Did The Red Baron Really Shoot Down A UFO During WWI? The German Ace’s Fellow Pilot Believes So

German fighter pilot ace, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, also known as the Red Baron, is officially credited with shooting down 80 enemy planes during World War I, but a sensational new book claims that the man considered the flight ace supreme was also the first pilot in history to shoot down a UFO.

I’s a big boast, but the Red Baron has a big reputation. So much so that in his new book, UFOs of the First World War, author Nigel Watson recounts the 1999 confession by the Red Baron’s fellow pilot, Peter Waitzrick, who allegedly witnessed the epic encounter in the skies between the Red Baron and the UFO.

Waitzrick waited until he was 105-years-old, a good 80 years after the Baron’s alleged dogfight with interplanetary visitors, until confessing what he saw in the crystal blue skies above Belgium during the spring of 1917.

The Red Baron and Waitzrick were on an early morning mission when they ran afoul of what they described as looking like an upside down silver saucer covered in flashing orange lights.

No doubt well aware that curiosity killed the cat, and also shot the fighter pilot who stopped to pause for breath, the Red Baron instinctively allowed his abject terror at the sight of this unidentified flying object get the better of him and didn’t hesitate to open fire and mow that mother down.

The Mirror reports that Waitzrick claims he witnessed the entire encounter between the Baron and the aliens.

“We were terrified because we’d never seen anything like it before. The Baron immediately opened fire and the thing went down like a rock, shearing off tree limbs as it crashed into the woods.”

Admittedly, the Red Baron was in a league of his own when it came to his skills as a fighter pilot, but was Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, handicapped as he was by the technical limitations of the Fokker Dr.I triplane and the Albatros D.III Serial No. 789/16, so naturally gifted when it came to flying, that he was capable of gunning down a UFO that presumably had the capacity to journey through galaxies and was capable of doing all sort of mind-blowing crazy things?

Waitzrick believes so. He claims that there were two pilots in the the UFO, and after crashing they climbed from the wreck before fleeing into the trees. Perhaps these extraterrestrials were simply teenage joyriders from another dimension who had bitten off a little more than they could chew?

Who knows! One thing’s for sure, although Waitzrick and his squadron originally believed the UFO was a secret US aircraft, when they became familiarised with reports about UFOS, they remained convinced that what they saw were visitors from another planet.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Baron shot down some kind of spacecraft from another planet and those little guys who ran off into the woods were space aliens of some kind.”

{Lead photo Via Getty Images}