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I posted this question in History SE: https://history.stackexchange.com/q/71705/60022. And it was suggested that I post a related question here.

I'm a member of Austin Sängerrunde which is a German singing club founded in 1879. This photo hangs in our club room. It's supposedly the Red Baron and the inscription is a greeting from him to our club. I was told 20 years ago that the photo was a hoax. The History SE answers make it almost certain that the handwriting is not the Red Baron's.

But perhaps it really is a photo of the Red Baron which our prankster wrote on.

We'd like to run down as much information as we can, so my question here is, "Can anyone identify the particular biplane in this photo?" There are letters and numbers on this plane. No picture in Google Images shows a Red Baron plane with numbers on the side. I'm hoping someone here knows what the numbers mean. No doubt the "Alb" is for "Albatros". enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ That's an Albatros CIII (right there on the side), the Red Baron flew lots of types but none of them a CIII. I cant find any info on serial number 2143 though :( $\endgroup$
    – Jamiec ♦
    Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 15:00
  • $\begingroup$ Is it beyond the realm of possibility that the Red Baron simply had his picture taken in front of someone else's plane? Who are those other 2 guys? Maybe it belongs to one of them... $\endgroup$
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Jun 9, 2023 at 16:33
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah I don't think Richtofen ever flew observer aircraft. $\endgroup$
    – John K
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 0:27
  • $\begingroup$ The Albatros C.III model was produced by half a dozen different companies. From what I could find on the internet, "Alb" was the official abbreviation used to indicate a plane built by Albatros Flugzeugwerke GmbH. The serial numbers appear to have comprised two parts, with the "suffix" usually separated by a slash, although a dot is used in this case: ".16". Perusing photos and drawings online, I could find planes using /15, /16, and /17 for the suffix, whose meaning I have not been able to establish. $\endgroup$
    – njuffa
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 21:21
  • $\begingroup$ @njuffa Might 16 be the year 1916? $\endgroup$
    – B. Goddard
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 21:45

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Alb is indeed for Albatros. The German serial number system was formalised in 1913, and gives some information on identifying this plane:

Alb - Albatros Werke AG, the manufacturer, founded in 1909. Although you'll sometimes see a plane referred to as "an Albatros(s)" that's rather like saying "a Messerschmitt" or "a Boeing", and doesn't indicate the type (e.g. Richthofen himself speaks of flying "my good Albatros"). During WW1 Albatros manufactured over 10,000 aircraft of various types.

C - Two-seat armed biplane scout. There were many other C planes from various manufacturers, and the pilots themselves often referred to their planes using this letter designation. Richthofen himself talks of flying a "C-type" plane in Russia in 1916, possibly a C.III.

III - the manufacturer type in Roman numerals.

Thus to identify a German WW1 plane, you need all three parts. There were, for instance, other Albatros C planes (I - XV); there were other manufacturers' C.III planes (e.g AEG, Halberstadt), and there are other Albatros III planes (e.g. the famous Albatros D.III, where D indicates single-seat fighter). This plane is, therefore, an Albatros C.III .

2143 - the manufacturer serial number

16 - the year the aircraft was ordered (1916)

The Albatros C.III was one of the most important aircraft of the mid-war, one of the first two-seaters with weapons for both crew members. So popular was it that production was spread between Albatros and seven other manufacturers. The aircraft in your picture was built under license by Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, from a batch of 50 ordered in July 1916 (serials 2124 to 2173).

I would speculate that, because this aircraft has no squadron markings it is either about to leave its factory, or just arrived with its squadron. It is also lacking the observer's machine gun. Certainly it's unusual to see a plane in this state, with such a prominent manufacturer's mark and no other markings. So that would make the most likely date for the photo as mid 1916.

I can't say who is in your picture, but here is the Red Baron in front of the same type of aircraft in 1917 (it's definitely not the aircraft in your picture, however, and nor was he flying it: he was just taking a ferry-flight.)

von Richthofen in front of Albatros C.III 1917

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This wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen

says this regarding his early flying career:

"The next month, Manfred joined Kampfgeschwader 2 ("No. 2 Bomber Squadron") flying a two-seater Albatros C.III."

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    $\begingroup$ Google finds multiple books predating Wikipedia and the Word Wide Web that mention von Richthofen flying this type of plane. Example: Edward Jablonski, The Knighted Skies: A Pictorial History of World War I in the Air, Putnam 1964, p. 78: "The Albatros C-III, a two seater reconnaissance aircraft, was widely used from its introduction in 1916 to the end of the war. Several famed German pilots began their careers flying this plane, among them Manfred von Richthofen, Ernst Udet, and Hermann Goering." $\endgroup$
    – njuffa
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 21:11

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