Paul Bäumer
German flying ace (1896-1927)
Paul Wilhelm Bäumer (11 May 1896 – 15 July 1927), also known as The Iron Eagle, was a German fighter ace in World War I. Bäumer died in an air crash at Copenhagen on 15 July 1927, age 31, while test flying a Rohrbach Ro IX fighter. Rohrbach's test pilot had already been involved in a spinning accident, and Bäumer, acting as a freelance test pilot, continued the testing and died after the aircraft entered a spin and crashed in the Øresund.
Background
Bäumer was born on 11 May 1896 in Duisburg, Germany. He was a dental assistant before World War I, and earned a private pilot's license by the summer of 1914.
Involvement in World War I
At the start of the war, he joined the 70th Infantry Regiment. He served in both France and Russia, being wounded in the arm in the latter. He then transferred to the air service as a dental assistant before being accepted for military pilot training.
By October 1916, he was serving as a ferry pilot and instructor at Armee Flugpark 1. On 19 February 1917, he was promoted to Gefreiter. On 26 March, he was assigned to Flieger Abteilung 7; he was promoted to Unteroffizier on the 29th.
“Paul Bäumer” enters the record as german flying ace (1896-1927). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paul, Bäumer and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Bäumer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.