Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries

Fighting the Red Baron (2010x13)

Air date: Jun 04, 2010

In 1914, when World War I began, the aeroplane was so new the British had never used it in battle before. Eager recruits, some as young as 17, rushed to join the British army's new aircraft service - the Royal Flying Corps - and quickly came up against the Red Baron and the German hunting squadrons. By the end of the war in 1918, a new and terrifying form of warfare had been devised, the skies had been turned into battlefields and the cost to aviation pioneers had been enormous. Fighting the Red Baron follows two modern-day pilots as they face the same challenges the aviators of WWI faced, in order to find out how aerial warfare changed so quickly in just four years.