| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
23 Sep 2004 09:50:12 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Injury may have led to Red Baron's death |
http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/nation/story/1675659p-9435740c.html
Injury may have led to Red Baron's death
By SCOTT CHARTON, Associated Press
Last Updated 5:31 am PDT Wednesday, September 22, 2004
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - History books say that The Red Baron, the
legendary World War I German flying ace, was shot out of the sky and
died in April 1918. But new research suggests that his death spiral
may have begun nine months earlier.
A University of Missouri at Columbia researcher and his Ohio
collaborator argue a severe injury to Manfred von Richthofen's brain
during an earlier aerial confrontation figured in his death.
"He was a very reserved character all his life, but he is described as
much more immature after the injury, and we have found that is common
with this type of brain injury," Missouri's Daniel Orme said Tuesday.
During his final, fatal dogfight, von Richthofen was seen pursuing a
fleeing plane across enemy fire in an uncharacteristic display of
"target fixation." The pursuit broke Richthofen's own rule to "never
obstinately stay with an opponent," said Orme.
Orme collaborated with fellow neuropsychologist Tom Hyatt of
Cincinnati for a fresh take on what led to the Red Baron's death on
April 21, 1918, when he was shot through the chest and crashed.
They focused on a July 6, 1917, incident in which von Richthofen was
flying head-on toward an enemy plane's machine gunner at a distance
where he was sure he couldn't be hit. "Suddenly something struck me in
the head," he recalled. A bullet creased Richthofen's scalp, leaving a
four-inch scar that never completely healed.
After that, von Richthofen, the son of Prussian nobility who would
have glowered at a soldier's unbuttoned tunic, began exhibiting odd
behavior, such as laying his head on a Berlin restaurant table to
publicly display the open head wound to a friend's mother.
His mother, Baroness von Richthofen, wrote that after the injury,
"something painful lay 'round the eyes and temples" of her son.
"I found Manfred changed ... the high spirits, the playfulness, were
lacking in his character - he was taciturn, almost unapproachable -
even his words seemed to come from an unknown distance," she wrote.
After subsequent flights, Richthofen had to lie down to fight off
nausea and severe headaches. Richthofen wrote: "I am in wretched
spirits after every aerial combat but that is surely one of the
consequences of my head wound."
Hyatt was watching a documentary about the Red Baron, and became
fascinated with the head injury. "The film clearly showed him in
hospital with a large head bandage, and to me, it began explaining his
later behavior that led to his death," he said.
Orme and Hyatt began sifting journals, medical records and books about
the Red Baron's symptoms in the months before his death. Their
findings are to be published this fall in the international journal
Human Factors and Aerospace Safety.
For Orme and Hyatt, research on the Red Baron's case fit a shared
professional specialty. Both are retired from the Air Force, where
their duties included studying whether brain-injured pilots should be
allowed back into the air.
"We have evaluated many head-injured patients, and the description of
the Red Baron's actions and behavior are just classic for what is
called post-concussive syndrome," Orme said.
"In combat, the environment is very austere and the individual has to
act quickly and make critical decisions, and he just lost the capacity
to incorporate all that data quickly and make solid judgments. He
didn't have the mental flexibility to realize he shouldn't pursue that
plane."
There is still debate about who fired the shot that fatally pierced
Richthofen's chest - an Australian artillery crew on the ground, or a
Canadian flier, Roy Brown.
But Orme and Hyatt say the shot fired nine months earlier, by British
flier A.E. Wooldridge, set the Red Baron on a fatal course because of
the brain injury.
"It was a pretty serious hit," Hyatt said. "As a neuropsychologist, I
always get irritated when Hollywood movies depict someone being hit in
the head, falling down, then shaking their head and all is fine. That
isn't how it works, and the Red Baron's case shows those long-lasting
effects."
(c) 2004 AP
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| User: "Brian E. Clark" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Injury may have led to Red Baron's death |
23 Sep 2004 04:19:29 PM |
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<stoney@the.net> wrote:
Injury may have led to Red Baron's death
Witnesses insist that the injurious attack was delivered by a beagle
flying a Sopwith Camel, though official records dispute this...
--
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Brian E. Clark
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Injury may have led to Red Baron's death |
24 Sep 2004 08:19:19 PM |
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On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:19:29 GMT, Brian E. Clark
<reply@newsgroup.only.please> wrote:
<stoney@the.net> wrote:
Injury may have led to Red Baron's death
Witnesses insist that the injurious attack was delivered by a beagle
flying a Sopwith Camel, though official records dispute this...
True. They've got clear pictures of the dog house....
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