As much as I read of him Manfred was a cold psychopathic killer lacking emotions and from the start a surprisingly bad pilot. From the childhood he enjoyed hunting and killing, his wet dreams coming when he was strafing Russian soldiers in the east (who had almost no chance to inflict damage on his aircraft), but got frustrated with lack of air to air action and being unable to down an enemy aircraft.

Under Oswald Boelcke he got a Fokker and began scoring victories. He said that killing an animal satisfy's him for hours, killing a man for half a day if I remember right. Allegedly once a novice pilot ran to him that a flight of enemy aircraft is closing. He rudely said 'Get into your aircraft and kill some or get killed'. Youngster eagerly run away and was dead soon after.