[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

7th May 1917


Top British flying ace, VC Albert Ball falls in battle. Lothar Von Richthofen credited for kill.

Falsely imho:

Ball was last seen by fellow pilots pursuing the red Albatros D.III of the Red Baron's younger brother, Lothar von Richthofen, who eventually landed near Annœullin with a punctured fuel tank. Cyril Crowe observed Ball flying into a dark thundercloud. A German pilot officer on the ground, Lieutenant Hailer, then saw Ball's plane falling upside-down from the bottom of the cloud, Brothers Franz and Carl Hailer and the other two men in their party were from a German reconnaissance unit, Flieger-Abteilung A292. Franz Hailer noted, "It was leaving a cloud of black smoke... caused by oil leaking into the cylinders." The engine had to be inverted for this to happen. The Hispano engine was known to flood its inlet manifold with fuel when upside down and then stop running. Franz Hailer and his three companions hurried to the crash site. Ball was already dead when they arrived. The four German airmen agreed that the crashed craft had suffered no battle damage. No bullet wounds were found on Ball's body, even though Hailer went through Ball's clothing to find identification. Hailer also took Ball to a field hospital. A German doctor subsequently described a broken back and a crushed chest, along with fractured limbs, as the cause of death. (clearly a case of blunt-force trauma from the crash as described by a trained medical person)
The Germans credited Richthofen with shooting down Ball, but there is some doubt as to what happened, especially as Richthofen's claim was for a Sopwith Triplane, not an S.E.5, which was a biplane. Given the amount of propaganda the German High Command generated touting the younger Richthofen, a high-level decision may have been taken to attribute Ball's death to him. It is probable that Ball was not shot down at all, but had become disoriented and lost control during his final combat, the victim of a form of temporary vertigo that has claimed other pilots

Even today: rule one of flying (especially in a Cessna) U NEVER FLY INTO A THUNDERCLOUD...especially dark ones! I've survived two intense microbursts myself one blew down a large professionally erected party-tent literally hitting only the large yard I was in; the other deposited six inches of hail on my 200 yard diameter Napa neighborhood in 10 minutes. Such winds are known to crash modern jet liners, much less a well strung biplane, on approach to landings at near touch-down altitude as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_191

For aircraft, you have all these hazards and many more. First is the severity of the updrafts and downdrafts; if the currents inside a thunderhead can keep a chunk of ice the size of a softball aloft, just think what it'll do to your little Piper Cherokee (or even a 747). Second is icing; as your plane is getting tossed around, the same near-freezing water condensation that forms hailstones finds the ultra-low-pressure environment over the top of your wings' leading edges simply irresistible. Third is debris; if there's an active tornado or even high straightline winds associated with this event, not only will you have ice flying around, but dirt/sand, rocks of varying sizes, tree branches, all the way up to Dorothy and Toto. Even planes with a military pedigree, like the P-3 Orions that are used to track hurricanes, can't survive this kind of onslaught.
Don't go anywhere near a thunderhead. Just don't. In fact, if you're a private pilot, don't even take off if there's a thunderhead anywhere near you, and if you're flying cross-country and see one, get on the horn with ATC immediately and request information on its course and speed and what you can do to avoid it. For pilots of small unpressurized craft the answer will usually be to put the storm front on your tail, open up the throttle and find the nearest airstrip that can take you.

The cloud spit out a stressed out war-weary ace, inverted at two hundred feet, with an oil-flooded Hispano engine: too low for hope of recovery. Even the artist got the clouds right; Last Fight of Captain Ball https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16700/why-is-the-cumulonimbus-cloud-formation-so-dangerous