Goering Read Online Free PDF

This was the quick-witted war of the air, with its own comradeship based on a mutual trust in skill.
    By 1917, Goering’s reputation as a fighter pilot was fully established. In addition to the Iron Cross, he was to be awarded the Zaehring Lion with swords, the Karl Friedrich Order and the Hohenzollern Medal with swords, third class, all prior to his final award, Pour le Mérite. In May he was put in command of Squadron 27, which needed an improvement in morale. Goering was now responsible for both administration and strategy; he had to show inspiring leadership. He set about the immediate strengthening of the squadron, working day and night to ensure efficiency first on the ground and then in the air. In the summer the two squadrons, 26 and 27, were operating alongside each other, flying from the same airdrome on the Flanders front—at Iseghem, near Ypres. The air attacks on the Allies were now built up into a major offensive; Goering’s squadron in particular had to help in the protection of the other planes, attracting enemy fire away from them. The Allies, meanwhile, were redoubling their efforts in the air, and the Germans countered by forming specially large composite squadrons, called Jagdgeschwader (pursuit squadrons), equaling four of the others; the first of these was commanded by Manfred von Richthofen. Goering and Loerzer were among those whose squadrons were merged to create the third of these major formations.
    As the final great offensive of March 1918 developed, Goering was recognized as an outstanding officer whose leadership had an invigorating effect on men whose morale was flagging. He was moved to any area where difficulty of this kind was being experienced. Life in the air was brief and hazardous. After April, when Richthofen was killed in action, his promotion was rapid. One morning in May, when Goering was in the cockpit ready to take off on a mission, his adjutant came running toward the aircraft waving a paper. Against the roar of the engines he shouted that the Emperor had awarded him the Pour le Mérite. The decoration was the highest that could be given; it was awarded not for some single action of outstanding bravery but for continuous courage in action. 4
    Captain Reinhardt, a celebrated pilot, had been chosen to succeed Richthofen as squadron commander. One day in May he too was killed, while testing a new plane in which Goering himself had just flown. It was then, on July 7, that Goering was chosen to command Richthofen’s famous squadron, now gravely depleted. On July 14, the day he assumed his command, the men of the squadron went on parade to meet him. Karl Bodenschatz in his book Jagd in Flanders Himmel remarks how tough he looked. “You could see this,” he says, “in his movements and the way he spoke.” Lieutenant von Wedel introduced him to the men, and Goering replied in a “strangely insistent tone of voice,” the words informal and unprepared. He said it was a special honor to be made commandant of such a unit as this, and he spoke of the men who had died in order to make the fame and spirit of the squadron what it was, a spirit they would all need to remember in the grave days ahead. Then Lieutenant Bodenschatz, as adjutant, gave Goering the Richthofen emblem, the walking stick made for Germany’s most famous flyer by a craftsman called Holzapfel, who had so pleased Richthofen by his gesture that he had kept the stick with him to the day he died. Reinhardt had possessed it for only four weeks.
    On July 17 Goering dispatched his first official report, in which he wrote:

    The British single-seaters are giving as good an account of themselves as ever, but the French fighters rarely penetrate beyond the front line; they usually avoid serious encounters. On the other hand, the French two-seaters usually appear in close formation, pushing home their bombing attacks ruthlessly and from low level. For this they usually employ twin-engined