::: The MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE of ROY BROWN, WW I Canadian Ace :::

A WAR WEARY Captain Roy Brown looks at us now from eternity.

The WW I CANADIAN ACE who I now believe killed the RED BARON (although last week I thought had only assisted in the kill) is no where to be found.

Literally.

There are only so many places one can hide, when one is dead. Independent mobility becomes the issue.

After searching the Stouffville Cemetery in sub-zero weather with Barb in tow, we searched every tombstone to no avail.

He wasn't there!

A drop by the local library revealed an article that chronicled Brown's death, and noted he was intered in Aurora!

On March 16, 1944 The Stouffville Tribune listed the front page news that Captain Roy Brown had died suddenly at his farm on the 6th Concession of Whitchurch at only fifty years of age. The man who had shot down the Red Baron (Baron Manfred von Richthofen), and when upon seeing the Baron's fresh remains expressed personal sorrow, was now, sadly, gone.

Hailing originally from Carlton Place near Ottawa, the famous airman had made Stouffville his home after retiring from the aviation industry. Roy had been battling illness for some time, yet was out and about the town, on a daily basis.

Only a year previous, in 1943, Roy Brown as a Liberal Party candidate for a Toronto riding, had delivered a blistering attack on Canada's postwar treatment of war veterans:

"The postwar period is more serious than winning the war. We who served in the last war know what it is to get kicked out of the service, and then wonder where to turn, and where to go to make a living. I got back into civilian life last time with 27 fractures, and was a nervous wreck. I got no pension. That kind of thing must never happen again.

Roy's sentiments drew a groundswell of public support right across the country. From veterans, and the public, alike. This Canadian hero, who had saved many fellow Allied colleagues from being shot down, a WW I ace in his own right, and world famous for attacking and then taking out Germany's legendary Red Baron, by stats the greatest ace of WW I, noted that his country had failed him.

Nationally, it was an embarrassing moment.

Mainly, because it was true.

But I digress… presently, the article revealed to us where we had to go.

A half hour later we had arrived… at the Aurora Cemetery!

Dark now.

To search, or not to search?

A daunting task with the spectacle of thousands of plots before you, and not a single light around, save on the roadway. Oh well, that's what flashlights are for.

Hours later… nothing! NOTHING!

This isn't right.

Where is he???

As we were despairing, we noticed a car drive up to the Main Office. What luck!

After knocking on the door, and convincing the lone woman that we weren't grave robbers, she disclosed a detail she only faintly remembered. Roy Brown's family had quietly spirited the Canadian ace away, about twenty years previous.

No formal record.

Destination unknown.

I wasn't the only one who had come looking through the years, apparently. But no one has ever found out the ace's new resting spot.

If YOU know where Captain Roy Brown rests… let me know. Thanks.


DID ROY BROWN Shoot Down the RED BARON?

You betcha'

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE, shown in full, tells American ace, Oliver Colin LeBoutillier's side of the story. His recall of the event, I believe, removes all doubt!




'BROWNIE DID IT'
Eyewitness: Sopwith Camel Guns Turned The Trick

By Gene Kuhn


FIFTY-FIVE YEARS have passed since that fateful Sunday morning in April when Germany's ace of aces, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, was shot down in his bright red Fokker triplane over France's Somme Valley.

In that time, hundreds of differing accounts have been written, several books have been published and, countless arguments have taken place, over one question: Who got the Red Baron?

Was it one or both of two Australian machine gunners who took the baron's low-flying plane under fire from the ground? Or was it, as the official record has it, the late Capt. Roy Brown, leader of 209 Squadron's A Flight.

The answer, supplied by Oliver Colin "Boots" LeBoutillier, a 75-year-old Las Vegas businessman, will disappoint both the Australians, who have been not at all averse to taking credit, and the Germans, who prefer to believe that nothing in the sky could match the baron.

LeBoutillier, the only American volunteer pilot in the squadron and leader of B Flight was an eye witness to the baron's downing and he insists it was indeed Brown who shot him down.

"To my dying day I'll say Brownie shot him down, Capt. Roy Brown. I'm convinced of it.

"By God, it was so evident. I saw the shots going into the cockpit. How could it be anything else?"

"There is absolutely no doubt Brownie shot him down," he repeated. "He was probably dead before he hit the ground.

"The Australians saw the red triplane and started firing like hell at him. Then when he was down they jumped in and scavenged the airplane.

"It isn't up to me to say they didn't fire at him and maybe they hit the wings. But they claimed him. The Australians will always say, 'We got him.'"

LeBoutillier said the fatal shot had to come from Brown's Sopwith Camel as he dove at a 45-degree angle on the baron's plane.

The bullet, he said, entered Richthofen's shoulder from the back and took a downward path, hitting his heart and making, its exit in the left chest area.

LeBoutillier's hands became the planes of Brown and Richthofen as he gestured to show the relative and changing positions of the aircraft in the dog fight.

His statements on the death of the legendary fighter pilot were made in an interview prior to his appearance last night as guest speaker at a dinner meeting of alumni of Fresno State University's aerospace classes.

"Would you put something in that I'm vitally interested in aerospace education programs?" he asked.

LeBoutillier said he was "just a kid" when he ran away from home to join what was then the Royal Naval Air Service in Canada.

"I had five minutes of flying in a Model B Wright airplane, "just like the Wright brothers had, at Mineola, Long Island.

"I took it off the ground, made a turn and the minute I landed I was a pilot."
LeBoutillier started as a probation flight sub-lieutenant. But promotions were rapid because of attrition, he said.

In those days Britain had two air arms, the Royal Flying Corps and the RNAS. The naval squadrons were in the 200 series, he said, and his squadron was the ninth, hence the 209th Squadron.

The squadron was assigned to patrol the Allied lines on April 21. But "the weather was bad and it finally cleared so we could get off about 9:30."

It was divided into three flights, Brown's, LeBoutillier's and C Flight with Capt. O. W. "Red" Redgate as the flight leader.

The squadron was two or three minutes from the lines when the fight with Richthofen's Flying Circus developed.

"At 12,000 feet Brownie had started to tangle with all the German triplanes, and that's when B Flight flew right into it," LeBoutillier continued.

"All you saw were Sopwiths and triplanes. all together. There were three or four red triplanes, but nobody knew Richthofen was in one of them.

"I had fired on a red triplane but missed. Then one chased me for about 20 seconds. I pulled out to see if my wings were all shot up. Then at that moment here came Roy Brown at a 45-degree angle, and I could see his tracers going into the cockpit. He pulled up and never saw the red triplane again."

But LeBoutillier did. He made a low pass over the downed plane, which he said had received damage to landing gear and right wing tip.

Brown's report of the action apparently triggered much of the controversy over the Red Baron's death.

LeBoutillier said Brown reported "the triplane went straight down." But it did not, and the Australians took it under fire.

"He (Brown) pulled up in a climbing turn to the left, and it looked to him like it was going down. He assumed when he pulled up, the plane went straight down.

"Then he later said he shouldn't have put that in the report. Your first impressions of what you saw is what they want. Once you walk away from your airplane and make your report, you can't change it."

Dale M. Titler makes a great deal out of Brown's failure to see Richthofen's plane hit the ground. In his book, "The Day the Red Baron Died," Titler is inclined to give credit to Robert Buie, one of the two Aussie gunners who opened up on Richthofen's plane.

According to Titler, Richthofen died of a bullet which entered the side of the Red Baron's chest and ranged upward—just the reverse of the bullet's course as LeBoutillier described it.

LeBoutillier's footnote to history may end the controversy over the end of the Red Baron. Maybe.

Fresno Bee (Fresno, California) - Friday, July 13, 1973