Testimonial of Leutnant Lübbert

"MvR's latest triumph was muted by uncertainty about his brother. A participant in that fight, Leutnant Friedrich Wilhelm Lübbert, recalled: The Rittmeister was among the last to land. Only his brother Lothar was missing. When Richthofen landed, his first question was: "Lothar back?". The answer: "No, but it was observed that the top wing of his triplane fell off at 5.500 metres and that he went down in a glide." Calmly, Richthofen went with his pilots to the operations hut. No news had come in yet. Suddenly there was a report by telephone: "Leutnant von Richthofen has crashed near Cambrai and is dead." Shortly thereafter a second report came in: "Leutnant von Richthofen has made an emergency landing and has badly injured an eye." No one knew which report gave the actual facts. Everyone spoke in depressed tones. The Rittmeister's facial features did not change in the least. "We must wait.", he said and very calmly went into a critique of the day's flight. "By the way, I have shot down two today.", he said in the midst of things and casually. When no further news came in after a long time, he got into his crate and flew to the crash site in order to determine for himself more about the fate of his brother, whose injuries turned out to be relatively light, fortunately, despite the hard crash."