[Sailor Steve]

This nicely illustrates one of the problems I have with research for the '100 Years' thread. Today is supposedly the 100th anniversary of the first kill by future German ace Herbert Knappe. A lot of the time there is no information on the plane the pilot flew, or even the plane he shot down.

In this case Wikipedia, and all the sites that copy them, says he was flying an Albatros D.II. The problem there is that the first Albatros D.II didn't see service until August, and that was on the Western Front. Knappe was on the Eastern front, and the plane he shot down was Russian. Records are clear on this.

Possibilities are that Knappe was flying a different plane, or maybe the date is wrong and it wasn't June 1916, but 1917. This would make sense as his second victory didn't come until May 1918, and there were still Albatrosen around in mid-'17. I've put in a request at The Aerodrome forums in case someone there has better information, but it will probably be a few days before I know anything.