Talk:Der rote Baron
Major Overhaul
The first issue of this page (2012) was based on screenshot made from a cathode-ray tube TV with a poor camera.
Better (and wider) stills are now online with some additional ones for a better analysis.LVCDC (talk) 22:42, 23 January 2025 (UTC)
Accuracy
This movie is full of details, some correct, some wrong.
We won't go into the personalities of the characters, as that would be too long and beyond the scope of IMPDB. As for the airplanes, there are some 'sharp' elements here too, alongside approximations and even outright impossibilities!
Dates are often fanciful :
- "ten years later, 1916" : as explain on the main page, the young Manfred could not see such a flight in 1906 (The European (if not a World) Premiere was on 23 October 1906 when Alberto Santos-Dumont approx 220 meters only at human height !)
- several aircraft are seen flying months before they really reach the front line units;
- among the biographical notes (at the very end of the movie), some reality are said; birth and death of Werner Voss (13 April 1897 – 23 September 1917); so why he's still alive when von Richthofen visits the Siegfried Line (in November 1917 as written on the screen) ?
Fiction :
- Leutnant Friedrich Sternberg is a fictional character as said at the very end. On the screen, we see his fictitious Albatros :
... loosely inspired by this Albatros D.Va (unknown pilot) ?
- but nothing is said about another fictitious character, Captain Winston Clyde Walker (the Allied burial scene).
Aircraft colors :
- Is this D.III ...
... inspired by Paul Baumer's plane ? (which was a D.V) :
- Werner Voss is working on an engine (why ? is there no mechanics ? and where does this Mercedes come from ? the Albatros is still fitted with its own one!)
- Albatros with "Kriegst mich nicht" (can't get me); loosely inspired by Ernst Udet Fokker D VII tail with the message "Du doch nicht !!" (Definitely not you) ?
And the paint figure is close to the art painted on Bernhard Kilian's Albatros D.V.
- Mount of an unknown pilot :
- An Albatros D.V with a Totenkopf (skull and crossbones). Several pilots use a skull (sometimes with bones) but only one on a green fuselage. Some says Werner Voss could have piloted an Albatros D.I with a Totenkopf in a black square, the usual mount of Crown Prince Friedrich Carl of Prussia (plain pale green and skull without details). Probably the most fictitious paint scheme seen on the screen...
- anonymous mount of unknown pilot :
... and what we can seen on the screen :
- Roy Brown : compare this paint instruction from a model kit...
... with the aircraft seen in action :
Red chevron at the bad place; fuselage roundel; white stripes in excess and on fuselage's top ...
(to be continued)