‘On April 23rd [1917], acting as observer, [Bate] went for his first flight over the German lines. In the engagement that followed he displayed great skill and gallantry, and brought down one of the enemy machines. His pilot was wounded and his own tunic was torn by a bullet, though he remained unharmed. The … [patrol] to which he was attached accounted for eleven enemy machines, without losing any of their own.’³⁵

The RFC war diary entry for 23 April mentions only the crew of Second Lieutenant Reid and Lieutenant Fearnside-Speed of 18 Squadron as having ‘driven down a hostile machine, which is believed to have fallen out of control’³⁶ and Jasta 26 suffered no casualties that day.³⁷ Hence, this British claim is questionable.

On 28 April, fighting at Arras was renewed and resulted in British gains.³⁸ Correctly anticipating that the British action at Arras would be accompanied by air attacks further south, German planners ordered fighter units, including Jasta 26, into action between Bohain and St. Quentin. Göring scored the Staffel’s only victory of the day when his patrol attacked a flight of Sopwith two-seaters. Göring described the fight thus:

‘About 6:30 p.m. [we had] aerial combat with a [flight] of six Sopwiths over St. Quentin. I shot down one Sopwith, which crashed behind our lines northeast of St. Quentin. After it tumbled over continuously, I followed close to my opponent. Shortly thereafter, a second Sopwith came spinning down, tumbling over and over, followed by one of our Albatros machines. I also went after the opponent down to 1,000 metres’ altitude and saw him crash south of St. Quentin, apparently behind enemy lines.’³⁹

Two German pilots claimed Sopwith two-seater victories that day, Jasta 26’s Leutnant Hermann Göring and Offizierstellvertreter Edmund Nathanael of Jasta 5,⁴⁰ even though British records show only one such aircraft was lost. Nonetheless, both fighter pilots’ claims were confirmed. Possibly, Göring accounted for the Sopwith that landed within German lines, where its crewmen – Second-Lieutenant Clifford M. Reece,⁴¹ pilot, and Aircraftsman 2nd Class William E. Moult,⁴² air gunner, of 43 Squadron, RFC – were taken prisoner. A view of their aircraft is seen above.