During World War One, German aircraft along the Balkan Front were at times outnumbered 10-to-1 by the Allies. The front stretched roughly 300 miles from the Adriatic Sea to the Aegean Sea, through Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. The German air mission was dedicated almost entirely to observation and reconnaissance. The only German fighter pilot, 22-year-old Lieutenant Rudolf von Eschwege, was personally responsible for patrolling 100 miles of the front, protecting the reconnaissance flights, intercepting enemy airplanes and defending Bulgarian ground troops from enemy air attacks. He was so successful that the British finally had to resort to setting a diabolical aerial trap for the Eagle of the Aegean Sea.
Rudolf von Eschwege (pronounced ESH-vay-guh) was a 19-year-old military cadet when the war started in 1914 and spent the first few months in the German cavalry on the Western Front. When the fighting stagnated into trench warfare, the role of cavalry was diminished significantly, so Eschwege transferred to aviation. Despite crashing several times during training, he finally qualified and, in July 1915, became a pilot flying two-seater observation planes. By May 1916, he was flying Fokker Eindecker fighters, protecting the other observation planes. In the fall of 1916, Eschwege was commissioned a Lieutenant and transferred to the Balkan Front. His time on the Western Front had been more or less uneventful.
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