[3] Richthofen was born in Kleinburg, near Breslau, Lower Silesia (now part of the city of Wrocław, Poland), on 2 May 1892 into a prominent Prussian aristocratic family.

[8] After completing cadet training at the Groß-Lichterfelde Preußische Hauptkadettenanstalt in 1909, he joined an Uhlan cavalry unit, the Ulanen-Regiment Kaiser Alexander der III.

[9] When World War I began, Richthofen served as a cavalry reconnaissance officer on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, seeing action in Russia, France, and Belgium; with the advent of trench warfare, which made traditional cavalry operations outdated and inefficient, Richthofen's regiment was dismounted, serving as dispatch runners and field telephone operators.

[10] Disappointed and bored at not being able to directly participate in combat, the last straw for Richthofen was an order to transfer to the army's supply branch.

[15] In September 1915 on being transferred to Brieftauben Abteilung Ostende (B.A.O) on the Champagne front and assigned to Pilot Henning von Osterroth, he is believed to have shot down an attacking French Farman aircraft aboard an Albatros C.I with his observer's machine gun in a tense battle over French lines;[16] he was not credited with the kill, since it fell behind Entente lines and therefore could not be confirmed.

Boelcke was visiting the east in search of candidates for his newly formed Jasta 2, and he selected Richthofen to join this unit, one of the first German fighter squadrons.

[22] Richthofen scored his first confirmed victory when he engaged Second Lieutenant Lionel Morris and his observer Tom Rees in the skies over Cambrai, France, on 17 September 1916.

[e] His brother Lothar (40 victories) used risky, aggressive tactics but Manfred observed maxims known as the "Dicta Boelcke" to assure success for both the squadron and its pilots.

Richthofen was flying his Halberstadt on 6 March in combat with F.E.8s of 40 Squadron RFC when his aircraft was shot through the fuel tank, by Edwin Benbow, who was credited with a victory from this fight.

[26] Richthofen flew the celebrated Fokker Dr.I triplane from late August 1917, the distinctive three-winged aircraft with which he is most commonly associated—although he did not use the type exclusively until after it was reissued with strengthened wings in November.

Richthofen received the Pour le Mérite in January 1917 after his 16th confirmed kill, the highest military honour in Germany at the time and informally known as "The Blue Max".

By June, he had become the commander of the first of the new larger "fighter wing" formations; these were highly mobile, combined tactical units that could move at short notice to different parts of the front as required.

"[41] Although Richthofen was now performing the duties of a lieutenant colonel (a wing commander in modern Royal Air Force terms), he was never promoted past the relatively junior rank of Rittmeister, equivalent to captain in the British army.

Written on the instructions of the "Press and Intelligence" (propaganda) section of the Luftstreitkräfte (Air Force), it shows evidence of having been heavily censored and edited.

German propaganda circulated various false rumours, including that the British had raised squadrons specially to hunt Richthofen and had offered large rewards and an automatic Victoria Cross to any Entente pilot who shot him down.

The Baron was spotted and briefly attacked by a Camel piloted by May's school friend and flight commander, Canadian Captain Arthur "Roy" Brown.

[57][58] His aircraft stalled and went into a steep dive, hitting the ground at 49°55′56″N 2°32′16″E / 49.9321076°N 2.5376701°E / 49.9321076; 2.5376701 in a field on a hill near the Bray-Corbie road, just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, in a sector defended by the Australian Imperial Force (AIF).

The RAF credited Brown with shooting down the Red Baron, but it is now generally agreed by historians, doctors, and ballistics experts that Richthofen was actually killed by an anti-aircraft (AA) machine gunner firing from the ground.

Many sources have suggested that Sergeant Cedric Popkin was the person most likely to have killed Richthofen, including a 1998 article by Geoffrey Miller, a physician, and historian of military medicine, and a 2002 edition of the British Channel 4 Secret History series.

[58][60] In 2007, Hornsby Shire Council, a municipal authority in Sydney, Australia, recognised Buie as the man who shot down Richthofen, placing a plaque near his former home in Brooklyn.

One of the leading British air aces, Major Edward "Mick" Mannock, was killed by ground fire on 26 July 1918 while crossing the lines at low level, an action he had always cautioned his younger pilots against.

One of the most popular of the French air aces, Georges Guynemer, went missing on 11 September 1917, probably while attacking a two-seater without realizing several Fokkers were escorting it.

3 Squadron AFC's commanding officer Major David Blake, who was responsible for Richthofen's body, regarded the Red Baron with great respect, and he organised a full military funeral.

[73] In the early 1920s, the French authorities created a military cemetery at Fricourt, in which a large number of German war dead, including Richthofen, were reinterred.

The family's intention was for it to be buried in the Schweidnitz cemetery next to the graves of his father and his brother Lothar von Richthofen, who had been killed in a post-war air crash in 1922.

Later the Third Reich held a further grandiose memorial ceremony at the site of the grave, erecting a massive new tombstone engraved with the single word: Richthofen.

[75] During the Cold War, the Invalidenfriedhof was on the boundary of the Soviet zone in Berlin, and the tombstone became damaged by bullets fired at attempted escapees from East Germany.

A study conducted by British historian Norman Franks with two colleagues, published in Under the Guns of the Red Baron in 1998, reached the same conclusion about the high degree of accuracy of Richthofen's claimed victories.

[77] In order of date awarded At various times, several different German military aviation Geschwader (literally "squadrons"; equivalent to Commonwealth air force "groups", French escadrons or USAF "wings") have been named after the Baron: In 1941 a newly launched Kriegsmarine (German navy) seaplane tender received the name ''Richthofen'' [de].

Captain Roy Brown donated the seat of the Fokker triplane in which the German flying ace made his final flight to the Royal Canadian Military Institute (RCMI) in 1920.