Göring’s Twenty-first Victory

The next Jasta 27 combat was a combination of triumph and tragedy. After the second morning patrol on Monday, 17 June, Göring reported:

‘[A]t about 8:30 a.m., I spotted five Spads … attacking our tethered balloons west of Soissons. With my Staffel [of six other fighters] I came down and attacked them. During the course of the fight, from 500 metres, I downed a 200-hp Spad that crashed at the western edge of the small woods of the Ambleny Heights. I saw, closely below me, Leutnant Brandt pass over a second Spad. At the same moment, two of my Fokkers collided and crashed. Due to our attack, the German tethered balloons remained unharmed.’²²

He two ill-fated German pilots were twenty-four-year-old Oberleutnant Maximilian von Förster²³ and Vizefeldwebel Wilhelm Schäffer,²⁴ twenty-six. It is most likely that the new and relatively inexperienced pilots collided while angling for a “kill-shot” position behind one of the Spads. The two Fokkers fell to the ground and both pilots were killed.²⁵

Offsetting the two German losses that day, Kogenluft confirmed that Staffelführer Hermann Göring had scored his twenty-first victory and Leutnant Rudolf Klimke attained his eighth.²⁶ Their victims – most likely Maréchal des Logis Francheschi and Adjudant [Warrant Officer] Breton – came down within German lines and were taken prisoner.²⁷

Due to his health problems, Göring had not been able to attend the 1. Typenprüfungen [first aircraft type tests] held at a Berlin suburban airfield in January 1918. But now – in better health, proudly wearing his Pour le Mérite and with the status of twenty-one confirmed victories to his credit – he was eager to attend the second such event, which began on 3 July at the airfield at Adlershof [literally eagles’ court], home to the Flugzeugmeisterei [aircraft test establishment].²⁸ The facility enabled fighter aircraft manufacturers to compete for lucrative production contracts by having their new models test flown by successful German single-seat pilots. The legendary Manfred von Richthofen had helped establish this forum for aircraft evaluation, as his former comrade Richard Wenzl recalled:

‘Richthofen … was of the viewpoint that not just any old home front pilot, most of all [not] one working for one of the aircraft companies, should be the man who determines what will be flown at the Front. Thus, representatives from … the Jagdstaffeln at the Front came to these tests. The individual types were test-flown, [and] then the gentlemen agreed amongst themselves on which types were best suited at the time …’²⁹

Many attending pilots distrusted one radical new design³⁰ that proposed to replace the battle-proven Fokker D.VII fighter. Created by Claudius Dornier, the new Zeppelin-Lindau D.I was of an all-metal cantilever design and the first biplane fighter with duralumin stressed “skin” covering the wings and fuselage. Unperturbed by the aeroplane’s innovations, Hermann Göring boldly stepped forward to fly it.³¹ He put it through its paces and, later, pronounced it to be a splendid fighter. Not to be outdone, Hauptmann Wilhelm Reinhard, Richthofen’s chosen successor as commander of Jagdgeschwader I, climbed into the cockpit, applied power to the aeroplane’s 185-hp BMW engine and soon had the metal fighter aeroplane at 1,000 metres’ altitude. During a dive, the struts between the top wing and the fuselage broke³² and the top wing fell away. The remainder of the aircraft plunged to the ground; Reinhard, who had no parachute, was killed in the crash.

The loss of Reinhard, just over six weeks after Richthofen’s demise on 21 April, shocked the Luftstreitkräfte. The adjutant of JG I, Oberleutnant Karl Bodenschatz, was among the first to raise the question of a successor to Germany’s most prestigious aviation command. He echoed his superiors’ sentiments when he noted: ‘The selection [pool of potential successors] was not very big. Jagdgeschwader Richthofen had to have an absolutely first-rate man. The new Jagdgeschwadern II and III were led by Hauptmann [Rudolf] Berthold and Oberleutnant [Bruno] Loerzer, who could not be called away [from their posts]. But who should get Jagdgeschwader I? [Who should] be the next heir to Richthofen?’³³

News about Reinhard’s death was circulated widely within German military aviation,³⁴ and given the importance of the post, his successor was chosen in five days. A number of more accomplished, higher scoring, highly decorated Staffelführers were passed over in favour of Oberleutnant Hermann Göring. The selection process was never revealed and this author can only speculate that, soon after Reinhard’s death, one of Göring’s sponsors, Hauptmann Helmuth Wilberg, appealed to the highest ranking Göring admirer, Crown Prince Wilhelm, to propose that the leader of Jasta 27 succeed to leadership of JG I. Even though the Crown Prince was only nominally in charge of the army group that included the 7th Army,³⁵ he could exert influence in this type of personnel matter. Assuming that politics at high levels were involved and, as Göring was in Berlin at the time, he surely sought help from his godfather, Dr. Hermann Ritter von Epenstein. The doctor maintained a big house in Berlin, where he enjoyed the benefits of decades of using his inherited and earned wealth to cultivate friends in high offices. Epenstein would have known who in Berlin to ask to help support his godson’s career ambitions.