Top scoring Battle-of-Britain aces

Surely best that they are all remembered for the remarkable men they were rather than who was “best”.

For my part, the humble Sgt John Smith who got a definite four, say, is every much a hero as the Baders Tucks, Johnsons and the Locks. If not more so.

Well said – I’ve ALWAYS felt the same way towards this – (one of my pet niggles…….)

In the IPMS circles I used to mix in, everyone under the age of 30 seemed obssesed with ‘Aces’ & building their planes….. (with me always griping the same argument/philosophy as quoted above, regarding ‘Joe-Average’ or ‘Johnny No-Kills’ being just as important).

Same happens on some of the American die-cast websites – which is probably WHY we’re treated to ENDLESS releases of (yet another) ‘Bud’ Anderson “Old Crow” P.51 Mustang…… instead of one flown by ‘anon’ in a more interesting colour-scheme (& other than the 357th).

Sorry Firebird – overlooked your last post, before writing this.
Glad you feel the same way 😎 😎 😎

For my part, they were all bloody hero’s, whether they got 4 or none, just getting into the cockpit and taking off to do what they all had to do is enough for me.

Quite! Like the offside rule in footy – if they were on the pitch they were interfering with play and hats off to them.

For my part, the humble Sgt John Smith who got a definite four, say, is every much a hero as the Baders Tucks, Johnsons and the Locks. If not more so.

For my part, they were all bloody hero’s, whether they got 4 or none, just getting into the cockpit and taking off to do what they all had to do is enough for me.

Fighter Command scores during 1940

Researching fighter claims of any nationality, using primary source documents, can be a minefield. At best, and in my humble opinion, there are relatively few claims that can be difinitively attributed to pilot A, B, or C. In confused combat situations the ability to attribute specific losses to specific claimants, and thus tally up a score, becomes increasingly problematic. Of the high scorers there were doubtless some who over inflated things. Equally, some claims were probably made in good faith and yet were entirely without any real foundation. If you add up the claims by Fighter Command over France in early 1941, for example, you will find that the entire German fighter arm was was wiped out at least once over – and that patently never happened. Add up the claims in 1940 and, again, you find the total decimation of the Luftwaffe fighter (and bomber) force took place. Clearly, over claiming was an issue and that applied to all sides. Equally, friendly fire was a not insignificant factor. Trying to work out who “really got the most” is pretty much a futile task and I think the re-evaluation of the rankings of the so called top aces is never going to be achieved with a definitive result and I think all rank tables will always be open to re-interpretation and argument. Surely best that they are all remembered for the remarkable men they were rather than who was “best”. For my part, the humble Sgt John Smith who got a definite four, say, is every much a hero as the Baders Tucks, Johnsons and the Locks. If not more so.

People should be careful quoting luftwaffe scores as rampant over claiming of kills was what lead the luftwaffe higher echelon to believe the RAF was down to its last 100 aircraft when this was in no way the situation.

There was talk of similar things in the RAF but no where to the scale of the luftwaffe.

curlyboy

Not that old ‘they scored more so they must have overclaimed’ nonsense again…..:rolleyes: you’ll be saying next, the success of the RAF’s Nightfighter Sqns really was down to the pilots eating lots of carrots……:p

People should be careful quoting luftwaffe scores as rampant over claiming of kills was what lead the luftwaffe higher echelon to believe the RAF was down to its last 100 aircraft when this was in no way the situation.

There was talk of similar things in the RAF but no where to the scale of the luftwaffe.

curlyboy

Excellent, thanks Firebird, another ‘problem area’ cleared up for me 🙂

Regards Tom

Battle of Britain Aces

Can anyone list all the RAF Aces on this forum?

Aah……one of my long standing pet subjects.

A lot of the problems seem to stem from what exactly constitutes the Battle of Britain.
Officially, from a British point of view it’s 10th July to 31st October, but a more simplistic dateline often just takes the complete 4 month period from 1st July to 1st November.

For the top 5 x RAF, it doesn’t actually matter whether you use the 1st July or 10th July, and my research indicates that the RAF top 5 of the Battle of Britain is as follows.

Eric Lock – 21
James Lacey – 18
Archie McKellar – 17.5
Josef Frantisek – 17
Colin Gray – 15.5

Incidently, for the same 01/07/40 to 31/10/40 period the top 5 x Luftwaffe scorers are,

Adolf Galland – 35
Walter Oesau – 32
Helmut Wick – 31
Werner Molders – 28
Herbert Ihlefeld – 21

Although, for the Germans, the Battle of Britain is from Aldertag on 13th Aug 1940, through to the end of the mass bombing offensive against the UK on 16th April 1941 prior to the Luftwaffe bomber force being redeployed east in prereration for the assault on Russia.

In this case the Luftwaffe top 5 would be,

Adolf Galland – 43
Helmet Wick – 39
Werner Molders – 39
Herbert Ihlefeld – 35
Hermann-Friedrich Joppien – 30