THE FIGHTER PILOT WHO LANDED A BURNING AIRCRAFT

With 35 aerial victories, Godwin von Brumowski was the most successful fighter pilot Austria-Hungary had in the First World War. His marking was a yellow skull on the sides of his aircraft. He made ace (5 kills) as early as 1916, in a reconnaissance plane that was never built for air combat, when he shot down an Italian fighter.

It did not take long from there before he was given command of Fighter Company 41, which became Austria’s most successful fighter unit under him. After a meeting with Manfred von Richthofen he had every aircraft in his unit painted completely red, so the fighters could be made out from a long way off and put fear into the enemy.

On 1 February 1918, Brumowski was drawn alone into a dogfight with 8 British fighters and escaped only with his aircraft badly shot up. It caught fire and soon the entire wing was burning, yet he still made it back to the airfield and put the plane down safely. That makes him one of the very few men to survive an aircraft fire.

Three days later he was again alone against 8 enemy aircraft, and his plane was shot up so badly that the lower wings broke away. With the upper wings still intact, he kept the machine in the air until he reached his base, where it flipped over on landing. Brumowski’s comment on the day: “Apart from that, nothing happened.” After his 35th kill he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa on 23 June, Austria’s highest decoration at the time.

On 3 June 1936, Brumowski was escorted to Valhalla by an honor guard after he was killed in a crash while instructing a flight student. An air base of the Austrian Bundesheer has carried his name since 1967.

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