On the morning of Sunday, 3 October, Göring made his first flight over the lines in the pilot’s seat, at the controls of an Albatros C.I (serial number C 486/15). By this time Ctype aircraft on the Western Front had been equipped with machine guns⁴⁰ and now he had his own forward-firing machine gun to complement the flexible gun used by his backseat man, Unteroffizier [Corporal] Mayer. It was most unusual for a German officer pilot to have an enlisted observer, so Mayer may been a pilot himself, serving as an aerial gunner and back-up pilot in the event Göring had a problem while qualifying for his pilot’s badge. Göring and Mayer joined two other two-seater crews in a two-hour flight along the left flank of the 3rd Army in the Champagne Sector. The three aeroplanes reported being involved in seven air combats during the flight.⁴¹ Göring, in typically dramatic form, added to his report that he (and, presumably, Mayer) had ‘fought off seven French aeroplanes one after the other’.⁴²

According to an FFA 25 summary, the unit’s only successful air combat on 3 October took place later that morning. To provide combat experience to newly arrived airmen from other Feldflieger-Abteilungen, mixed-unit crews were sent out on missions. Thus, FFA 25’s Leutnant Ehrhardt (pilot) flew with FFA 34’s Leutnant Bernert (observer) when they encountered and claimed to have shot down a French aeroplane at 11:00 a.m. near Tahure, twenty kilometres south of Vouziers.⁴³ However, French records list no air combat casualties that day,⁴⁴ which calls the victory into question, as French loss records needed to be accurate to justify ordering replacement aircraft and personnel. Other World War I belligerents’ aircraft loss records are generally accurate for the same reason.

Göring and Mayer made an uneventful observation and orientation flight the following afternoon⁴⁵ and apparently were not involved in the encounter in which the mixed unit crew of FFA 25’s Vizefeldwebel [Sergeant-Major] Schramm (pilot) and FFA 44’s Leutnant Cammann (observer) attacked an enemy machine at 5:00 p.m. over Suippes,⁴⁶ about twelve kilometres southwest of Vouziers. Schramm and Cammann were credited with an aerial victory; no French losses were recorded,⁴⁷ which, once again, makes their claim questionable.

Göring flew with other enlisted backseat men in succeeding days and, while he reported some air combat activity, he did not attain the success that his FFA 25 comrades Leutnant der Reserve Schülke and Oberleutnant Veiel did on the morning of Monday, 11 October, when they shot down an enemy aircraft over Montlainville.⁴⁸ Or on the 12th, when, at 5:25 p.m., the team of Vizefeldwebel Schramm and Leutnant Cammann scored FFA 25’s seventh aerial victory, an enemy aeroplane shot down south of Tahure, and, five minutes later, Leutnant Kaehler and Oberleutnant Kirsch attained the unit’s eighth air combat triumph a short distance away.⁴⁹ It is likely that one of these crews was responsible for bringing down the French Voisin two-seat bomber from Escadrille VB 112 crewed by Soldat [Private] Bremond and Lieutenant du Beauviez, who were forced to make an emergency landing within German lines in that area and were taken prisoner, as confirmed by French loss records.⁵⁰