Best WW2 Fighter Pilot Poll Round 2 (3 Viewers)

Best Pilot Pt. 2


  • Total voters
    41
  • Poll closed .

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Again you forgot the Top fw 190 ace Kittel in your list !

But its always very difficult to value who was the best pilot ( ok you can count the kills, thats easy ), but maybe a good pilot is a B-17 pilot who brought his flak crippled aircraft back, or the young german fighter pilot at the end of the war with lack of training who started with no chance of return.
Or the pilots of the 332nd FG who fought a war against 2 enemies.

I think its ok to make a poll about the aces, but we shouldnt forget the unnumbered pilots; they fulfilled their duties like the aces, too.

greets

Thomas

I think if you look some of the older post and threads recognition has been given to bomber and fighter pilots alike and it is also recognized that during WW2 air-to-air combat and dropping bombs was just one aspect of aerial warfare. Patrol, logistics, and my personal favorite, flying through the "soup" could all be just as hazardous (or even more) than dropping bombs and/ or shooting or getting shot at air-to-air.

Personally I think it's just as hazardous to shoot an old NDB beam approach and breaking out of the overcast at 300' than it is flying through flack or getting bounced by a gaggle of -109s.
 
Kruska, no problem. Unless, like you say, it might have been a night-fighter. Forgot about that myself. They were bombers like Lancs and Wellingtons, etc. Could be Lent with 102 night and 8 day victories.

Who was your uncle?
Code:

Hello Njaco,

well the No.1 (4 engine a/c) could have been Lent, but according to offical stats. it was Eder - who knows?

My uncle is O. v. Kruska, he is pictured on a group photo in the book "Holt Hartmann vom Himmel" sitting in an armchair and (sorry long time ago - 25 years -that I read this book) he was the Fliegerschulen Leiter or 2nd in command during the training flying course in which Hartmann was enroled.

Regards
Kruska
View attachment 62236
 
I voted Bär
on German top aces I would have difficulties to chose between Rall and Bär but because Rall didn't get into 2nd round, the choise was rather easy. Bär fought through war, had experience from every front and had at least enough cockyness for an excellent fighter pilot.

Juha
 
I've always favored Maj. Thomas McGuire. Seems to me, from the reading that I've done, that the way "kills" were counted in the Pacific made it much more difficult to rack up a score than in the ETO. Aircraft shredded on the ground didn't count. Aircraft that were "shared" kills were settled with a coin toss. McGuire ended up with 38 before crashing while swatting at a Zero on his wingman's tail, so who knows how many kills he would've accumulated had he won a few more coin tosses or been able to count planes on the ground? I love the fact that he never lost a wingman on any combat mission...that, and he practically wrote the book on P38 tactics.

...then again, I haven't read much from the German side, either. Yet.
 
And McGuire is not an option in this poll because he did not recieve eneogh votes in round one.

If you want to discuss him in this thread that is fine, but you can only vote for one of the ones up there.
 
Kruska, Did he ever speak to you about his time at the school or about Hartmann? That is a very interesting part of the Luftwaffe.
Code:

Hello Njaco,

Sorry, unfortunatly he was KIA on the Eastern Front and I was born about 15 years later. According to his sister and my father as well as another pilot-uncle (not really related) whom I met many times, he was a Flieger of great humor and as such very liked by his students.

If I recall Hartmann's book correctly, nobody actually thought before 1942 that this "Bubi" would make it one day to be the top scorer or even a good fighterpilot. So I wouldn't be surprised about my uncle maybe not even having taken notice about him - just as one of many during flight-school.

Regards
Kruska
jd-pr-067[1].jpg
 
Hello everyone!

I still go with Hartmann for 2 reasons:

1. He was fine comrade and soldier: Never lost a wingman killed and refused to leave his squadron on the eastern front even though he had a few opportunities. He paid bitterly for it: 10 years of various Soviet POW camps including countless "interrogations", solitary confinement in darkness (probably comparable to what you see in "Pappilon") and he still came out unbroken.

2. While many disregard his kills in the east as easier, he certainly knew what his job was as a fighter pilot. You know how many Luftwaffe pilots in the BoB saw JaBo- or bomber escort-duties as direct insults because they failed to fully grasp the nature of the war they were fighting. Hartmann's 300+ kills include many Il-2s, the plane that was probably the most dangerous to the men fighting the battles on the ground.
 
Hello everyone!

I still go with Hartmann for .......

2. While many disregard his kills in the east as easier, he certainly knew what his job was as a fighter pilot. You know how many Luftwaffe pilots in the BoB saw JaBo- or bomber escort-duties as direct insults because they failed to fully grasp the nature of the war they were fighting. Hartmann's 300+ kills include many Il-2s, the plane that was probably the most dangerous to the men fighting the battles on the ground.
Code:

Hello KrazyKraut,

Surely I want to refrain from "maybe" putting words in your mouth, but regarding your expressed opinion to Hartmann's IL2 attacks or BoB I want to forward the following;

Pilots or even fighter pilots were not "free" to fly around at random deciding on the target, they were given a mission or ordered/briefed about their tasks. As such Hartmann was simply given the order to support German ground troops and by doing so encountered or attacked IL2's or whatever a/c that he happened to run into during his mission.
There is a lot of heroic bull….t, tales or exaggeration of the Jaeger or Experten mystical status in many books. Mainly due to the Nazis or Goering's desperate PR efforts regarding his "falcons".

Regards
Kruska
 
Thank you, Soundbreaker!

Hello Kruska,

what you say is true, although I think there was a certain, varying degree of autonomy on the eastern front.

What I meant to say however, is that quite a few pilots felt insulted or punished by orders like the mentioned bomber protection. At least that's what you read in the books. And apparently this was exactly what Goering meant to achieve with these kind of orders. It might be exaggregated though.

Hartmann was, in my eyes, a very realistic soldier. His views on air combat were based on accomplishing his mission while minimizing the risk to himself and his men. Very straightforward and not as romanticizing as some others.
 
Hartmann was, in my eyes, a very realistic soldier. His views on air combat were based on accomplishing his mission while minimizing the risk to himself and his men. Very straightforward and not as romanticizing as some others.
Code:

Hello KrazyKraut,

I surely do agree on your viewpoint expressed towards Hartmann and the same would apply to Baer and many other pilots of all nations. So it isn't really an outstanding feature in regards to evaluating the Best.

Again in regards to escort duties:

Off course it was a very common task that was ordered and fulfilled by the Jagdstaffeln, it was actually their sole purpose/objective - securing the airspace during their mission.
The BoB changed that in view of "securing the airspace" before the actual bomber raids got started. So the "Freie Jagd" – Free Hunting was ordered for many weeks, its main goal was to annihilate the British fighters mainly over the channel or coastal area.
And exactly this caused / enabled the Kill Statistic fever and was spurned by Goerings PR addiction – glorifying the "Falcons", Fliegerhelden or Aces.

The actual reason why the fighter pilots disliked the "close escort" in regards to the bombing raids over England was the insufficient range of the 109 not allowing them to actually utilize their skills or providing sufficient time to engage in dog-fights. They also knew that once hit or their a/c damaged they would end up in captivity. Not that they felt insulted/punished besides a few who felt it negative in regards to their "Halsschmerzen" (Throatpain) a German expression used for ambitious soldiers to receive the Knightscross.

Therefore according to official Luftwaffe reports and also remembrances of my uncle the numbers of "broken off flights" due to reported "Engine problems", low oil pressure, or "strange sounds" increased dramatically as the BoB prolonged. It was the Channel that made close escort a suicidal or a no return ticket job and as such "unpopular" / feared amongst any Luftwaffe pilot.

Regards
Kruska
 
I think it's really strange that Nowotny didn't make it to round 2. He had 258 confirmed kills in 442 missions!

How some of the more questionable pilots up there made it and he didn't is beyond me.

Not to mention Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Batz, Rudorffer, or any of the other German pilots who had more than 200 kills...

In any case, it's nice to see that Hartmann, Marseille, and Baer are the top three in the polls.
 
I think it's really strange that Nowotny didn't make it to round 2. He had 258 confirmed kills in 442 missions!

How some of the more questionable pilots up there made it and he didn't is beyond me.

Not to mention Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Batz, Rudorffer, or any of the other German pilots who had more than 200 kills...

In any case, it's nice to see that Hartmann, Marseille, and Baer are the top three in the polls.

They did not make the poll because they did not get eneogh votes. It really is not that hard to understand?

People vote for different reasons than you do. Some people might put more weight on other things other than just how many kills they got.

Sorry but you are not the only authority on who is best...
 
They did not make the poll because they did not get eneogh votes. It really is not that hard to understand?

No, I understand the system just fine; that's not the problem here. I'm just expressing my dismay at the results of said poll, that's all. In any case, at least the top three are right.

People vote for different reasons than you do. Some people might put more weight on other things other than just how many kills they got.

Two comments:

1. I don't 'just' consider how many kills a pilot got. If that were the case, then clearly I would have voted for Hartmann.

2. You are right when you say that other people put more weight on other things. Unfortunately one of those things seems to be the latitude and longitude of where the pilot was born and grew up.

Sorry but you are not the only authority on who is best...

Are there any serious, professional military historians (a.k.a. 'authorities') who claim that Witold Urbanowicz or Robert S. Johnson or Pappy Boyington or even Buzz Beurling was the best fighter pilot of the war?

Are there *any* authorities on World War II aviation who would NOT include Nowotny in a top ten list of the best pilots of the war?
 
No, I understand the system just fine; that's not the problem here. I'm just expressing my dismay at the results of said poll, that's all. In any case, at least the top three are right.



Two comments:

1. I don't 'just' consider how many kills a pilot got. If that were the case, then clearly I would have voted for Hartmann.

2. You are right when you say that other people put more weight on other things. Unfortunately one of those things seems to be the latitude and longitude of where the pilot was born and grew up.



Are there any serious, professional military historians (a.k.a. 'authorities') who claim that Witold Urbanowicz or Robert S. Johnson or Pappy Boyington or even Buzz Beurling was the best fighter pilot of the war?

Are there *any* authorities on World War II aviation who would NOT include Nowotny in a top ten list of the best pilots of the war?
Why not it ain't just numbers , 99.9% of the time after 41 the Germans were flying over or very near there own lines they weren't tredding deeply into unfamiliar territory and when they did they didn't fare all that well. I would like to know how you rate yourself an expert what qualifications do you have ? have you ever talked to some of these guys
 
And the US PTO aces scored allot of kills in superior planes in greater numbers against poorly trained/inexperienced Japanese pilots. (which was usualy the case for the better part of the war)
 
Why not it ain't just numbers , 99.9% of the time after 41 the Germans were flying over or very near there own lines they weren't tredding deeply into unfamiliar territory and when they did they didn't fare all that well.

That's a pretty weak point. First of all, there are many factors which are more important than whether or not a pilot was flying over his own lines.

In fact, one might argue that it's *totally* irrelevant, especially seeing that as the war went on, the allies had an ever-increasing level of air superiority, and scoring kills under conditions where the enemy has you outnumbered counts as a plus for the Germans.

I would like to know how you rate yourself an expert what qualifications do you have ? have you ever talked to some of these guys

Nope, I've never met a WWII fighter ace personally, but I'm interested in the subject, I read a lot, and I'm aware of a lot of relevant facts and statistics. Most importantly, though, I have a background in mathematics, and I understand how to compare things across multiple orthogonal categories as objectively as possible. In the case of World War II fighter pilots, the statistics are skewed so far in favor of the top Germans that there really doesn't seem to be any way a non-German could come out on top of *any* reasonable comparison model.

And seriously, am I making any unreasonable claims here? Is it really that unreasonable of me to express disapproval at the fact that Nowotny isn't on the list up there and that so many of those other guys are???

By the way, it seems like I'm just agreeing with what the professional military historians have to say. If there's anyone here who believes that the best pilot of the war wasn't German AND can cite a reputable military historian specializing in WWII air combat (a.k.a. a real expert) who agrees, then I'd love to hear about it.

I for one can cite Galland, who stated that Marseille was the best fighter pilot of the war.
 
And the US PTO aces scored allot of kills in superior planes in greater numbers against poorly trained/inexperienced Japanese pilots. (which was usualy the case for the better part of the war)

Good point. There's a reason why the Japanese started resorting to Kamikazi attacks. At least part of it was to avoid the whole war being a Marianas Turkey Shoot. By the end of the war, the Japanese pilots were getting almost no training. (Same with the Germans.)

In my opinion, shooting down a Russian plane at any point during the war was worth more than shooting down a Japanese or German plane late in the war.
 

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