The Eagle of the Aegean Sea

Rudolf von Eschwege was the only German fighter pilot on World War I’s Macedonian Front, but in a little more than a year the intrepid and resourceful flier achieved 20 victories.

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By Walter A. Musciano

German officers and men stationed at the airfield in Drama, Greece, were shaken out of their beds by the thunder of heavy guns on the morning of May 20, 1917. Headquarters advised them that British warships in the Aegean Sea were bombarding the naval base at Kavalla, about 15 miles southeast of Drama.

The gunfire was being directed by a Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) Maurice Farman reconnaissance plane with a seven-fighter escort. Leutnant (second lieutenant) Rudolf von Eschwege (pronounced Esh-Vay-Ga), the only German fighter pilot on the Macedonian Front, ran to his Albatros and took off as soon as he heard the news, still wearing his pajamas. Eschwege knew that he must try to surprise the Farman pilot without interference from the seven-fighter escort. Instead of attacking the Farman directly, he circled to the east of the enemy, heading out over the Aegean and climbing all the way. Soon he was above and seaward of the intruders, who expected any interceptors to come from the shore. Suddenly he plunged down out of the morning sun, passing through the escort and firing at the Farman as he dived. His aim was true–the Farman fell into the Aegean Sea with the dead pilot slumped over the controls. His mission accomplished, Eschwege now depended on his Albatros’ diving speed to escape the fighter escort. But the Allied pilots were so surprised by his sudden attack that they failed to chase the speeding Albatros. The encounter is a perfect example of Eschwege’s daring and ingenious approach to combat aviation.

Rudolf von Eschwege was born in Homburg von der Hohe in northern Germany on February 25, 1895. After completing his secondary schooling, he entered the War Academy. When World War I began, the 19-year-old cadet–of medium height and a delicate build, with piercing blue eyes–was sent into battle with the 3rd Mounted Jäger Regiment on the Western Front. After three months on the battlefield, finding little opportunity for individual initiative, Eschwege applied for flying duty, and by February 1915 he was in flight training. Like the “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen, Eschwege was not a born pilot. Before he completed his training, the fledgling flier crashed several planes, but he eventually passed his tests and went back to the Western Front as the pilot of a large two-seater in the observation/reconnaissance unit Feldflieger Abteilung (FFA) 36 in July 1915. The winter of 1915-1916 proved largely uneventful, but by May 1916 Eschwege was flying Fokker Eindecker scouts, attempting to protect FFA 36’s observation planes.

During the fall of 1916 Eschwege was commissioned a lieutenant and transferred to Macedonia. That remote front received little attention in the press during the war, and few people even realized at the time that the conflict had extended into the Balkans. The war in Macedonia, a complicated and sometimes confusing struggle, pitted the German, Turkish and Bulgarian forces of the Central Powers, on the one hand, against Allied forces, which included British, French and Serbian troops. The British Royal Navy controlled the Aegean Sea, which meant that Allied war materiel was delivered to the war zone by ship to the Greek port of Salonika. The Germans, Turks and Bulgarians depended on the single-track Berlin­Constantinople Railroad, which passed through Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and European Turkey and was a prime target for British and French/Serbian aircraft. Otherwise, supplies–including fuel and oil for the aircraft–had to be transported via horse and wagon along the mud tracks that passed for roads in Serbia. Each German flying unit had 90 horses and 30 wagons to keep the supplies rolling in. Except for a few wheat fields, the terrain was mostly inhospitable, with mountainous crags, marshes and muddy bottoms so deep that at times whole wagons disappeared in the mire.

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