On April 20, 1918, the greatest ace of the Great War shot down his 79th and 80thenemy aircraft. One day later, he was dead. Manfred Von Richthofen was thirty-six at the time. The Red Baron was one of the most famous persons in the world. On April 21, he was engaged in a routine encounter with a novice Canadian pilot Lt. Wilfred May. Seeing his comrade in danger, Capt. Arthur Brown dove at the red Fokker triplane and opened fire. Brown pulled out before crashing into the ground and the Red Baron continued on May’s tail. He passed over an Australian infantry unit and soon after crash landed in a field near the Somme River. The Australians rushed to the site to find the German barely alive. Some claimed he said something including the word “kaput” before passing away. No autopsy was performed, but it was reported that he had a single bullet wound in his chest. At the time, Brown was credited with the shoot down and was awarded a bar to go with his Distinguished Flying Cross. However, modern scholarship has determined that the cause of death was probably a machine gun round fired by Sgt. Cedric Popkin. So it seems likely that the man who could not be defeated by any pilot, was brought down by a simple infantryman.
https://www.kumc.edu/wwi/biography/red-baron.html
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