HERMANN GÖRING
Once the Messines ridge was cleared of German troops in early June 1917, British ground forces advanced their campaign to drive back the German army in Flanders. But, as an eminent British historian observed: ‘Nearly two months passed before …preparations for the main advance were completed, and during the interval the Germans had ample warning to prepare counter-measures.’2 The coming event would be known as the Third Battle of Ypres because of its focus on the commanding heights of the German salient opposite that city. But even before the campaign began, on 31 July 1917, Oberleutnant Hermann Göring and Jagdstaffel 27 were aggressively – and successfully – challenging their Royal Flying Corps adversaries in the skies above and around the centuries-old city(Appendix I).
Two weeks before the battle started – on the evening of Monday, 16 July 1917 – the Albatroses of Jasta 27 tangled with S.E.5 fighters of 56 Squadron, RFC. The British aircraft were escorting a bomber formation when they were attacked by Göring and ten of his comrades.3 Following that encounter, the Staffelführer gained his ninth aerial victory,4 but, as Göring noted in his combat report, one of his foes got in enough good shots to knock loose the engine of his Albatros D.III:
‘At 8:10 p.m., northeast of Ypres I attacked a single-seater formation, [and] shot down one, which … crashed. Immediately thereafter, I had to turn against a second opponent, whom I forced down to 200 metres. As a result of [that] aerial combat, suddenly the engine dropped off [its mountings] and hung only loosely in the fuselage [in such a way] that I immediately went into a spin and [had to] land the machine behind the third row [of trenches], where I nosed over. By that [action] the second opponent got away.’5
Apparently, Göring’s first opponent was Second-Lieutenant Robert G. Jardine6 of 56 Squadron, RFC, whose aircraft reportedly was disabled. Back on the ground, Göring’s Albatros D.III (serial number 2049/16) – in which he had scored his fourth, fifth and sixth victories – was beyond salvaging and was scrapped. His new aeroplane, an Albatros D.V, was fitted with a more powerful engine than his D.III.
He flew Albatros D.V 2080/17 when he scored again, on the evening of Tuesday, 24 July 1917. Earlier that day, a Göring protégé, Leutnant der Reserve Helmuth Dilthey, scored his first victory – which was also Jasta 27’s first triumph over a Royal Naval Air Service Sopwith Triplane fighter. Dilthey wrote:
‘I was ordered, with two other machines, to keep enemy aeroplanes far from the frontlines and to protect our own flyers there. At the frontlines I encountered seven Sopwith [biplane] single-seaters that withdrew as I turned towards them at about the same altitude. After that, above them appeared three triplanes, [employing] … what was for them the usual and … relatively safe tactic of diving down on us from above, firing, but before coming close, pulling up … Thanks to their tremendous climbing ability, [they] were again immediately several hundred metres above us. After this manoeuvre, one of them flew by us and off to the side. I also pulled right up and fired at him … until my machine side-slipped, which occurred after a short time as I had to put my machine into an extremely steep angle in order to get the higher flying triplane in my gun-sight.