H.A. JONES
Hermann Göring faced a discouraging situation. In the midst of rising casualties, Jagdgeschwader I’s then highest-scoring pilot – sixty-victory ace Ernst Udet – had gone on leave the day that Göring returned from his break. Udet’s most recent string of air combat triumphs – nineteen kills within twenty-two days since 1 August2 – had been a powerful motivational force for his JG I comrades. But, in the process, Udet had become exhausted and he needed to rest.
Unlike Manfred von Richthofen, who had been so devoted to his frontline duties in 1917 and early 1918 that he had to be ordered to take leave, Udet and other later Staffel and Geschwader leaders understood the value of recuperation. Even Göring, whose biggest struggle had become badgering his superiors for more men and equipment, went on leave with some regularity.
In his 1937 biography Ernst Gritzbach wrote:
‘Göring had to balance the use of his resources against the enemy with the greatest adroitness at every turn. Above all things, by sheer dint of his personality, he continued to motivate the inner fighting spirit of his ever more shrinking little band of flyers. Often the Geschwader’s airfield was so far forward that it lay within range of enemy artillery fire. The men could hardly think of sleep, as they really gave the utmost to their mission.’3
Royal Air Force historian H.A. Jones saw a darker view of Göring’s situation, as he observed:
‘The Richthofen [Geschwader], which …had been the head and front of the German air fighting formations in the West, had been fought almost to destruction … Although Göring was given some young pilots and was subsequently able to get going once more with the help of his former flight commanders, it was impossible for the [Geschwader] to recover its glory in the few weeks of active life which remained … Göring, a leader of proved worth, was possibly gifted with a temperament more offensive [-oriented]… than that of his predecessor [Wilhelm Reinhard] or it may be that the German air service, sensing that the … war was changing, was impelled to throw its weight into the battle heedless of cost.’4
Göring was not that foolhardy with his ever more limited resources. Rather, he sought motivational devices, such as using the power of imagery to inspire his men. Hence, at this point, Göring broke the tradition of having the Richthofen Geschwader-Kommandeur [wing commander] fly an aeroplane with a highly visible amount of red on it. He was not the Red Baron and asserted his own identity in a way that his men would recognise during the battles to come. His final aeroplane – Fokker D.VII F 5125/18 – was all white, which, as noted aircraft markings researcher Greg VanWyngarden observed, ‘almost certainly … was painted this way at the [Fokker] factory especially for Göring’.5 Between his administrative duties and, almost certainly, the effects of his continual struggle with rheumatoid arthritis, Göring did not fly much during the last three months of the war. When he did, however, he was as recognisable in his white Fokker D.VII as Manfred von Richthofen had been in his red Albatroses and Fokker Triplanes.