It appears the name has been tarnished, it is a shame as the real Werner Voss was a great man.
James McCudden (highest decorated RAF pilot in WWI) wrote after he had seen the pilot of a green Fokker triplane put up the most courageous fight against his formation of SE5s
'I shall never forget my admiration for that German pilot, who single handed fought seven of us for ten minutes and also put some bullets through all our machines. His flying was wonderful, his courage magnificent, and in my opinion he is the bravest German airman whom it has been my privilege to see fight.'
Werner Voss was at one point von Richthofen's closest rival but he came from a completely different background to the Prussian baron. Like Albert Ball, he grew up against a background of industry, and again like Ball his first love was machines and he was never happier than when tinkering with his motorcycle or an aero-engine. He was born in Krefeld, the son of a dye factory owner, on 13 April 1897. On the outbreak of war he was in a cavalry regiment, the 2nd Westphalian Hussars, enlisting while he was still under age. In August 1915 he transferred to the air service, then seen very much as an extension of the cavalry's military function. During the first weeks of the Battle of the Somme he flew as an observer where the highly dangerous routine of artillery observation brought him both a strong identification and sympathy for two-seater crews (he wrote later that of his original reconnaissance unit not one was still alive) and a desire to get behind the controls of an aircraft himself. He got his flight training in the late summer of 1916 and on 2 zNovember he was transferred to Jasta 2, Oswald Boclcke's old command. Six days later he got his first victory when he forced down a BE2c. From then Voss's skill as a single-seater pilot cut a swathe through the Royal Flying Corps. In January and February 1917 Voss raised his score to twenty-two, trailing the Rittmeister himself by only five. During April 1917 he fought on the French Front during the disastrous Nivelle offensive on the Chemin des Dames which brought the French army close to cracking. Up to 31 July 1917 when Voss was posted back to the British sector to command Jasta 10, he shot down a total of thirty-four aircraft. Remembering his days on the Somme as an observer he wrote after shooting down a BE2, "Poor devils". I know how they felt. I have flown in such a type-they must be destroyed because they spy out our secrets but I would prefer to shoot down fighters.'
While flying an Albatros DV against the new British types that were arriving to avenge the disaster of April, Voss was called to Schwerin to test the latest product from the Fokker stable, the Fokker Dr I, which it was hoped would maintain the German technical ascendancy. The qualities of the extraordinary new aircraft delighted the natural pilot in Voss. His triplane became an obsession and he would later endlessly tinker with his machine while wearing an old grey jacket.
On 28 August at last the new operational triplanes arrived at Heule and Voss's Jasta used these superb offensive machines to their best ability, the RFC at first being taken completely off guard when the hitherto friendly shape of a Sopwith Triplane began to spit bullets at them. Voss's machine with its cowling marked with a face both ferocious and comic was the third machine from the factory, Fokker Fl 103/17, the second Fok 102/ I 7 going to Richthofen himself. In the first ten days of August Voss shot down five aircraft from the cockpit of his Dr I and four more before the end of the month. On 5 September he shot down a Sopwith Pup and a Caudron on the same day. On the 9th he attacked a formation of three Sopwith Camels, shot two down and drove away the third bringing down an FE2d on the same patrol.
By 23 September 1917' Voss's score stood at forty-seven. On his first patrol that day he shot down a DH4 to bring his score to just two short of the magic fifty. That afternoon his two brothers Lt Otto and Uffz Max Voss arrived at the airfield at Heule to accompany Werner on leave back home to Krefeld. What a present to bring home! For the twenty year old to have despatched fifty enemies of the Fatherland! At 6.05 therefore Werner Voss took off again in spite of failing light in his triplane Fok Fl 103/17 looking for the enemy.
It was the day of the autumn equinox. That September evening a massive cloud formation at I0,000 feet effectively marked the operational ceiling. Patches of thin cloud at 1000 feet spotted the tortured and already darkening Flanders landscape below as Voss scanned the western horizon above the British lines looking for any stragglers from the afternoon's air battles running for home, silhouetted against the dying rays of the sun.
Then Voss saw a single SE5a scudding home and the Triplane fell in pursuit. Unseen to Voss, above and to the east was a patrol of perhaps the best fighter pilots in the Royal Flying Corps. No 56 Squadron RFC with six of its most experienced pilots-A P F Rhys-Davids, R A Mayberry, V P Cronyn, R T C Hoidge and K K Muspratt led by James McCudden VC-were about to hunt the hunter. R Stuart-Wortley saw it from 1000 feet higher up. 'A red flare flickered from the leader of the SE5s. There was an enemy in sight , but search as I might I could see nothing. Then, of a sudden I espied the Hun... a solitary, lonely Hun in a Fokker triplane.'
Already the flight leader McCudden was building up a tactical trap to snare the triplane pilot with Rhys-Davids and McCudden at either side and Muspratt and Hoidge at top and bottom of an open mouthed box with the other two SE5s guarding any possible escape from the trawl. The leading SE5 pilots pressed their triggers together but at the first rattle of .303 gunfire Voss did the incredible. As Cronyn wrote 'he whipped round in an extraordinary way, using no bank at all but just throwing his tail behind him.' Pitching the acrobatic qualities' of the rotary-engined triplane against the faster but heavier and slower-turning SE5s. Voss flew straight back towards his ambushers firing as he came. Another flick turn and the triplane was behind Hoidge and bullets tore into his aircraft. McCudden had taken the first burst of Voss's fire through his wings and had broken away sharply but now recovered. He wrote 'the pilot seemed to be firing at all of us simultaneously and although I got behind him a second time I could hardly stay there for a second. His movements were so quick and uncertain that none of us could hold him in sight at all for any decisive time.' Three times the SE5 pilots tried to use their advantage of speed and numbers to build a net to snare the snarling twisting triplane, and three times the Fokker escaped.
A formation of Albatros DVs flew above the fight but were held back by a cordon of Spads. One red-nosed DV got through and for a few desperate minutes the Albatros guarded Voss's tail until it was driven down. 'This left Voss alone in the middle of us', Capt G H Bowman recalled, 'which did not appear to deter him in the slightest.' Instead of breaking out and flying east into the safety of the gathering gloom Voss turned again and again into the attack. At last Rhys-Davids got on his tail in SE5a B585 with his propeller boss almost glued to the triplane's rudder and for a few seconds the Fokker filled his ring-sights. Rhys-Davids fired a long burst from both Lewis and Vickers raking the triplane from end to end.
After that Voss made no further attempt to turn. He was already dying in the cockpit of the triplane now slowing up and flying level. Then slowly down it went, gently gliding westwards. Rhys-Davids dived again, put a Vickers shot into Voss, reloaded and put another Lewis drum into the seemingly indestructible triplane. The Fokker turned right and its glide steepened and Rhys-Davids' diving SE overshot. McCudden however saw Voss's end. 'I noticed that the triplane's movements were very erratic, and then I saw him go into a fairly steep dive and so I continued to watch, and then saw the triplane hit the ground and disappear into a thousand fragments, for it seemed to me that it literally went to powder.'
British soldiers found the remains of the triplane and the body of the pilot and salvaged what they could. Voss had come down just north of St Juliari some half mile behind the front line. The pilot's body was buried in a mass grave. Next morning No 56 squadron got a telegram from the RFC headquarters. The dead pilot had been found wearing the Boclcke collar and at his neck he wore the Pour te Merite. His name was Werner Voss. As they counted the bullet holes in their own machines the pilots of No 56 Squadron knew they had faced one of the greatest air fighters of the war indeed many German and RFC pilots considered him a greater fighter pilot than von Richthofen. Rhys-Davids later said to McCudden 'If I could only have brought him down alive', a wish shared by McCudden.
So next time you look at the name Voss with hate, think again about the callsign someone decided to use.
