THREE men who would play an important part in future German military aviation were flying over the Western Front during the early months of 1918. Two of these young fighter pilots were inseparable friends, and would remain so for many years, until death finally parted them; the third man was an outrageously flamboyant individualist, whose life after the war was destined to be a strange mixture of excitement and gaiety, fading away into a tragic and violent end in 1941. All three became holders of the Ordre Pour le Mérite, and their fame was equalled by only one other living air ace, the illustrious Manfred von Richthofen.
When Hermann Goering unexpectedly contracted arthritis at the age of twenty-one in 1914, there was little doubt that his new career as an infantry officer was already ended. Then, while he lay crippled with pain in hospital at Freiburg, Bruno Loerzer, his closest friend in the regiment, who had just transferred to an air training school in the same town, opened out a completely new world for him—the kingdom of the sky. By the time he had recovered enough to hobble slowly around the ward he was determined to become an airman, but it needed patience and all his acknowledged iron resolution to overcome the reluctant authorities and eventually reach the front as Loerzer’s observer. The two friends worked well together in action, and made many reconnaissance flights, mostly over the heavily fortified area around Verdun.
In the autumn of 1915 Goering was trained as a pilot, and after flying the big cumbersome A.E.G. twin-engined bombers for a while, soon managed to rejoin Loerzer, who by 1916 was commanding a fighter unit, Jasta 26. It was obvious that a man with Goering’s abilities as a pilot and remarkable qualities of leadership would rapidly earn promotion, and within a year he had his own command, Jasta 27. Yet Loerzer continued to remain with him; both units shared the same field and the two friends frequently led their combined formations into battle together, their individual scores steadily mounting in the hundreds of engagements that preceded the great German offensive in March, 1918.
At about the same time that Hermann Goering was lying helpless with arthritis at Freiburg, a young army despatch rider named Ernst Udet was learning to be a pilot at Darmstadt. He turned out to be a willing pupil, but recklessness and over-confidence brought a number of minor crashes. Nevertheless, after a successful year flying two-seaters and then Fokker monoplanes, he went to Jasta 15, and by April, 1917, had five victories. In June of the same year he fought the most dangerous and eventful battle of his whole career, when he encountered the brilliant French ace, Georges Guynemer, in the air. For over eight minutes the two biplanes zoomed and spun and twisted around each other, then Udet’s guns jammed and Guynemer courteously turned away and left him. The experience affected Udet intensely for some time, and he had scarcely recovered his nerve when he was posted to command Jasta 37 in Flanders.
During the first two months of 1918 the headquarters of the German High Command prepared for the gigantic offensive that was intended to reverse the fortunes of war and overthrow the Allies by breaking through across the Marne. Artillery, transport and ammunition flowed to the front in an endless stream, while at the same time the Air Service was steadily expanded, mainly by reinforcements from the Russian battle areas. Many new fighter units were formed, until no less than seventy-seven Jagdstaffeln were in existence, and a number of these were then grouped together as Jagdgruppen for the purpose of the offensive.
The German Air Service Order of Battle prior to the mightiest onslaught of the Great War revealed the tremendous amount of work that had been done in implementing the expansion programme initially decided upon in 1917. Germany now had forty-eight Fliegerabteilungen reconnaissance and photography units serving in France, with a further six Fliegerabteilungen on the Turkish front; thirty Schutzstaffeln ground support units; seven Bombengeschwader heavy bombing groups; and the seventy-seven Jagdstaffeln fighter units already mentioned. On 20th March, the eve of the offensive, Jagdgeschwader I, under Manfred von Richthofen, was reinforced by Jagdgruppe 2 (comprised of Jasta 5 and Jasta 46) and the southern sector of the Western Front became the responsibility of Jagdgruppe 9 (Jastas 3, 37, 54 and 56) and Jagdgruppe 10 (Jasta 16 and 34) under the command of Oberleutnant Kohze.
At 4.45 a.m. on 21st March the artillery bombardment that opened the battle rained down death and destruction again and again along the British Fifth Army trenches, and four hours later the German infantry were struggling forward through the smoke and mist that shrouded the desolation of No Man’s Land. Some fifty-six divisions had been assembled for the attack, and by sheer weight of numbers the initial onslaught was a success; slowly but surely the Fifth Army retreated towards the Somme. Despite appalling weather the Royal Flying Corps was in the air from dawn to dusk, harassing the German troops in the forward areas and bombing and machine-gunning transport and infantry behind the lines, although poor visibility restricted fighting in the air for the first three days of the offensive.
On 24th March Richthofen, in his scarlet triplane, led twenty-five aircraft into a raging dogfight with ten S.E.5as of the famous 56 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, and shot down his sixty-seventh victory, which disintegrated over Combles. Thus began the period of his last successes; within a week he destroyed another seven Allied machines, including three that fell to his guns in one day. At once he was headline news again throughout all Germany, but the ardent young Manfred of the Jasta Boelcke days had gone for ever and in his place was a man aged beyond his years, weary of the war and the unceasing bitter struggle for existence that now consumed his life.
During that first week of the March offensive, Richthofen found time to tour the Jagdstaffeln in the 2nd Army area, and in due course arrived at an airfield near Le Cateau, where he talked for a while with Ernst Udet, The commander of Jasta 37, already with twenty victories to his credit, had proved himself to be a capable if somewhat reckless leader, and Richthofen, always an excellent judge of men, asked him to join the Geschwader. As in so many other similar instances, Udet turned out to be well worthy of the master’s selection; on his first flight with the Richthofen Circus he shot down a Sopwith Camel.
By the end of March, 1918, the tremendous spring offensive on which Germany’s hopes depended was slowly grinding itself to a standstill along the whole front. The 17th Army was halted at first, while the 18th Army fought desperately forward almost to Amiens, then paused, unable any longer to withstand the appalling casualties they were enduring every day. The air fighting continued to be waged with a fierce intensity matched only by the struggle on the ground, and the German Air Force made history in dozens of brief but savage battles, but as the weeks passed German strength in the air grew slowly weaker; only the morale of the hard-pressed Jagdstaffeln remained unwavering as ever.
The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service were amalgamated on 1st April to form the Royal Air Force, which concentrated most of its strength against the German fighter formations that were now made up of as many as thirty to forty aircraft at a time. Richthofen led his brightly painted triplanes into the full heat and fury of the aerial war again and again—by 7th April he had seventy-eight confirmed victories—but the Geschwader as a whole had passed its zenith back in the late summer of 1917, and an inexorable fate was carrying the Red Knight himself remorselessly forward to the inevitable end. In the last two years he had seen many aircraft fall in flames, and now the ghastly memories returned again and again to haunt him. “The last ten I shot down burned,” he said thoughtfully one day, when interviewed by a newspaper correspondent. “The one I got today burned, too. I saw it quite well. At the beginning, it was only quite a small flame under the pilot’s seat, but when the machine dived, the tail stood up in the air and I could see that the seat had been burned through….” This obsession with fire, which he shared with Britain’s leading air ace, Mannock, was significant for both men; it indicated clearly that mentally, if not physically, they were almost exhausted.
21st April, 1918, began much the same as any other day. Richthofen strolled out to his red Fokker Triplane in the early morning, deep in conversation with Joachim Wolff, a young pilot who was to accompany him on a hunting trip to the Black Forest in two days’ time. Mechanics spun propellers, the roar of Oberursal engines disturbed the crisp spring air, then Richthofen raised a gloved hand and the six machines sped across the field to rise swiftly into the cloudy sky.
Flying westward along the Somme valley, Richthofen soon sighted two R.E.8 two-seater observation craft of No. 3 Squadron, A.F.C., and four triplanes dropped neatly away out of the formation as they dived to the attack. Simultaneously, two flights of Sopwith Camel fighters from 209 Squadron, R.A.F., led by Captain A. R. Brown, D.S.C, were attracted to the scene by the white puffs of British anti-aircraft fire around the triplanes and immediately plunged to the assistance of the besieged two-seaters In the ensuing battle, aircraft twisted and spun and dived in a bedlam of chattering guns and roaring engines; two triplanes soon weaved crazily through the dogfight out of control, and a Camel staggered away with a wounded pilot. Amid the confusion of noise and flame Richthofen patiently circled, seeking an unwary opponent.
Then, quickly, the Red Knight selected a Camel flown by Lieutenant W. R. May, a new pilot with no battle experience, and swung skilfully on to the Sopwith’s tail. May saw the pencil lines of tracer flashing past his cockpit, and glanced over his shoulder; he looked into the ugly flame-stabbing muzzles of twin Spandaus and glimpsed the outline of a goggled, black-helmeted head. Instinctively, he took violent evasive action, turning and diving until he ran out of sky and was skimming along the Somme Valley just above the ground, the merciless guns behind him hammering away in his ears. Then at last he was right down between the banks of the river, and could turn no more; it had to be the end.
Meanwhile, Captain Brown had seen the scarlet triplane attack May and plunged headlong towards Richthofen, opening fire as soon as he was within range. The three aircraft passed low over the front-line trenches, the triplane under heavy fire from Australian machine-guns and rifles on the ground. Brown held the enemy machine squarely in his sights for a moment and his tracers stitched a pattern of death along the fuselage; Richthofen turned slightly in his seat, then abruptly fell forward. The triplane faltered, but he managed to touch down, bumping heavily along the ground to a standstill. When the pilot was lifted from the cockpit, he was found to be dead, killed by a single bullet through the heart.
In the late afternoon of 22nd April Manfred von Richthofen was buried with full military honours at Bertangles. Six RA.F. officers carried the plain wooden coffin shoulder high from the hangar where it had remained during the night, to the hearse, a Crossley tender, and then the cortege moved slowly away, preceded by a firing party of Australian airmen and followed by more than a hundred Allied mourners. At the graveside, the simple but strangely impressive words of the Church of England burial service were repeated by an English chaplain, in a silence broken only by the endless muted thunder of the guns only a few miles away. With the three sharp volleys of rifle fire that rang out over the grave, the ceremony was ended, save for that most moving of all bugle calls, the Last Post; quietly and respectfully the troops filed away, leaving Richthofen at peace among his enemies.
Thus ended the brief but brilliant life of the Red Knight of Germany. Except for the three weeks in July, 1917, when he was recoving from his head wound, he had been almost continuously in action on the Western Front from September, 1916, until the day of his death; during that period he destroyed eighty enemy aircraft, thus claiming more victims than any other pilot during the Great War, a remarkable record that was never equalled from 1914–1918.
That night, Leutnant Karl Bodenschatz, adjutant of the Richthofen Jagdgeschwader, sadly opened his commander’s last will, which had remained in a sealed envelope for some weeks, locked in the unit strongbox. The single sheet of paper bore only one sentence, hurriedly written in pencil: “Should I fail to return, Leutnant Reinhard (Jasta 6) shall take over the leadership of the Geschwader.” Even in death, Richthofen’s word remained law in the German Air Force, and Reinhard, who was a good, steady pilot, but lacking in imagination, became his successor. At the same time the loss of Richthofen began to have a profound effect on the Geschwader and a dark cloud of despair settled over the little airfield at Gappy, spreading to almost every other unit along the front. Heavy casualties were suffered during the next few weeks, although Ernst Udet seemed to be unaffected by the general depression and soon established himself as Germany’s most successful surviving fighter-pilot.
Then, on 18th June, Reinhard left for Adlershof, on the outskirts of Berlin, to test a new type of biplane fighter intended to replace the now long-obsolete Albatros. At the demonstration, the commander of Jasta 27, Oberleutnant Hermann Goering, took the prototype machine into the air, and found that it responded perfectly; after a short flight he landed, and Reinhard took his place. To the watching staff officers and technicians it seemed to be an ordinary routine flight, nothing more than a final check on an approved fighter, but at 3,000 ft. an inter-plane strut broke, the whole upper wing of the biplane immediately collapsed and the machine plunged to earth out of control. Reinhard was instantly killed.
For five days every man in the Richthofen Geschwader wondered who would be nominated as the new commander; it was taken for granted that the appointment would be given only to a serving member of the unit, probably Manfred’s brother, Lothar von Richthofen, or Ernst Udet. Then, on 8th July, the long-awaited message arrived from the High Command, and the adjutant, Bodenschatz, read it aloud to the pilots crowded around him: “Order No. 178.654. 8.7.18. Oberleutnant Hermann Goering has been appointed commander of the Geschwader No. 1 Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen.”
Why Goering, a man from outside the Geschwader? Difficult though it may be to fathom the true reasons for his selection, it probably came about because he was at that time the senior regular Oberleutnant, and at the same time was a capable fighter-pilot, with twenty-one victories. Also, he had recently been awarded the Ordre Pour le Mérite; above all, he was a splendid organiser and a born leader.
Within a week the new commander arrived at Beugneux airfield to join his new unit, and immediately called all flying personnel of the Geschwader to an address. A rather plump, short man, with steady blue eyes, Goering quickly explained to the assembled pilots his views on air fighting, and ended by saying how proud he was to have the great honour of leading Germany’s finest airmen. Then Oberleutnant Bodenschatz formally handed him the famous geschwaderstock—a gnarled walking-stick that had been carried by Richthofen and later Reinhard, and which had become a symbol throughout the whole German Air Force. With that brief ceremony, the inauguration ended, and the pilots walked silently away, instinctively sensing that the good old days had ended with Richthofen, and the methods of this new highly efficient and strict commander would seldom be to their liking.
By July, 1918, the Richthofen Geschwader, in common with many other fighter units, had almost completely re-equipped with the latest German single-seater scout biplane, the Fokker D.VII. The short-lived success of the Fokker Dr 1 Triplane, which failed entirely to regain the air supremacy from the S.E.5a and the Sopwith Camel types used by the Allies, aroused the German High Command to order all aircraft manufacturers to produce entirely new fighter prototypes; these were all tested together by front-line pilots at a special open competition held at Johannisthal, Berlin, in January, 1918. By far and away the most superior design was the Fokker D.VII, which was therefore put into quantity production at once, not only at Anthony Fokker’s own factory at Schwerin but also in the Albatros and A.E.G. works at Berlin.
The Fokker D.VII has been immortalised as the machine that represented the ultimate achievement in German fighter aircraft types used operationally in the First World War. A sturdy, conventional biplane, the D.VII featured the usual Fokker cantilever wooden wings and a simple fuselage built up of steel tubing covered with fabric, while the interplane “N” struts and the unusual pyramidical centre-section strutting were also built up of streamlined steel tubing. The standard engine fitted was a 160 h.p. Mercedes, later superseded by a 185 h.p. B.M.W; the armament consisted of the normal twin synchronised Spandau machine-guns situated in the cowling to fire forward through the propeller The maximum performance figures of the D.VII—110 m.p.h. at 10,000 ft.—were good, but not remarkable for the period; however, it had a much more important asset, the ability to retain perfect control at heights where the Allied aircraft it opposed were slow and difficult to handle.
Like the Fokker Triplane and the Albatros fighters that had preceded it, the D.VII was flown by most of Germany’s leading pilots, and by the end of the war practically every Jagdstaffel on the Western Front had been equipped with this machine, the excellent flying qualities of which were to earn it special recognition in the Armistice Agreement, which specifically named the D.VII to be handed over to the Allies. Yet it arrived in action just too late to sway the tide of battle that had now turned completely against Germany; hampered by the British blockade at sea, the supply of raw materials had slowly dwindled away, and by August, 1918, aircraft production was seriously affected.
Meanwhile the Richthofen Jagdgeschwader continued to move to and fro about the front, always in the thick of the battle and suffering increasing casualties. Because of these losses, which gradually reduced the fighting strength of the Geschwader to that of a Jasta, operational patrols were conducted in conjunction with a Jagdgruppe under Ritter von Greim, and Jagdgeschwader 3, which had been built up some months earlier under the command of Bruno Loerzer from Jasta Boelcke, 26, 27, and 36. Other units had been combined to form Jagdgeschwader 2, commanded at this time by von Boenigk, and in this confusion of expansion and reorganisation, which strove to combat the tremendous Allied superiority in numbers, the German squadrons fought on with a dogged determination, but they could not be expected to last much longer. The sands of time were rapidly running out, and the end of the Great War almost in sight.
On 1st September, 1918, Hermann Goering reported to the High Command on the situation in the field.“… the enemy biplanes are strongly armed and operate very well in close formation,” he wrote, “even when attacked by several German single-seaters. They are equipped with armoured or fire-proof fuel tanks… On the fronts of the 7th and 2nd Army, enemy balloons have been attacked on several occasions without catching fire…” The young commander’s words revealed his despair; even his undoubted ability as a leader could not exact any greater efforts from his faithful officers and men.
During the last week of September the Allied assault on the last and greatest German network of defences, the famous Hindenburg line, was launched, and by 1st October most of that intricate system had been taken, with the capture of over 4,000 guns, 25,000 machine-guns, and more than 250,000 prisoners. The exhausted and sadly depleted German Air Force concentrated against the overwhelming numbers of British day bombers now in action, hurling into the battle as many as fifty fighters at a time, and on 30th October sixty-seven German machines were shot down for a loss of forty-one Allied aircraft. All three Jagdgeschwader roamed here and there over the disintegrating front line, their D.VIIs now supplemented by a few of the new revolutionary Fokker D.VIII fighters. These slim little parasol monoplanes, Anthony Fokker’s last contribution to the German military aviation industry, were very fast and highly manoeuvrable, but unfortunately never became available in sufficient numbers to alter the desperate situation.
On 5th November the Richthofen Geschwader fought its last battle in the air during the Great War, engaging a formation of Spad fighters and shooting three down without loss. Then the weather closed in and rendered flying impossible. The pilots stood idly on the airfield in the pouring rain, waiting for the heavy fog to lift, unaware that many miles away in Germany the High Seas Fleet at Kiel had mutinied, there was street fighting in Berlin, and in a number of army units troops had refused to obey their officers. And also at this turning-point in history, while the Kaiser’s empire crumbled into ruins, a young unknown corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, who had been temporarily blinded in a gas attack near Ypres, lay in a military hospital at Pasewalk, in Pomerania, slowly recovering from the injury. His name was Adolf Hitler.
Three days later it was obvious that the end was now very near for Germany. Hermann Goering summoned all personnel of the Richthofen Geschwader to assemble before him, and informed them bitterly that orders had been received to demobilise. Confused and contradictory messages continued to pour in until the Armistice at last became effective, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918; at once an order arrived directing the pilots to hand over their aircraft immediately to an American receiving unit. Instead, Goering decided to lead his squadron to Darmstadt, and on the 12th November the Geschwader took off to return to the Fatherland.
At Darmstadt a revolutionary soldier-council was in control of the aerodrome, and the troops there commenced to impound the Geschwader aircraft, but an enraged Goering approached the soldiers and gave them his ultimatum—either the confiscated machines would be released or he would attack at once with every other aircraft he possessed. In his anger and desperation he undoubtedly meant every word. His authority quickly proved to be effective; without any further argument the fighters were at once returned to him.
The last order received by Goering instructed him to lead the Geschwader to Aschaffenburg, for the purpose of surrendering all his aircraft to a French commission. As a final act of defiance, all the pilots deliberately landed heavily at the airfield there, and many of the machines were almost completely wrecked by the impact with which they struck the ground. That evening, Goering made a farewell speech to the demobilised men, reviewing the achievements of the Geschwader since its inception in June, 1917, and recalling the great leader who had died in action while flying with it, Manfred von Richthofen. A total of 644 victories in the air had been gained since Oberleutnant Dostler had shot down an observation balloon on 5th July, 1917, until the last three victories on 5th November, 1918. During that time fifty-six officers and six other ranks had been killed; fifty-two officers and seven other ranks had been wounded. Thus ended Germany’s most outstanding fighter wing, the élite Jagdgeschwader No. 1 Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the men who fought and flew in it no longer wanted, the machines they had used now in the hands of their enemies.
On 11th November, 1918, when the thunder of the guns at last faded into silence, a German pilot walked quietly to the blackboard where orders for the day were normally chalked, and wrote sadly, “Im Kreig geboren, im Kreig gestorben”. In those few words he summed up the whole bitter, splendid history of the Imperial German Air Force. Born in the war—died in the war; and in those dark days it seemed that such untarnished glory would never be seen again.
And, in a way, it proved to be so. The knights of the air on both sides who fought in the First World War were a class of men apart from all others, and when they departed quietly into the mists of time an era had ended. Their mettle had been wrought in the seething crucible of the Somme, and it is to their everlasting credit that it never failed to shine brighter than the most tempered steel, not only when they ruled the embattled heavens, but also in the face of their greatest enemy—defeat.