Talk:F. W. Winterbotham

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- KenWalker | Talk 04:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Post-War
The article is silent on Winterbotham's life after the war, except for his books. He was only 48 when the war ended and you might imagine that he continued working for MI6, but the Guardian obituary on 1 February 1990 quotes Air Marshal Sir John Slessor's foreword to The Ultra Secret in 1974: 'It is a curious reflection on our system of honours and awards that he should have finished up after the war as a retired Group Captain with a CBE on a quiet farm in Devon.' https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-guardian/36750765/ He must have had permission at the highest level to publish The Ultra Secret, which dramatically altered the historiography and public understanding of the Second World War, but there doesn't seem to be any known paper trail regarding that. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

World War I service
In this section it is claimed that Winterbotham was – shot down and captured on 13 July 1917, being shot down in a dogfight in Passchendaele by a member of the Richthofen Geschwader.

This I feel alludes that he was ‘possibly’ shot down by Manfred von Richthofen himself. But as the German fighter pilot, known in English as Baron von Richthofen or the Red Baron. Was himself wounded in combat sustaining a head wound on 6 July 1917 and did not rejoin active service against doctor's orders until 25 July. It really is pushing at the edges of the Red Baron connection.

Richthofen’s personal Luftstreitkräfte squadron was known as Jagdstaffel 11 which produced many high-scoring "aces" including his younger brother Lothar von Richthofen and a distant cousin Wolfram.

Linking the dogfight in the Passchendaele or Passendale area, to the Battle of Passchendaele page is also misleading as ‘the battle proper’ ran from 31 July – 10 November 1917 clearly before Winterbotham was shot down.

The references [2] are from Winterbotham own book! Pauseypaul (talk) 18:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)