The credit went to Captain Roy Brown, and almost certainly to the wrong man. Richthofen died on 21 April 1918 from a single .303 round through the heart, and the angle it took through his body points to a long, low shot from the ground, not from a cockpit. The likeliest gunner is Sergeant Cedric Popkin, an Australian — the only man known to have fired at him from the right in the seconds before he came down. Historians and ballistics experts now regard ground fire as all but certain. In 1918 it was unthinkable that the best airman of the war had been killed by an enlisted Australian with a Vickers. So a commissioned pilot got the credit.

W. Britain has him on the ground in service dress rather than in a cockpit — field grey with red piping, the peaked cap, tall boots, and the Pour le Mérite at his throat. In a diorama he stands with the other aces rather than in a scene: Bishop, who was flying against him. Göring took over his squadron after he died. And the American Vickers is the gun that did it — the same weapon, in Australian hands, fired from the mud.

W. Britain model 10091. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single standing figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.