Although the German airman was flying on a front that received little attention in the war, Eschwege’s fame was spreading. In addition to his other nickname, the Eagle of the Aegean, some who knew of his exploits were beginning to call him the “Richthofen of the Balkans.”

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By now it was early June 1917, and the wheat in the Bulgarian fields was ripe enough to burn. Starvation was a legitimate weapon in this brutal little war, and British planes were scheduled to spread incendiary bombs over the Bulgarian wheat fields of the Sary Schaban plain. The British determined that the ideal time to firebomb the wheat was between June 3 and June 7.

Such raids had been carried out earlier without interference, but that had been before Eschwege was on the job. Drama was too far from the Sary Schaban plain for him to intercept the enemy planes. Eschwege knew that if he waited at Drama, the fields would be ablaze and the bombers would have returned to Thasos unscathed. The clever German flew to an emergency airfield midway between Thasos and Sary Schaban early on the morning of June 5 and lay in the shade of his Albatros’ wings, waiting for the bombers. He knew that the British planes normally appeared around midday, when the evening dew had evaporated.

As soon as he heard the familiar drone of aircraft engines, Eschwege started his Albatros’ engine and gave chase to two Henri Farmans and a Sopwith seaplane, shooting down one of the Farmans for his 10th victory. After that, no further attempts were made to firebomb the wheat fields.

Eschwege was stricken with malaria early in September, but on September 12, three days after returning to duty, he shot down a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter–his 15th victory. After Eschwege’s 16th victory, on October 3, he became interested in observation balloons, enormous tethered hydrogen-filled sausages that spied on troop movements and directed artillery on the battlefield. So far the German ace had never shot down a balloon. He decided to try his hand at destroying the British gasbag that appeared every morning over Orljak, west of the Struma River.

Eschwege’s first balloon-busting attempt was early in the morning of October 28, 1917. He had loaded his machine-gun belts with incendiary bullets and began circling through the mountains north of Seres, approaching Orljak with the sun at his back. The German flier’s first attack forced the observer in the balloon’s gondola to take to his parachute. The balloon itself, however, failed to erupt in flames. It took four passes before Eschwege managed to ignite the hydrogen. Clearly, balloon-busting was not as easy as it might have seemed. Eschwege barely escaped pursuing Allied fighters on his way back home.

A second balloon-busting sortie on November 9 ended when Eschwege’s guns jammed. Six days later, however, he was more successful, sending a second Orljak-based balloon down in flames.

The Allies sent up another balloon at the same location on November 19. After shooting down a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter, his 19th victory, Eschwege attacked the new gasbag. But this time the Allied crew managed to haul the balloon to the ground before the German could fire. Disappointed, the Aegean Eagle turned on four accompanying planes, but they fled from the lone Albatros.

Eschwege was up at dawn on November 21, 1917, eager for his 20th victory. He loaded the guns of his aircraft with incendiaries and headed for Orljak, about 30 miles to the west. Some accounts and illustrations have Eschwege flying a Halberstadt D.II–an obsolete type that nevertheless served effectively in Flieger Abteilungen over Salonika and the Dardanelles as late as January 1918. A photograph purported to show Eschwege’s crashed plane, however, includes a section of elevator and an interplane strut that suggest he was flying an Albatros D.III at the time.

A Bulgarian officer commanding an observation post in the mountains north of Seres had a good view through his binoculars of the Orljak balloon that morning. He noted that it was higher than ever–2,500 feet instead of the usual 500 to 1,000 feet–and that no planes were in the air to protect it. When Eschwege’s scout appeared, the Bulgarians at the post gathered to watch their champion score another strike against the hated English. As Eschwege attacked, puffs of smoke from the customary anti-aircraft defenses were strangely absent.

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