Previous head injury doomed Red Baron

Since he was shot down in 1918, much speculation has been made of who actually killed the German World War I flying ace dubbed the Red Baron. A team of researchers, including a University of Missouri-Columbia neuropsychologist, found that Baron Manfred von Richthofen never would have put himself in the position to be killed that day had he not suffered a severe head injury nine months earlier.

By comparing accounts of von Richthofen's injury and medical records, health psychology clinical associate professor Daniel Orme and retired neuropsychologist Thomas L. Hyatt of Cincinnati have concluded that the Baron displayed classic signs of traumatic brain injury, including personality and cognitive changes, leading to errors in judgment that made him a sitting duck in what amounted to a shooting gallery behind British lines.

After suffering the head wound on July 6, 1917, Orme says von Richthofen was disinhibited, a common consequence of such a trauma, and did things he never would have done before. Among those, he laid his head on a dining table in a restaurant, revealing the open wound in his scalp. The Baron also exhibited "target fixation" the day he was shot down, locking a fleeing British pilot in his sights and pursuing him into enemy territory at tree line level, making himself easy prey.

It has been found that frontal lobe injuries affect a person's ability to adapt behavior to changing situations. Orme, a retired Air Force officer who evaluated aviators for fitness to return to flying following head trauma or neurological illnesses that affect mental skills, also notes that the Baron--credited with 80 "kills" during the Great War--was more moody after suffering the head injury, another classic symptom of a traumatic brain injury.

"Why did he put himself in this position?" Orme wonders. "That's the unique twist. It is a surprising thing that no one had connected the dots and arrived at this conclusion up to this point. He clearly should not have been flying. Perhaps credit for his being shot down should have been given to that machine gunner nine months before whose lucky shot creased the Baron's skull."

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