For the rest of March and well into April, Loerzer and Göring devoted all of their flying time to reconnoitring various Verdun-area locations. When Göring spotted new construction at the Côte de Talon,⁴⁷ he drew the 5th Army staff’s attention to it and monitored the site’s progress. Indeed, on 22 April, Loerzer flew Göring along the northeast portion of Verdun so that forty-five aerial photos could be taken of many fortification details.⁴⁸ Five days later, Göring made forty-three photos of the area north of the City of Verdun, the citadel and major roads in the area.

On 2 May 1915, in one of the unexplainable anomalies of the German awards system, Bruno Loerzer – but not his continually serving observer, Hermann Göring – received a significant decoration from the Grand Duchy of Baden. As he had been commissioned into a Badisch infantry regiment, Loerzer had been approved for an award of the Knight’s Cross 2nd Class of the Order of the Zähringer Lion with Swords⁴⁹ ‘as a symbol of particular appreciation for outstanding conduct in the face of the enemy’.⁵⁰ In general, German officers’ awards were presented more for continual service than for a single heroic act.⁵¹ It was odd that Loerzer, who was in flying school when the war broke out, was honoured while Göring, who had gone to war in a Badisch regiment, did not receive the same award until April. Perhaps that action was a subtle chiding for the unorthodox manner in which he left the regiment to enter the flying corps.