Interesting indeed James and XN923. I think that it is true that chivalry in the idealised though probably, in actuality, non-existent medieval tradition did not exist in the WW1 air combats. That is a clumsy sentence but what I am saying that much of the chivalry of the Medieval period which involved letting a beaten opponent live was due in reality to the fact that as hostages they were worth a lot of money. Ransom payments funded many an extension to the manor.

The WW1 airmen lived a life so utterly apart, in combat terms, from the foot sloggers in the trenches and their individual combats may have seemed for fleeting moments for those in the meat grinder to be somehow preferable. Yet a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head whether it’s from a pilot or a muddy scared infantryman.

To me the Germans seem to have engrained the mythic element of knightly combat into their military philosophy to a much greater extent than most with the possible exception of the French. And it is apparent that this ethic survived into the WW2 Luftwaffe. XN923 cites the status accorded the Experten, and this status is unparalleled in the Allied forces. But the price was heavy because by creating those mythic warriors they also created a system where the very best had no respite other than death or incapacitation from constant combat.

The Allies were much more pedestrian and rotated pilots out of combat so that they could instruct or put their leadership skills to tactical and strategic use. In Germany in WW2 the leadership was striving to recreate the myth of the Teutonic Knight – the knights who had first come to prominence in the expansion into the pagan parts of Eastern Europe and from which the Prussian national identity grew. A knight cannot retire he is always on a quest or he ceases to be that mythic figure – for want of a better example its like the man of La Mancha Don Quixote. The quest is always there but in the end no Knight can be immortal.

This creation of a myth was necessary to legitimise what was essentially a working class right wing party that had taken over from the WW1 and pre-WW1 aristocratic German leadership.

But that is a digression. Like James, I see precious little of the myth of knightly behaviour in WW1 air combat. Lanoe Hawker was killed after he had run out of ammunition and was trying to escape. In the Medieval period he would have possibly been captured and held for ransom, but that is not an option in the air. Also the reality was that an enemy who survives and escapes will come back to try and kill you.

A very interesting discussion.