Actually Manfred, ( like Brown would do ), was watching over the battle not to look for stragglers or novices, ( which are impossible to identify from looking at an enemy machine by the way ), but rather to see how the battle progresses, & also to look after his juniors & nail an enemy machine that gets on the tail of one of his boys. he did this very thing in chasing May who had just attacked Manfreds cousin who was a greenhorn. Dunno what exactly a loan aircraft is, but am quite certain identifying a rookie by looking at his plane is quite impossible.

On occasion he would take on a machine that was being macho & separated itself from it's formation to attack Manfred & his circus. he distained this type of individual vs team macho sort of departure from the air group tactics & did not hesitate to attack these types. Having said that, he did on occassion do solo patrols, but this was not the norm for him.

& contrary to the popular view, one of Manfreds pilots recounts in the book The Aces Talk by Ed Sims, they often flew across enemy lines. Which is often depicted as Manfreds great mistake, but that's just another myth. "someone" got a lucky 5-600 yard shot, Some might say a fortunate shot. It was not the 1st time his machine or many other machines for that matter were hit from the ground.