CASPAR KULENKAMPFF-POST
Initially, the German ground and air offensive against Verdun in 1916 was marked by success, but army Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn did not anticipate having such a resourceful opponent as Général Philippe Pétain, commander of France’s Army Group Centre. Despite fierce German artillery attacks, he organised an effective supply route that enabled him to respond with equal vigour to the onslaught.
Numerous instances on the ground and in the air demonstrate that ‘both sides fought with equal bravery,’2 but ultimate success came through the French Army Group Centre’s ability to persevere until British forces relieved pressure on it by launching the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916.
General der Infanterie Hans von Zwehl of the 5th Army staff attributed some of the failure to ‘a grievous pessimism [that] had set in’3 among his troops. Adding to that sombre mood, while Hermann Göring was on leave in Berlin, a piece of particularly bad news circulated among German aviation units: on Sunday, 18 June 1916, fighter ace Oberleutnant Max Immelmann was killed during an aerial combat after his Fokker broke up in the air and fell 2,000 metres to the ground. It was not clear whether his death at age twenty-five was caused by some kind of failure of the aeroplane or by enemy bullets.
Throughout air corps, pilots who had hoped to emulate Immelmann’s earlier well-publicised success – and that of his equally high-scoring counterpart Oswald Boelcke – had been encouraged when the pair had received the Pour le Mérite, after their eighth confirmed aerial victories. That number established a performance level at which pilots might reasonably anticipate gaining such a high honour and they were motivated accordingly. Thus, the aggressive combat pilot Hermann Göring, with two confirmed victories to his credit, could consider that he was a quarter of the way toward attaining the boyhood goal he once proclaimed – to distinguish himself and get even more medals than his father had.
Adding to the bad news within Feldflieger-Abteilung 25’s area of operations, another prominent German airman became another Eindecker casualty the day after Immelmann died. On 19 June, thirty-eight-year-old Hauptmann Ernst Freiherr von Gersdorff, a seasoned pre-war pilot4 and most recently commander of Kampfgeschwader 1 [Combat Wing 1], or Kagohl 1, was shot down while flying his Fokker near Metz.5