sunday afternoon, September 17, 1916, Boelcke leads four other fliers on the squadron's first combat mission over Equancourt, France.  Following the doctrine he has established, Boelcke drops down on a British F.E.2b two-seat observation plane and sends it into a crashing spiral for his 27th victory ... his men also drop four more English planes, including Lt. von Richthofen shooting down his first plane of the war (he will also start giving himself 2-inch silver cups engraved with the date, time, place, type of plane shot down and the name of the pilot ... there will be 60 in the Baron's collection before he does away with the affectation not because of any horror about celebrating death, but because his Berlin jeweler can no longer get war blockaded pure silver and anything else just won't do ... for his first kill, he also takes his first wreckage souvenir to display in the trophy room of his parents' home ... the observation plane's machine gun), another F.E.2 observation plane, killing its.pilot, Lt. Lionel Morris, and observer, Captain Tom Rees.  Following the group's first mission, Boelcke starts the tradition of debriefing his men when they return to the airfield.  Rainy weather on the 22nd aggravates Boelcke's asthma deeply enough that he can't fly, but he refuses to go to the hospital and instead follows his men's mission from the Jasta 2's airfield, and helps coordinate the squadron's transfer from Bertincourt to Lagnicourt when British artillery begins falling too close for comfort.  Gratified that his training is producing results, he is proud when his men fly six sorties wihout him, but under the guidance of Oberleutnant Gunter Viehweger, shooting down three planes.  Okayed to fly again and back in command, Boelcke closes out September by shooting down his tenth plane of the month on the 27th, for his 29th confirmed victory of the war.  Summing up the activities of his squadron for the month, Jasta 2 is credited with flying 186 sorties, 69 of which result in combat, combat that finds Boelcke and five others shooting down 25 planes.  As requested by the Kaiser and the German high command, the German ace has wrested aerial superiority from the British on the Somme front at a cost of four casualties.  In October, Boelcke and the squadron will battle even harder to maintain their advantage ... and there will be more casualties.

Boelcke's Biplane

Boelcke

October begins with more successes for Boelcke and Jasta 2.  On the first day of the month, the ace adds victory #30 to his total by downing a Bristol Scout northwest of the French town of Flers.  Foul weather in northern France however cancels any more flying until the 7th of the month, when Jasta 2 begins flying again and Boelcke bags a French Nieuport 12 fighter near Morvai.  Three days later he and the squadron are successful again in the skies over Morvai, with Boelcke downing another British observation plane while his men fly 31 sorties, engage in combat in 18 of them, and down five more planes.  The unit goes up again on the 16th, and adds four more planes to their triumphs, with Boelcke getting confirmed kills for a British two-seater and a British single-seat fighter.  British observation planes also fall to Boelcke on the 17th and 20th of the month.  Boelcke has another double victory day on the 22nd, scoring triumphs over a Sopwith Strutter and a B.E.12 fighter, gets his 39th victory three days later (a B.E.2 observation plane), before bringing down his 40th plane on the 26th (another B.E.2).  He is the leading fighter pilot in the world (by contrast the man that will finish the war in first with 80 victories, Manfred von Richthofen, will have a total of 4 triumphs by October 26, 1916).  Lessons learned well, between mid-September and mid-October, the German air force will pot 211 enemy aircraft while taking 39 casualties.  Within the German totals, for the month of October, Jasta 2 will shoot down 26 planes while suffering only six casualties ... one of those casualties however is huge!

Boelcke In His Flying Kit

Members Of Jasta 2 - L To R - Lts Stefan Kirmaier (11 victories ... dead at 27),

    Hans Imelmann (6 victories ... dead at 19), Manfred von Richthofen 

(80 victories ... dead at 25), Hans Wortmann (2 victories ... dead in 1917)

After a full day of flying and paperwork, a weary Boelcke goes to the squadron mess for a little down time, but leaves when some of the unit's pilots rollick too loudy.  Retreating to his room, he growls to his batman about too much noise as he sits and silently stares into the fireplace flames heating his room.  Not invited but welcome anyway, his best friend in the squadron Bohme shows up and the two men have a quiet conversation about life and the war until an orderly knocks on the door and suggests the men retire as they have an early morning patrol to fly.  The next morning dawns misty with lots of clouds, not ideal flying conditions, but the group goes up on four missions, each led by Boelcke, and in the afternoon the captain flies a fifth patrol before returning to base.  Interrupting a chess game he is playing with Bohme, at 4:00 in the afternoon the squadron receives a request to fly a sixth patrol in support of a local infantry advance before night falls and operations are over until tomorrow.  It is all Boelcke needs to hear and he quickly takes off again, leading Bohme, von Richthofen, and three other Jasta 2 pilots towards the town of Flers, where the fliers discover and attack two Airco DH2 fighters from the RFC 24 Squadron commanded by Captain Lanoe Hawker, one piloted by 21-year-old Canadian ace Captain Arthur Gerald Knight (the Red Baron's 13th victim, he will be killed by von Richthofen on December 20, 1916) and the other by 23-year-old Lt. Alfred Edwin McKay (he will be killed by Pour Le Merite ace Carl Menckhoff on December 28, 1917).

Knight & McKay

Visibility poor and the air bumpy with invisible obstacles, six more German fighters arrive in the area.  Overkill apparent, the late afternoon plays out differently as von Richthofen goes after McKay, while Knight tries to escape Boelcke and Bohme as the Germans attempt to trap him between their guns.  Meanwhile, the other German fliers swirl about like vultures as they await their own turns to go after the British pilots.  Closing on Knight after five minutes of dogfighting, Boelcke and Bohme are suddenly surprised when McKay's fighter cuts in front of them while the pilot desperately attempts to get away from von Richthofen.  Maneuvering instantly to avoid a collision with the British fighter, Boelcke and Bohme swerve away from McKay but find they are now only feet from each other.  Now trying to escape colliding with each other, Bohme pulls the nose of his fighter up and Boelcke lowers his, but the fliers are too close to each other and with a sudden jolt the biplanes graze each other with Bohme's undercarriage lightly touching the tip of Boelcke's upper wing on the left side.  A death blow, the fabric on Boelcke's upper wing tears from the contact, his ride loses lift and the Albatros spirals downward through a cloud, the wing finally tearing off as it is is buffeted by turbulence while still 1,500 feet in the air.  Fighting to gain control of his fighter, Boelcke is amazingly able to make a soft crash landing of the Albatros near a German artillery battery outside the village of Bapaume.  The crash appears survivable, but in Boelcke's haste to get aloft for a six sortie, he has failed to put on a crash helmet or safety shoulder harness.  Hitting the ground, the captain's head snaps forward and makes violent contact with one of the plane's machine guns, fracturing the pilot's skull and killing him instantly.  Boelcke dies as the leading fighter pilot of the war with his victory totally frozen forever at 40 triumphs ... he is 25-years-old.

Last Photo

About To Collide

Collision

Fighting control issues of his own, Bohme pulls away from Boelcke's descent and is barely able to return to base missing his undercarriage.  Landing without wheels, Bohme flips the biplane over, but being strapped in, survives the crash.  On the ground a distraught Bohme is inconsolable as he cries over his role in the death of his best friend and thinks about blowing his brains out with a pistol (while his own crash landing is completely forgotten).  Calmed down by the rest of the squadron (Bohme will blame himself for the accident for the rest of his short life), the engineer turned fighter pilot will fly again in November and in the months ahead will reach a victory total of 24 enemy planes, win an Iron Cross, First Class, be awarded the House Order of Hohenzollern, spends time in a hospital recovering from being shot in left arm, commands Jasta 29 and Jasta 2, is awarded a Pour Le Merite, and is killed on November 29, 1917 with a love letter to his fiancee Annamarie that he'd been unable to post in a pocket of his burnt and bloody flight suit (kept as a victory souvenir by a British soldier, Annamarie will finally get Bohme's last letter in 1921 ... in 1930, Bohme's letters to her will be published by Professor Johannes Werner under the title, "Letters From a German Fighter Pilot to a Young Maiden").  That evening at the Jasta 2 airfield, a British plane flys over and drops a wreath with a simple message upon it: "To the memory of Catain Boelcke, our brave and chivalrous opponent.  From the English Royal Flying Corps."

Jasta Mess - Boelcke Is At Far Right With

Bohme Behind Him

A national hero dead, as German begins mourning the fall of the fighter pilot, Boelcke, despite being a Protestant, receives a massive sendoff at the Cambrai's "Virgin of Tenderness" Catholic Cathedral on October 31, 1916 (it is filmed for later viewing by the German public in movie theaters).  At the head of the funeral procession, Manfred von Richthofen will be honored to walk carrying a cushion displaying Boelcke's many decorations.  Six huge black horses pull a flower covered carriage containing the ace's flag draped casket as fighters criss-cross slowly overhead (there will be tributes from French, Italian, and British POWs that survived encountering the ace, including a wreath from victim #20, Captain Robert Eric Wilson and three other British prisoner pilots that is addressed to, "The opponent we admired and esteemed so highly.").  In attendance at the event will be Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, First Army commander, General der Infanterie Fritz Theodor Carl von Below, and a host of other German royalty and military officers, two of whom will give speeches.  Ceremony over, the funeral procession marches to the train station through an honor guard firing rifle salutes.  A day long journey by train takes Boelcke back to his hometown in Dessau, Germany where another funeral for the flier takes place at St. John's Church on the 2nd of November featuring more royalty, military officers, and family in attendance, another von Richthofen walk with the fallen ace's medals, a funeral oration from Prussian General Moriz Freiherr von Lyncker, comments from General Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen, and a flying tribute in which the pilots passing over the gravesite cut their engines and silently glide over the grave of their fallen friend.  Boelcke is buried in a memorial tomb at Dessau's Ehrenfriedhof (Cemetery of Honor).  

Boelcke In State

Boelcke's Funeral

Inside The Church

Boelcke's Tomb

With Boelcke gone, Lt Stefan Kirmaier takes over operating Jasta 2, a job the 27-year-old lieutenant will have for less than a month (he is killed by future WWII British Air Vice Marshal, John Oliver Andrews).  In all, during WWI, Jasta 2 (renamed Jasta Boelcke after the pilot's death) will be led by ten different German pilots, and with Boelcke's original training and his remembered leadership still guiding the unit, the Jasta will go on to be successful throughout the remainder of the war, scoring 336 victories by 11/11/1918 against casualties of 44 men, often attaining a kill ratio of 12 to 1 (the second highest victory total for any German squadron other than Jasta 11).  Of the fifteen pilots originally chosen by Boelcke to be members of Jasta 2, eight will become aces and three of the men will lead the squadron after their mentor's death.  In all, 25 fliers will become aces for the squadron during WWI, with the aces accounting for 90% of the unit's victories (and four of the unit's aces will become generals during WWII, Gerhard Bassenge (7 kills), Ernst Bormann (17 kills), Hermann Frommherz (32 kills), and Otto Hohne (6 kills).  Boelcke's two best pupils though based on the results they achieved are Lt. Werner Voss, an ace with 48 victories to his credit before being killed in 1917 at the age of 20 while dogfighting eight different aces of the No. 56 Squadron RFC (he puts bullets into all the planes of his opponents), and Voss' best friend and rival for top German ace, Manfred von Richthofen who will perish from ground fire on April 21, 1918 with 80 victories at the age of 25.  .   

Voss And His Fokker

Von Richthofen (R) And His Brother 

Gone, Boelcke still is an influence on military aviation.  Flying skill and leadership on display almost daily, the man known as "The Father of Air Combat" is the progenitor of air-to-air combat tactics, fighter squadron organization, early-warning systems to alert fighter squadrons of enemy movements, creation of the first fighter school training pilots (Jastaschule), and in his success against the British and French, he becomes a hero to his fellow pilots and to the German people, while at the same time being respected (and copied) by his opponents.  During World War II, a medium bomber wing of the Luftwaffe is named "Kampfgeschwader 27 Boelcke," a Luftwaffe barracks in Thuringia is named the "Boelcke Barracks."  There is also a "Boelcke" Street in Berlin, and another barracks named for the ace in the town of Koblenz, on a "Boelcke" Street, another "Boelcke" Street out of the town of Kerpen will have yet another "Boelcke" Street running northwest to two more barracks named for the ace, one of which also will have an officer's clubhouse named for the Prussian.  The pilot, along with being featured in books and magazines about aerial combat, also has to date over 160 books written about his combat adventures, the best being "Oswald Boelcke: Germany's First Fighter Ace and Father of Air Combat" by R. G. Head, "An Aviator's Field Book" by Oswald Boelcke, "Knight of Germany: Oswald Boelcke, German Ace " by Johannes Werner, and "Oswald Boelcke - The Red Baron's Hero" by Lance J. Bronnenkant.  The present-day German Air Force fighter-bomber wing, "Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader 31" (Tactical Air Force Wing 31) has Boelcke's name on its coat-of-arms and the wing conducts a yearly pilgrimage to the ace's grave on the anniversary of his death. At the wing's homefield of Norvenich Air Base, Boelcke is memorialized with murals on base buildings, hall portraits, a bust of the man at the entryway to the base's headquarters, the base magazine being named simply "Boelcke" and the pilot and one of his Fokkers are on display on the static display of the tail section of a German bomber.  And the pilot is the frequent subject of paintings and a number of collectible coins featuring his planes, himself, or both.

Norvenich Air Base

Boelcke Coin

Coat Of Arms

Perhaps the most famous fighter pilot of all time, Manfred von Richthofen, should have the last few words on his teacher and mentor, Oswald Boelcke.  The Red Baron will say of his squadron leader, "It is remarkable that everyone who knew Boelcke imagined himself to be his one and only friend ... he was equally amiable to everyone and neither more nor less to anyone."  And upon Boelcke's death, von Richthofen will comment, "I am only a fighting airman, but Boelcke was a hero."  

Boelcke

Rest in peace, Hauptmann Boelcke!

It Begins!