JG I also lost two pilots that day and, later that afternoon, Geschwader-Kommandeur Göring was called on to preside at the funeral of twenty-one-victory-ace Leutnant der Reserve Fritz Friedrichs. The young pilot, who had been approved for the Pour le Mérite but had not yet received the award, died after his Fokker D.VII accidentally caught fire in the air.⁴⁶ He jumped from the aeroplane with a parachute, but became entangled in the burning wreckage as it fell and was killed. As the Pour le Mérite was not awarded posthumously,⁴⁷ the fatal accident denied Friedrichs that high honour.

Even as Göring directed a Geschwader honour guard to place Friedrichs’ remains into the earth near Beugneux airfield,⁴⁸ other JG I members were preparing to move to yet another farm field, Monthussart-Ferme, some fifteen kilometres away, just outside of Braisne on the Vesle river. To avoid detection by Allied aeroplanes, the men and equipment were moved throughout the night of 18-19 July.⁴⁹

It is interesting to note that the day after Göring scored his aerial victory, his best friend, Bruno Loerzer, now the Kommandeur of JG III, shot down his twenty-eighth enemy aeroplane. While Göring’s air fighting success came to a halt in July, Loerzer continued to score until late September, at which point his total stood at forty-four.⁵⁰ But a post-World War II comment of Loerzer’s casts doubt on his and Göring’s success as fighter aces. In a discussion with Generalleutnant Wolfgang Vorwald,⁵¹ Loerzer admitted that ‘air combat victories [were] exaggerated’. Hence, in this author’s view, aerial victory lists, such as the one in Appendix I of this book, are subject to interpretation – and scepticism (‘What was Göring’s Final Tally’).

In any event, the furious pace of battle in the summer of 1918 offered no one at JG I’s new airfield any relief from their labours. On the morning of 19 July, work crews set up tent hangars, while pilots of the Staffeln flew off to the frontlines.⁵² Meanwhile, mechanics prepared for the airmen’s return and the inevitable post-combat repair work on the aeroplanes. The result of the pilots’ work was three Staffel victories for Göring to endorse and pass along to Kofl 7 for approval.

Amidst a powerful French ground attack in bad weather on Saturday, 20 July, Göring sent his pilots out to attack tanks, a captive balloon and infantry columns. They succeeded in all cases, but at the end of the day came the sad duty of three more funerals, including that of Göring’s fellow Knight of the Order Pour le Mérite, Leutnant der Reserve Hans Kirschstein.⁵³ A twenty-seven-victory ace and leader of Jasta 6, Kirschstein accepted a ride in a two-seater that crashed on taking off from a repair depot five days earlier.

A small joy on that rain-filled day was the arrival of a two-seater, out of which jumped one of the Geschwader’s most popular pilots: Leutnant Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen, a younger brother of JG I’s namesake, who had been on a long convalescent leave since he was shot down and badly wounded on 13 March. All eyes were focused on ‘the other’ Richthofen, who was younger (and who had shot down many more aeroplanes) than Göring. Of course, Göring could take pleasure in the knowledge that he had possession of the Geschwader walking stick created from a British propeller for Manfred von Richthofen and used by only one other person, his predecessor, Wilhelm Reinhard. Göring prized that wooden shaft, which symbolised another link in his chain of successes.

Inextricably connected to his brother’s legend, Lothar von Richthofen was eager to fly again. It was very fitting that he was placed in command of Jasta 11, which his brother had shaped from a nondescript unit to one of Germany’s premier air fighting Staffeln. But, as events proved, the younger Richthofen had returned to combat too soon. That fact became evident during his first flight, when he became disoriented and almost lost his way back to Monthussart-Ferme airfield. As Richthofen himself later related, his vision was so blurred that he ‘could scarcely tell friend from foe’.⁵⁴ He flew as often as he could and there was no way for Göring to keep Richthofen from his honour-driven quest to serve Germany.

More aerial triumphs followed and on the early evening of 25 July, he scored a milestone victory. Richthofen and his patrol attacked a formation of Airco D.H.9 bombers and their Sopwith F.1 Camel escorts over Fismes; he pursued one of the fighters and shot it down, claiming it as his thirtieth success.⁵⁵ By Kogenluft’s calculations – and they may have been for purely propaganda reasons – Lothar von Richthofen’s latest air combat claim was marked as JG I’s 500th overall victory.⁵⁶

But Göring would be absent when young Richthofen was once again in the spotlight. The following afternoon, only thirteen days after he arrived at JG I, Göring went on leave⁵⁷ for almost five weeks. Appropriately, in Göring’s absence, Geschwader leadership was passed to Lothar von Richthofen.

The reason for the leave is not mentioned in surviving Geschwader files. Göring was no coward and would not shrink from a hard fight, but, possibly, another bad episode of rheumatoid arthritis may have caused him to seek relief from what would have been pain so severe as to interfere with his powers of concentration. According to one account:

‘[Göring] departed for Munich and Mauterndorf [in Austria]. He spent more time with his godfather and Baroness Lilli von Epenstein than he did with his unofficial fiancée. It was obvious to Marianne Mauser’s father that the war was coming to a close, and not in Germany’s favour; and what sort of future would a young ex-pilot, no matter how heroic, have inside a defeated Germany? Better to marry off his daughter to another farmer, who could live off his land until times changed, than to a penniless charmer without prospects.’⁵⁸

By the time Göring returned to his post, on 22 August, the Geschwader had changed airfields several times and was back under the overall command of the 2nd Army in the Somme Sector. By that time, however, the complex of the war had changed dramatically. The Allied counter-offensive that began in the early morning hours of 8 August 1918 was so effective that Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg’s chief of staff, General Erich Ludendorff, called the event ‘the black day of the German army in the history of the war’.⁵⁹

Geschwader losses had paralleled those on the ground. On 10 August, the day after he was promoted to Oberleutnant, Erich Loewenhardt collided with another Jasta 10 Fokker D.VII and was killed.⁶⁰ Three days later, Lothar von Richthofen was shot in the thigh in a fight and invalided back to Germany, never to return to the battlefield. By the time of his last air fight, Lothar had scored forty aerial victories, the same amount as the legendary Oswald Boelcke, but half the number of his illustrious brother.

And now those days of glory were fading, as Göring, catching up on his administrative work, could see in the steady stream of JG I casualties that occurred in his absence (Appendix II). The weight of numerically superior and better equipped adversaries compelled Göring to write in one report:

‘… the enemy biplanes are very well armed and fly extremely well in large formations, even when attacked by several German single-seaters flying close together. [Enemy aircraft] are equipped with either armoured or fireproof fuel tanks … Very often in the 7th and 2nd Army Sectors enemy tethered observation balloons were very often attacked repeatedly, without being set on fire.’⁶¹

Göring could only growl and glower privately, but still observed by his adjutant, who, years later, remembered: ‘Oberleutnant Göring’s face became sterner during these days. Should [the enemies] have their armour-plating, one after the other, we will get them. Should they make their tethered balloons impregnable, one way or the other, we will get them.’⁶²

Despite Göring’s grim determination, a clear sign of JG I’s diminished air power was evident in its current operational status, as noted in a message from Kogenluft dated 13 August: ‘Due to great casualties [suffered] in recent days, [JG I pilots and aeroplanes are] to be condensed into one Staffel. [It is to] collaborate with Jagdgeschwader III and Jagdgruppe Greim.’⁶³

For the time being, the new arrangement made Göring subordinate to his friend Oberleutnant Bruno Loerzer, commander of JG III, consisting of Jastas 2, 26, 27 and 36.⁶⁴ It also placed JG I below Jagdgruppe 10 – a smaller organisation made up of Jastas 1, 39 and 59. Then known as JaGru Greim,⁶⁵ it had been established by the Bavarian ace Oberleutnant Robert Ritter von Greim.

As a footnote to history, it should be noted that, twenty-six years later, Göring was again replaced by Greim. In the final days of the Third Reich, on 25 April 1945, after Hitler sacked Göring and ordered his arrest, the newly promoted Generalfeldmarschall von Greim was appointed as last wartime commander in chief of the Luftwaffe.⁶⁶