Been doing some research into a relative who was a pilot at the end of the Great War. I've accessed his logbook which, thankfully, his kids donated to the RAF Museum, and it's pretty mundane stuff. He joined his squadron on 7 Sep 1918, flew a few "gopher" and training flights before making his first operational sortie on 24 Sep. His logbook is mostly bland entries like "Reconnaissance of such-and-such a place" or "Offensive Patrol." I found a file of combat reports for his squadron and he isn't mentioned...not a single engagement with the German Army Air Service. It seemed his operational career was pretty boring apart from an engine failure that caused him to crash on the front trench of the Hindenburg Line on 14 Oct 1918 which, thankfully by then, was in Allied hands.
Well...a few days ago, I decided to go back to the combat reports and see if they might shed some more light on my relative's operational sorties. The earliest I could find dated from 29 Sep 1918 and related to a task to escort a squadron of DH4 bombers. The crew that made the report engaged 7 Fokker D.VIIs, shooting down 2 of them. However, the key detail was that they were part of a 12-ship formation from my relative's squadron.
I also purchased "The Sky Their Battlefield" which records all known Allied (British, French and American) air losses during the entire Great War (it's an incredible book). An aircraft of my relative's squadron was recorded as shot down just 5 mins after the time of the combat report noted above. The apparent victor was a Fokker D.VII piloted by Josef Mai...it was his 30th and final aerial victory.
My relative's logbook tallies with the times of these engagements so it seems almost certain that he was part of that formation. That means he was engaged in, or at least dangerously close to, air combat with one of Germany's top aces. Even better, I found a couple of pictures online showing Josef Mai and his, apparently, well-known zebra-striped Fokker D.VII:
I love it when family history research turns up previously unknown details, and particularly when it helps build a new mental image of what was happening at the time.