Otto Parschau

Otto Parschau
Photo of Leutnant Otto Parschau just after earning the Pour le Mérite
Born	11 November 1890 Klutznick, Allenstein, East Prussia
Died	21 July 1916(1916-07-21) (aged 25) Grévillers, France
Allegiance	German Empire
Service/branch	Luftstreitkräfte
Years of service	1910-1916
Rank	Leutnant
Unit	FFA 42, FFA 261, FFA 32
Commands held	Abwehrkommando Nord
Awards	Pour le Mérite, Royal House Order of Hohenzollern, Iron Cross 2nd Class

Leutnant Otto Parschau (11 November 1890 – 21 July 1916) was a German World War I Flying Ace and recipient of the Pour le Mérite, Royal House Order of Hohenzollern, and Iron Cross, First Class. He was noted as one of the pre-eminent aces on the Fokker Eindecker. He was one of the world's first flying aces, as along with Leutnant Kurt Wintgens, Parschau was one of the original pilots entrusted with the prototype of the revolutionary Fokker Eindecker fighter plane with a machine gun synchronized to fire safely through its propeller arc via use of a gun synchronizer.

Parschau was born in Klutznick, in the Allenstein district of East Prussia. He became a commissioned officer a year after having joined the Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 151 in 1910. Parschau was trained as a pilot in Johannisthal, Darmstadt and in Hanover and received his licence on 4 July 1913.

Upon the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 Parschau was already serving with the Luftstreitkräfte, and soon found himself flying two-seaters in operations on the Champagne front and then in Flanders and Alsace-Lorraine before being posted to West Prussia and Galicia, on the Eastern Front.

Parschau was assigned a Fokker A.III aircraft bearing the IdFlieg military serial number of A.16/15, previously used by one Oberleutnant Waldemar von Buttlar. This unarmed monoplane had been privately purchased in 1913 by von Buttlar, whose aircraft had been requisitioned by the Fliegertruppe along with his commissioning as an officer in the German Army at the outbreak of hostilities, and had been painted a shade of green, the colour of von Buttlar's previous Marburg-based Jäger Regiment 11. Parschau had served with the same, surreptitiously named Brieftauben-Abteilung Ostende unit, abbreviated as BAO in German military communications of the time, in Belgium as Oberleutnant von Buttlar did in November 1914, where the two German officers could have first made contact. As A.16/15 still bore the green color of von Buttlar's old unit, the aircraft became distinctive as Parschau's 'Green Machine', right from the outbreak of World War I. Parschau flew this machine on a roving commission for nearly a year, serving with FFAs 22 and 42 and the aforementioned "BAO" unit, which was actually a group of four FFA units operating as one for the Oberste Heeresleitung or OHL, the World War I German Army's High Command office. In this period, Parschau flew his distinctive machine on the Champagne front during October and November 1914. Following this were periods in Flanders and Alsace-Lorraine before Parschau was posted first to West Prussia and then on to Galicia on the Eastern Front. His travels were marked on the Fokker's fuselage. This same aircraft would be the very first airframe ever to be fitted with a workable synchronization gear, and was equipped with the Fokker Stangensteuerung synchronizer — along with one Parabellum MG14 machine gun for its armament — in late May 1915 for Parschau's use and combat evaluation, and to function as the prototype Fokker Eindecker.