Higher Command and Downfall
Returning to active service in February 1918, Hauptmann von Tutschek was given command of the new Jagdgeschwader 2, consisting of Jastas 12, 13, 15, and 19. He was pitched into the challenge of gearing up and staffing a new organization; he expressed his dissatisfaction with progress in his diary. The new unit was short of aircraft, parts, and fuel and faced a numerically superior Royal Flying Corps.
One of his prerequisites was a new airplane to fly. He was delighted with his brand new Fokker Dr.I triplane. He first test flew it on 17 February 1918, and raved about it in his diary "..a tremendous machine climbs terrifically." He flew it to the last four victories of his career, on 26 February, and 1st (a balloon) 6th and 10 March.
On the last day of February, he narrowly survived a mid-air collision with Lt. Paul Blumenbach flying another triplane. Both pilots managed to coax their damaged machines to safe landings.
On 15 March, South African 10-kill ace Lt H.B. Redler of No.24 Squadron shot down von Tutschek. The German spun down in his green triplane (SNo.404/17) out of control. There are two versions of what followed.
One version of his death states when found he still had his wiping cloth tucked through his buttonhole and under his safety harness; as it was his habit to wipe his goggles clean going into battle, it was deduced he had been caught unaware.
A second version, less likely, claimed that one of Redler's bullets creased Tutschek's head and that the wound caused him to land. He supposedly waved to his wingmen as they circled, but was later found dead next to his plane.
His tally of 27 victories (24 with Jasta 12 or JG 2) would amount to a quarter of his parent Jasta 12's 104 victories.
Read more about this topic: Adolf Ritter Von Tutschek
Famous quotes containing the words higher command, higher, command and/or downfall:
“The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?”
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“There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.”
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“But as some silly young men returning from France affect a broken English, to be thought perfect in the French language; so his Lordship, I think, to seem a perfect understander of the unintelligible language of the Schoolmen, pretends an ignorance of his mother-tongue. He talks here of command and counsel as if he were no Englishman, nor knew any difference between their significations.”
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“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)