This is crazy, what the hell are you thinking, you can't
possibly do this, and there is absolutely no way in hell that you will be able
to do justice to this post. These were some of the first few thoughts in my
head as I decided to blog about one of my greatest role models, Werner Voss.
I am pretty sure that you haven’t heard much of this guy unless you share my enthusiasm for vintage fighter aircraft and the men who flew them. Voss was probably one of the pioneers in the field of dog fighting, one of the very first dog fighters. He was a personal friend and competitor to Manfred von Richthofen (some of you may know him better as The Red Baron, the greatest pilot of his era) and it is the general view that had he not met his death the way he did, he might have been able to end World War 1 as the greatest flying ace. I understand that most of the information on this pilot can be found on his Wikipedia page, so I’ll not go too much into the stats or his performance in the war. He was a pilot of the German empire who was awarded the Pour le Mérite (also called the Blue Max which sounds a lot cooler), the Iron Cross and numerous other medals for his bravery and for his aerial kills that stood at an impressive 48 (second only to the baron) before he fell in combat.
What I do want to talk about, and share my thought on
is the way this guy decided to meet his maker, his last dog-fight. It was the
23rd of September 1917, Voss had already claimed a kill this day but
decided to go out on another patrol and ran into a flight of the elite 56th
squadron of the RAF. This squadron was one of the most distinguished flying groups
in the entire war and each and every one of the RAF pilots in the pack attacking
Voss was an ace. The dog-fight lasted for only 10 minutes but any WW1 historian
worth his salt will tell you that it was one of the greatest displays of
bravery and air combat put up by the Germans. The Brits were flying the SE5s
and Voss was in a Fokker F1 triplane, the latter having a clear advantage in
speed and rate of climb. This meant that Voss could have escaped from the fight
if he wanted to and there was no way that the Brits could keep up with him, but
for the better or worse, Voss never really knew how to run away from a fight. He
took the English head on and for the 10 minutes before being shot, he gave them
the scare of a lifetime. The fight has been well described in the video links
given below and I would really appreciate it if you took some time to look them
through.
I guess it’s just me, but I feel that there’s just this
sort of awe about these men and the machines they flew. The way they find the
courage to go up against the greatest of odds and do it with a smile on their
lips and a glint in their eyes. Could Voss have survived if he had decided to
run? Possibly, would I have run if I was in his position? Definitely, but that’s
not the kind of attitude that a real fighter pilot has, give him his wings and
he will command the skies. There’s no fear in their hearts, there’s no care in
their eyes, just an undying joy of doing what they do best, and that’s to take
to the skies and give hope to the men in the trenches and the mud. Here are the
men, no different from you, but at the same time very different. Think of them
as angels on your shoulder, angels who will fly above you, fight above you and
die before you just so that you may have that little extra help that in the
battlefield can mean life or death. Voss was one of the best pilots to have
ever graced the skies, but he was not alone, he belonged to an elite group of
knights who took the skies and gave hope to that little boy standing in a field
in his village, they said don’t worry, fear not the enemy’s artillery, fear not
the thousands that march against us. I have my wings and I have my guns, and
you have my word, I shall defend
our skies and defend our freedom till my guns stop shooting or my heart stops
beating. These are the words Winston Churchill had for the pilots who flew in
the second Great War, and I quote “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.
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