Andre de Meulemeester

Nickname: Sergeant Mystere
Place of birth: Bruges, Belgium
Place of death: Bruges, Belgium
Allegiance: Belgium
Service/branch: Aviation
Rank: Lieutenant
Unit: 1x¨re Escadrille de Chasse, 9x¨me Escadrille de Chasse
Awards: Order of Leopold II, Belgian and French Croix de Guerre, Silver award of Italian Medal for Military Valor

Lieutenant Andre Emile Alfons de Meulemeester was a Belgian flying ace during World War I. He was credited with eleven confirmed and seventeen unconfirmed aerial victories.

World War I

Andre de Meulemeester joined Belgian aviation at the beginning of World War I. In October 1916, he was assigned to 1x¨re Escadrille de Chasse as a Nieuport pilot dubbed Sergeant Mystere. He had a victory claim unconfirmed on 1 February 1917, and scored his first official one on 30 April. By the time he scored his sixth and last Nieuport-borne win, on 4 November 1917, he had also accrued nine unconfirmed claims. He then changed up to a Hanriot HD.1. Using his new craft, he managed to score one more confirmed and three more unconfirmed victories before changing squadrons. On 17 March 1918, he scored the first of four confirmed and five unconfirmed victories with 9me Escadrille de Chasse. His eleventh undisputed triumph was as a balloon buster; he destroyed an observation balloon on 5 October 1918.

Postwar

During the war, he had flown 511 combat sorties, engaged in 185 aerial fights, and been wounded twice. Now that the war was over, he quit flying and took over the family brewery.

List of World War I aces from Belgium

Sources of information

Reference

Nieuport Aces of World War 1. Norman Franks. Osprey Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1855329611, 9781855329614.

More aircraft.

Source: WikiPedia