the top air ace was the “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen,
with sixty-one kills; Göring and Loerzer had scored fifteen each,
and their friend Ernst Udet one fewer. Thirty years later, Lo-
erzer would snicker to fellow generals that his buddy Lieutenant
Göring had inflated his mission claims. “Do the same,” Loerzer
claimed Göring had urged him, “otherwise we’ll never get
ahead!”
Despite his robust good looks, his general health caused
more problems than his war injuries. In February he was
hospitalized with a throat infection for several weeks. In his ab-
sence, the Germans began stitching their fighter units into
larger formations, using four squadrons in a wing (Geschwader).
Von Richthofen was given No. Wing, and Loerzer No. .
Göring was consumed by an envy that was only partly allayed by
the kaiser’s award, at last, of the Pour le Mérite on June , .
Richthofen had been shot down and killed on April , but
Göring was passed over as his successor. He now had eighteen
official kills. On June , he gunned down a biplane near Villers
At war’s end, Lieutenant
Hermann Göring, lean and
handsome, proudly displayed
the “Blue Max,” the Pour le
Mérite medal, at his throat.