Nick Buxey provides a great little article about Major Lanoe Hawker, who tangled with the famous Red Baron in the skies over Northern France.

THE BRIEF, BUT GLORIOUS CAREER OF MAJOR LANOE HAWKER

The epic duel between Lanoe Hawker VC and Baron von Richtofen over the Somme in November 1916. (1/72 scale plastic kit models: an Airco DH2 (Revell) and an Albatros DII (Roden).

In the skies over the Somme battlefield in November 1916 a deadly duel took place between two extraordinary fighter pilots. They were part of a new breed, as ‘fighter’ planes, or ‘Scouts’, were a new concept in warfare.

Aerial warfare was itself a very new concept and had developed from the use of the ‘new fangled’ invention as an observation and reconnaissance tool. The threat posed by observation from the sky had led to the observers being attacked by their opponents to prevent their information from being relayed back to their intelligence corps. To be able to attack, the attacker had to be armed. Initially, both Germans and Allies used whatever weapons they had to hand that could be used from the cockpit of an aeroplane: pistols, shotguns, sporting rifles…. Eventually, machine guns were mounted on aeroplanes and very soon the observation and reconnaissance planes evolved into dedicated ‘Scout’ planes - ‘fighters’.