In D&D, of course, it was originally decided that the five types of chromatic dragon should be distinguished by each having a unique attack, so that green dragons breathe poison, black dragons acid, and so on. Naturally, the most powerful of all the chromatic dragons was going to be the one that breathed fire, fitting the legends on which the broader idea is based.
1E
The red dragon is unusual in the original Monster Manual in that it has two pictures and, despite being drawn by the same artist, they don't match. The creature shown in the line drawing on the inside is fairly unremarkable as dragons go - it's more a case of the others having features that distinguish them from it than it being particularly distinctive in its own right. Still, we can say that it has a narrow lower jaw, a row of triangular spines down its back replacing the frill of green and black dragons, and no horns. It also has what look to be whiskers on its cheeks, which perhaps reinforces the 3E contention that dragons are synapsids (related to mammals) and not reptiles.
The picture on the cover, however, shows a creature with a much more robust head and shorter snout. It lacks the whiskers, but, most notably, has enormous horns projecting laterally, which are twisted like those of many bovine species. Such features could be justified as sexual dimorphism, with the individual on the cover being a male, and the one on the inside a female. But this is, perhaps, less plausible as an explanation for why the creature on the interior has three toes on each forefoot, and the one on the cover has four.
In terms of its physical power, the red dragon is the most potent of the chromatic dragons and, in most respects, is one step stronger than the one immediately below it in the hierarchy. Despite being at the top of the scale, however, in this edition it still only has the same hit points as an African elephant, despite being much larger. In comparison, the T. rex is said to be about the same size and has far more hit dice.
In some respects, however, the regular scale breaks down to make the red dragon tougher than it would otherwise be. A regular stepwise increment, for instance, would have given it an armour class of zero (since low was good in 1E), whereas it's actually negative, far better than any non-magical armour. Similarly, while we'd expect it to be more intelligent than the average human, it's basically equivalent to the top 10% of the human population (an IQ of about 120, if we take things literally). Red dragons also spend less time asleep than humans do, and about a third of them can use magic... well enough, ironically, for an adult red to be able to cast the fireball spell.
2E
The red dragon here has a more lizard-like head, without the brow ridges of 1E. It does have horns, but they are quite unlike those of 1E, being smooth, comparatively narrow, and pointing backwards (which, as ever, makes it hard to see how it would use them for much). Whereas the 1E red dragon, rather oddly, had black wings, here they seem to be reddish-brown, still not matching the colour of the body, as they will later, but closer. We can't really see the details of the wing structure, but they look more bat-like than in 1E, where all five digits formed the wing and a horn-like spur projected from the wrist; here it seems more like a short, clawed, thumb.
Another major change to the look is that the triangular spines down the back have gone, to be replaced by a narrow fringe of brown hair, again hinting at mammalian relationships. The fact that it has canine teeth is another mammalian feature not seen in reptiles (as are the horns), although the scaly hide and the shape of the head do look reptilian, as we'd expect. The whiskers of 1E have been replaced by what can loosely be described as a genal frill. This resembles the much larger neck frill of a frilled lizard, and like that structure, is probably composed of skin stretched over cartilaginous spurs projecting from the back of the lower jaw.
The frilled lizard uses it to scare away predators by making itself look fierce. It's less obvious why this would be useful to a top predator that's bright red and is at least 80 feet (24 metres) long as an adult, but there you go.
3E
While the appearance of most dragons changes comparatively little between editions, the red is one of the more fluid. The original triangular spines having been replaced by a fringe of hair, they've now changed again, this time to a frill similar to, but not as prominent as, that of a green dragon. The horns are also quite different; while the Draconomicon does suggest that they're variable in form, all the images show serrated heavy backswept horns rather than the smooth conical spikes of 2E.
The wings, of course, are now fully red, although they appear singed and blackened along the trailing edge, perhaps suggesting a limitation on the dragon's inherent fire resistance at this particular extremity. The genal frill clearly extends up onto the ears, and so is more likely to be a means of enhancing the creature's hearing, similar to the large external ears of a bat.
The wings have a longer region of attachment to the body than in other dragons. They don't extend onto the legs as they do on bats, of course, but they do reach beyond the hips, increasing the membrane's overall surface area.
In other changes, beyond the general ramping up of power in this edition, it's notable that the red dragon is no longer exceptionally intelligent. In numerical terms, its rating hasn't changed (although arguably, the figure is less impressive in this edition)... but the other dragons have mostly caught up with it, with only the smaller black and white dragons still trailing behind.
5E
The changes in appearance in this edition are more easily put down to individual variation, although they are still more so than the changes in the appearance of other 5E dragons. The colour is more vibrant, and the dorsal frill not quite as high. There are spines on the end of the cartilaginous struts that support the genal/auricular frill, perhaps just because it's an older individual. (Although, given the immense size of the creature in the 3E picture, possibly not). Most obviously, the horns are ridged and wavy, rather than serrated - but note that 3E did say there was plenty of variation in the shape, so this may be an example of that.
Aside from simply being so large (nowhere near as big as in 2E, but still pretty impressive), there isn't much else distinctive about the red dragon; it's just the most physically impressive of the chromatic dragons and is the one that gets to breathe fire. For instance, while the intelligence rating remains the same, it's now outclassed in this respect by the scheming greens. It does, of course, retain the immense arrogance and greed that reds have always had, and that help explain its "chaotic evil" alignment.
Red dragons are said to lair on high mountain slopes. Depending on latitude and elevation, that could potentially cover a wide range of different habitats, but it seems clear that this is likely to mean "above the tree line", either in alpine meadow, or close to the rocky peak. This is not a great place for a large predator to hunt, since there's not an awful lot there to eat, but it's actually a pretty good choice for a flying predator.
It allows seclusion, which is doubtless useful even if one assumes that nothing eats dragon eggs. More importantly, without intervening trees and with high cliffs nearby it's a perfect place for a really large flying creature to take off from. They hunt then, we would assume, on the lower slopes and in the valleys, where there is much more plentiful food.
In this vein, it's interesting to note that the 3E Draconomicon states that red dragon wings are longer and narrower than those of other kinds, due to an extended second digit (index finger). This is what's technically called a "high aspect ratio" and is seen in birds and bats that need to rapidly fly over long distances, sacrificing manoeuvrability for speed. Which makes sense for a predator that swoops down from mountain tops to hunt in wide valleys and open plains.
In the other direction, there is likely an upper limit to how far up a mountain a red dragon could live, but, since this isn't where it gets its food, it's could potentially be very high indeed. One possible limitation could be "is it possible to fly that high at draconic (rather than aircraft) speeds?" Given that draconic flight clearly isn't obeying the laws of physics anyway, this is hard to answer. So it could be that the limit is instead whether there's still enough oxygen in the air, since there's no evidence that dragons don't need to breathe.
The actual "death zone" beyond which a human will literally die without an external oxygen supply is around 8,000 metres (26,000 feet) - only 14 mountains in the real world are higher than that. But a dragon is large and active, and we can assume that it wants to be reasonably comfortable and to live in its lair for protracted periods. So, without allowing for magical assistance of some kind, a more plausible upper limit is 5,000 metres (16,500 feet) - higher than anything in western Europe or in Australia, but ruling out rather a lot of summits in the world's really big mountain ranges.
Which still leaves plenty of places where they can live.
The biggest question related to red dragons is, of course, whether or not real creatures could breathe fire. Clearly, none of them do, but is it theoretically possible? There has been a fair bit of debate about this, most recently in the context of the dragons in Game of Thrones. Those in favour of it being possible suggest a number of potential mechanisms, such as belching out hydrogen and having some flint-like structures in the throat to ignite it, or simply spraying out white phosphorus. The most popular theory, however, uses the bombardier beetle as an analogy.
Bombardier beetles, which also make an appearance (in giant form) in early editions of the Monster Manual, are real-world creatures that produce hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide in glands on their backsides. When they are threatened, they can mix the two solutions together, creating a powerful exothermic reaction that explosively sprays boiling hot liquid out of their rear end. This is clearly not actual fire, but the argument runs that a dragon could spit out two separate substances that create a blast of flame when they are mixed.
I'm inclined to think this is a bit of a stretch, at least if you want anything that looks at all like the blasts of fire that we envisage dragons as producing. But, although the chemicals required are pretty nasty, it might not be impossible. A bigger problem, however, is doing this without setting your mouth on fire. Or, indeed, the whole of your head. A jet of fire, unfortunately, is not the same as an ultra-rapid blast of boiling liquid.
Of course, D&D red dragons are, from 3E onwards, immune to the effects of fire and heat. So this isn't a problem for them, and various other means of generating fire in such a creature present themselves once we allow magic to enter the mix; it could even work like a military flamethrower and spray blazing petroleum out of its mouth. In the real world, though, where animals are unavoidably flammable, I don't see it working.
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