For most of the following week, Göring and Rittmeister Ziegler resumed making barrier flights. As fighting intensified in the Champagne Sector, FFA 25 moved back to Stenay to make room at Vouziers for aeroplanes from the BAO⁶¹ and other air units arriving from western France and Belgium as the force build-up continued – with a view toward the German offensive against Verdun, set to begin in just over two months.⁶²

In preparation for the offensive, on 1 December, Major Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen, the Feldflugchef [chief of field operations], ordered the establishment of two major operational units that would evolve into Germany’s dedicated bombing groups. The units, designated as Kampfgeschwader der obersten Heeresleitung [combat wings of the supreme high command] and identified by the acronym Kagohl, were to be deployed at the discretion of the high command (rather than individual army headquarters or corps commands).

Göring was back at his old airfield when an interesting challenge was presented. He and Leutnant Emil Flörke, an observer, were dispatched to Gotha in Thuringia, in eastern Germany, to ferry a new aeroplane across Germany and back to Stenay. It was FFA 25’s first two-engine G-type, the designator for Grosskampfflugzeug [big combat aeroplane].

Göring was a model of self-confidence when he and Flörke set out for the Gotha aircraft factory’s plant. However, a day short of three weeks later, on 14 December, a telegram arrived at FFA 25 to inform Hauptmann Leonhardy that the brand-new big bomber had crashed at the factory airfield due to failure of landing gear clamps. Both crewmen had been hospitalised; Flörke lost a quantity of blood and Göring suffered a knee injury.