The Greatest Dogfight Never
What happened to this pilot?
He had no parachute, he did not land in a soft spot like a haystack, but he was uninjured. How is that possible?
Clues may be found in a couple other photographs from the same dogfight, which came from Mrs. Gladys Maud Cockburne-Lange, widow of the WWI flying ace for the British Royal Flying Corps who strapped a camera to his plane and filmed this European sky action.
After the war, the widow Cockburn-Lange sold the photos to a magazine for $20,000. The photos are fake, however. In 1984, a donation to the Smithsonian by American pilot David Archer, who was also a Hollywood special effects ace, included evidence that he'd been in cahoots with the widow Cockburne-Lange, if she even was a widow, or even named Cockburne-Lange.
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