For me how an enemy plane (or your own for that matter) comes to a ugly ending is one of the most immersive factors of flying. Red Baron doesn't do a bad job of it, but it could certainly be improved enormously.

For anyone who has read lots of WWI bio's etc they would no doubt be well aware of one of the most common commments by pilots on describing the demise of an enemy aircraft, and that is that it 'Just fell apart'. Indeed it's probably the most common occurance. Hughly descriptive it conjours up images of partialwings going one way, the pilot or crew another and the engine and fuselage plummenting earthwood.

Another form of ending is for the pilot to be shot. This usually resulted in the plane performing a quick zoom in response to the pilot jerking the joystick as he was hit by bullets. The aircraft would then normally stall at the top of the zoom, drop off on one wing and invariably spin down.

A third earthbound ending is a form of controlled glide. This would normally be the result of the engine being hit, wings damaged or pilot wounded. And if the pilot is lucky he amy make it before his kite cracks up.

The last is my favourite. Flammers! These hopefully will be spectacular, with technicolour effects.

The disintegrating plane effect would be caused by the aircraft exceeding it's structural limit during the dive to ground. They probably wouldn't shed wings, etc. immediately, possibly excepting when a flying wire was broken and then the wing would most likely collapse back onto the fuselage. There is no recorded incident of an FE2 breaking up in the air either. They were really tough. Note that a spinning aircraft would be less likely to break up due to the braking effect of the wings during the descent.

Most WW1 aircraft were distinctly tail-heavy, requiring some forward pressure on the stick to maintain level flight. This would be a major factor in the quick zoom and spin when a pilot is injured or killed.

Any sim should cover the ability to attempt to put a fire out. Sideslipping to avoid the flames, engine off and hoping that the fire would be extinguished before the airframe (or pilot) burned through.

I think I agree with SunScream here. Structural disintegration seemed to be a side effect more often than a direct cause. Most of the descriptions that I have heard of aircraft disintegrating seems to indicate that they did so when they were already going down, either in flames or with a dead man at the controls. In air disintegration did happen (Immelmann being a very famous case) but in general you had to hit "meat or metal" to bring one of these crates down.

WWI planes were remarkably tough and could take a fair number of bullets. However, when they did go, it could often be spectacular. Once the flames started the plane more often than not burned like a torch. The pilot could sometimes save himself by sideslipping, but this was the exception and not the rule. As for structural failure, if the structure did let go it tended to fall apart completely. The biplane structure is a box, with all sides needed to maintain structural integrity. Parts of the support could go away (spars and wires shot through) without destroying the integrity of the box. However, when integrity was lost the whole thing tended to collapse.

The construction of most WWI fighters was far different from WWII era, and later types, in that their construction architucture did not include cantilever wings. For the most part, the strength of the early aircraft depended on all the major components (Wing, fuselage, emmpanage ) being structurally sound to support the other elements. The wings of early fighters formed a box structure joined by wires and struts which were a combined structure rather than two seperate stand alone wing structures. Once one of the major components failed the others were likely to fail as well. This was one of the major reasons the Fokker D.VII was a major breakthrough in aircraft design in that it had cantilevered (self supporting)wings. It really didn't need the outer wing struts for support strength.

As BBury states the wings and planeform of WWI aircraft are quite open to structural failure, as it is the some of theparts that create strength, not each individual item in itself.

In a combat if a pilot hit the struts of his opponent then there is every likelihood that some form of structual failure will occur as that pilot continues to throw his bus all over the sky. And if one part gives way under stress, then it is likely that others will too.

Remember the comment "it just fell apart" was one commonly quoted in combat reports. It's not my saying.