Ejection Seat Related Patches

On August 1, ten British B.E.2c's bombed their Douai aerodrome. Boelcke and Immelman went after the departing Englishmen, but Boelcke's gun jammed after he had fired a few rounds. He landed to fix it and saw Immelmann attack the B.E.2's. Immelmann dived and fired, first at one plane, and then another. One started into a steep glide and Immelmann tailed it all the way to the ground. His gunfire had broken the pilot's elbow and forced him to land. On the ground, Immelmann approached the British pilot. They shook hands and Immelmann informed the Englishman that he was a prisoner. For this exploit, Max received the Iron Cross, First Class.

Immelmann scored again on September 9 and 21. But on the 23rd a French Farman shot up Max's plane, holing the fuel tank and destroying the landing gear. Somehow Immelmann survived and soon scored his fourth victory, a B.E.2c downed over Lille. His fifth a British biplane over Arras. On November 7, another B.E.2c for his sixth kill, and on December 5, his seventh claim, a Morane. By this time, the German press was idolizing him, Der Adler von Lille.

Der Adler von Lille

Aerial combat in the winter of 1915-16 was primitive and personal. On a mission over Lille, pilot Captain O'Hara Wood and gunner/observer Ira Jones, flying a BE-2c, had been warned of Immelman's presence in that sctor. While gunner Jones had a Lewis gun, there were four different mounts for it; he had to lift the machine gun from one to the other when needed. A Fokker monoplane came after them, and quickly maneuvered into the BE-2c's blind spot: low and behind. Desperately, gunner Jones picked his Lewis gun up and fired it while holding it in his hands. The recoil of the heavy weapon and the violent movement of the airplane made him lose his grip, and it fell out of the plane. The two British fliers expected the worst, but the Fokker flew off, out of ammunition. Later Captain Wood informed Jones that their opponent had been the famous Max Immelmann, whom he had recognized by his skillful flying.

On January 12, 1916, Immelmann and Boelcke both scored their eighth victories, prompting their decoration with the Blue Max.

While Fokker's monoplanes had permitted Immelmann and Boelcke to excel, the other German aircraft builders had not been idle. Halberstadt and Albatros introduced competing planes. To keep up, Fokker mounted three Spandau machine guns on an Eindekker and installed a more powerful 100 HP engine. This was the E-III. In April, Max tested the E-III, but the interrupter gear couldn't handle three guns and the prop was blasted to bits. Fokker then tried two guns, but in late May, Immelmann "shot himself down" again.

On June 18, Immelmann engaged some FE-2b's of RFC Squadron 25. According to British accounts, gunfire from an FE-2 piloted by Lt. G.R. McCubbin and gunned by Cpl. J. H. Waller hit Immelmann's Fokker and it dived into the ground. Perhaps the notion that a lowly two-seater FE-2 had brought down their leading ace, the Germans announced that he had been downed by anti-aircraft fire. This explanation also suited Tony Fokker, who filed a report noting that "the fuselage had been shot in two by shrapnel fire."