Best WW2 Fighter Pilot Poll Round 2

Njaco · May 7, 2008

I guess in some unconscious way we're all using a mathematical equation to decide. I believe its how opinions do come about.

Agree with the nationality part but you can't deny that it is a factor regardless of mistake or not. Its that floating variable!

and as for professors - those are some people I have met and I have yet to find one that isn't all knowing, "my way or the highway" type attitude who look down their long noses at you if you don't abide by their superior intellect. I take them with a grain of salt and a spoonful of Imodium.

pbfoot · May 7, 2008

P1234567890 said:
Hey, if you're anti-education, and you don't think that there's any benefit to going to school, then you're welcome to your opinion. I doubt that you believe this, though. I've got no idea how old you are or how many kids you have, but I'll bet that when your kids get old enough, you're going to tell them to go to university, and you're not going to urge them to drop out.

Professional military historians spend their lives doing research. They go through the log books and through as much first-hand information that they can possibly find. If you don't respect that, then you're being unreasonable.

I am not anti education I very much pro education but also realize a little education is a dangerous thing, I am 56 yrs old and have been involved in aviation most of my life either by employment or flying or as now preserving . I'll close todays statement off because I going to the field now maybe I'll give Marseilles 109 a little rub for you. I really suggest you try and talk to some of the guys that flew fighters then and now as the game has changed very little

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

Njaco said:
I guess in some unconscious way we're all using a mathematical equation to decide. I believe its how opinions do come about.

Yes, exactly. Some people put a 100% weighting on the number of kills, and ignore everything else. Others do a combination of kills/kills per mission/quality of enemies, etc. Some people rule out anyone from a different country and then try to figure out who the best pilot from their own country is. Everyone is using some kind of implicit equation.

Njaco said:
Agree with the nationality part but you can't deny that it is a factor regardless of mistake or not. Its that floating variable!

It unfortunately is a factor. But look at you; you didn't automatically vote for a pilot from your country. You didn't fall into the trap. Why not?

Njaco said:
and as for professors - those are some people I have met and I have yet to find one that isn't all knowing, "my way or the highway" type attitude who look down their long noses at you if you don't abide by their superior intellect. I take them with a grain of salt and a spoonful of Imodium.

Really? My experience with academics is exactly the opposite. If you can make an argument supporting your opinion, then they sort of have to listen to you. Good academics are open-minded, but not so open-minded that their brains fall out.

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

pbfoot said:
I am not anti education I very much pro education but also realize a little education is a dangerous thing,

What about a lot of education?

pbfoot said:
I am 56 yrs old and have been involved in aviation most of my life either by employment or flying or as now preserving

And I hope you don't think I disrespect your opinion, because I do respect it.

pbfoot said:
. I'll close todays statement off because I going to the field now maybe I'll give Marseilles 109 a little rub for you.

Cool; it sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I'll ask you this question: I'm in Toronto; where is the best aviation museum in the area which has WWII fighters in it?

pbfoot said:
I really suggest you try and talk to some of the guys that flew fighters then and now as the game has changed very little

But you and I voted for the same pilot... If I follow your advice, it's probably only going to make my opinion more like yours, which means that it won't change, since we already have the same opinion!

Marcel · May 7, 2008

P1234567890 said:
I explained my method for comparing pilots across multiple categories in round 1 of this poll, and it is perfectly sound.

We have discussed this before P123 and I still don't agree. Although I must admit that, being a scientist myself, a mathematical approach to analyze these pilots appeals to me, I also think it won't come anywhere close to give you a definite answer.

P1234567890 said:
Except that I'm the only one here who has suggested anything remotely resembling an objective, mathematical way of comparing pilots.

That's because others realize there's no way you can do that. Data is mainly at fault. The data that is known is either 1. inaccurate, 2. not complete 3. biased. Therefore you cannot draw real conclusions. I do however agree with you that it could be a nice way to get some more insight in these well known pilots.

Njaco · May 7, 2008

Pb works at one of the gems of the North Americas with Marseilles Bf 109 at his fingertips!

FLYBOYJ · May 7, 2008

McNamara applied a mathematical statistical approach to the Vietnam War - that worked real well!

Kruska · May 7, 2008

FLYBOYJ said:
McNamara applied a mathematical statistical approach to the Vietnam War - that worked real well!

Code:

so was the Bay of Pigs operation and the F-111 besides many others.

Regards
Kruska

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

Marcel said:
That's because others realize there's no way you can do that. Data is mainly at fault. The data that is known is either 1. inaccurate, 2. not complete 3. biased. Therefore you cannot draw real conclusions. I do however agree with you that it could be a nice way to get some more insight in these well known pilots.

Just because we don't have *all* of the information doesn't matter. It's obviously still better to factor in the information that we do have than to ignore huge chunks of it.

I argue that anyone who votes for one of the 'lesser' pilots above is ignoring huge chunks of very important information.

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

FLYBOYJ said:
McNamara applied a mathematical statistical approach to the Vietnam War - that worked real well!

Sure, but there are plenty of examples of a scientific analysis doing a *much* better job than any other technique.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the algorithm I suggested in part one of this thread, but if there is, then I'm certainly open to criticisms which would improve it or show that it is invalid.

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

Njaco said:
Pb works at one of the gems of the North Americas with Marseilles Bf 109 at his fingertips!

Seriously? Where is it? What is it called? I didn't even know that Marseille's plane still existed! Is it in the Niagara area?

Kruska · May 7, 2008

Hello 123......

Quote:
I'm not talking about authors. I'm talking about serious military historians in academia. Every major university has some. These are people who are not motivated so much by money but rather by writing history as objectively as possible. They are tenured and guaranteed their income, regardless of how popular their findings are.

Oh yeah..I do remember one of those, he had been a lecturer at the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs, and being his Students we had to listen and accept all his "questionable" conclusions in order to get our grades done. He had never been a pilot but he knew everything, according to stats, books and conclusions. Interesting wise most of what he spread did not stand up to the comments or real live experience and knowledge of former WW2 fighter pilots, Vietnam pilots or Bob C from Col. Springs, a U-2 pilot (Cuba-crisis) or from Johannes Steinhoff during his time in Springs, not to mention my uncle and others.

Quote:
but we're talking about combat pilots here... We're talking about killers.

No we are having a poll for the best pilot - If that implements a Killer to you
then that is your personal interpretation - so you should vote for a pilot who shot down another pilot dangling at a parachute, or hunting down a damaged a/c with 6-8 others, or strangling a pilot - which by the way would make a Russian or US Pilot the best.

Because mathematically and by equations this would indeed proof them as the best Killers.

Not some German pilot, since historians and academic writers consider them to be Ehrenmaenner und Helden der Luefte (Man of Honor and Heros of the air)

Regards
Kruska

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

Kruska said:
Oh yeah..I do remember one of those, he had been a lecturer at the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs, and being his Students we had to listen and accept all his "questionable" conclusions in order to get our grades done. He had never been a pilot but he knew everything, according to stats, books and conclusions. Interesting wise most of what he spread did not stand up to the comments or real live experience and knowledge of former WW2 fighter pilots, Vietnam pilots or Bob C from Col. Springs, a U-2 pilot (Cuba-crisis) or from Johannes Steinhoff during his time in Springs, not to mention my uncle and others.

Are you saying that because this guy was wrong about some things, that all academic military historians must be wrong about all things? That's quite a leap of inductive reasoning.

Kruska said:
No we are having a poll for the best pilot -

It is my understanding that we're talking about the best fighter pilots. It's kind of hard to shoot down a lot of enemy planes and not kill someone. Good fighter pilots are killers. They're not good because they're killers; they're killers because they're good.

At least that's how most people here seem to interpreting the polls. Very few people are suggesting bomber pilots or test pilots or instructors as being the best pilots of the war.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · May 7, 2008

Kruska said:
The present poll is based on Pilots that according to other forum members opinion/believes are supposed to be amongst the best, now taking the above into account why shouldn't a non German pilot be amongst them or even the best? just because off less Kills?

Dont hold your breath. That is what we have all been trying to say to him.

P1234567890 said:
Check it out (especially in the first round): Many of the questionable choices up there were voted for by people who have less than three posts here.

That makes your opinion better? On whose authority?

drgondog · May 7, 2008

Bar - for me. He lived and scored in the most lethal air battles during the battle for air supremacy over Germany - when he was encountering not just Mustangs, Lightnings and Jugs flown by good pilots over Germany, but also the 'golden BB's from hundreds of B-17s and B-24s.

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
That makes your opinion better? On whose authority?

It stands to reason that the people here who have thousands of posts are probably WWII aviation enthusiasts. Being an enthusiast about something tends to mean that the person is well-informed. And if you look at the people voting for Baer, they tend to be the ones who have thousands of posts on this forum. You're a fantastic example.

I put more stock into what you have to say about the topic of WWII aviation than I do about someone who has zero posts here.

A person with zero posts *might* be a WWII expert for all we know, but on the other hand he might not know anything. The people with thousands of posts, though, they probably know quite a bit.

So I assert that the number of posts the different voters have does count for something, and it is relevant.

Marcel · May 7, 2008

P1234567890 said:
Just because we don't have *all* of the information doesn't matter. It's obviously still better to factor in the information that we do have than to ignore huge chunks of it.

I argue that anyone who votes for one of the 'lesser' pilots above is ignoring huge chunks of very important information.

Or maybe know other things that you don't know...
Your idea of categorising the different points is interesting but relying on a mathematical model is dangerous as the info is usually inaccurate.
I started to doubt "hard facts" about the war when I read German reports about their attack on The Netherlands. Most of them talked about numbers of opponents that couldn't have been there, given the state the Dutch army at the time. Also equipment they were talking about couldn't have been there, as the Dutch didn't have them. Quite often these reports mentions one or two men that were the heroes, defeating the enemy by the two of them. Obviously, the Germans were in dire need of heroes. I'm not saying that they did the same with these experten, but it makes you cynical about the the known facts. I have no doubt the Allies did the same. Of course, most "facts" have some truth in them (some more, some less) so examining them can give you invaluable info, but to base an opinion on them is probably not very accurate. Therefore, these polls are usually nothing more than an opinion (and as Adler say quite fun ).

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

Marcel said:
Or maybe know other things that you don't know...

There are *tons* of things which I don't know, but it would have to be pretty miraculous secret knowledge in order to offset what we do know.

Marcel said:
Your idea of categorising the different points is interesting but relying on a mathematical model is dangerous as the info is usually inaccurate.

Well, we can only go by what the records say. Unless there is a good reason to doubt certain stats, then we should tentatively accept them.

Some of the records are pretty good. For example, let's take all of the candidates for top pilot that anyone can think of, and rank them according to the following statistics:

1. Total number of kills
2. Total number of combat missions (surviving more missions = indication of being a good pilot)
3. Ratio of kills per mission.

For each of these categories, we have a different ranking. Everyone knows the ranking for category #1. #2 isn't *that* hard to find out. Once you have #1 and #2, you can derive #3.

If we have these three different rankings, then we can do what I suggested in part one of this poll: Create a weighted metric on these three rankings, and then iterate over all possible weightings of these characteristics for some small step value. So for the weighting 100%,0%,0% the ranking comes out to exactly the same as the normal kill ranking. Then we calculate the rankings when we use a weighting of 99.9%,0.01%,0%, and so on, keeping a running total of pilot rankings. We iterate over the entire area, and in the end we come up with a pilot ranking which is about as robust and comprehensive as you want *for those three characteristics*.

We can add as many categories as we want, provided that we have reasonably accurate rankings for that category.

We could also incorporate some way of scaling the values according to quality of enemy faced (eg. shooting down a Japanese fighter in 1945 isn't worth as much as shooting down a German ME-109 in 1940.

If you guys are interested in helping, then I'd be up for writing the program which computes this. I'd need help gathering all of the statistics, though. There are enough people here so that this is doable, though. Who knows, maybe we can even publish a paper in some history journal or conference. It would be interesting for ww2aircraft.net to have a publication!

Kruska · May 7, 2008

Hello 123……

Come on calm down,

A mathematical based evaluation or assertion will never be on target as long as it has an unknown factor/variable, which in this case would be the word "might" or as such wrong basic information or missing information.

I have 54 posts and tomorrow a new forum member will post his first statement in regards to a Black Hawk, according to your mathematical assertion you would bet on me, but the new guy might be D.A.I.G.'s elder brother, best friend or whatever.

The new guy "might" also be a moron and you "might" win your bet.

Since when does a mathematically based assertion come up with the definite result of Amount accounts for or is relevant to Quality or knowledge? It might and it may not.

If the Japanese pilot is a veteran with 5 years of flying experience and the US boy just arrived from fighter school, is the US pilots kill less worth then that of the RAF pilot with 2 years flying experience who downed the 109 whose pilot just arrived from flying school??? Now where are you going to find all the relevant data of the Pilots that Hartmann or Baer shoot down???

How are you going to evaluate the pilot who shoot down Hartmann or Baer, wouldn't he be automatically the better pilot – so best pilot in WW1 was the Canadian? pilot who shoot down Richthofen right?

So for all these examples your mathematically based assertions due to missing information might proof to be wrong.

Regards
Kruska

P1234567890 · May 7, 2008

Kruska said:
Hello 123……

Come on calm down,

A mathematical based evaluation or assertion will never be on target as long as it has an unknown factor/variable, which in this case would be the word "might" or as such wrong basic information or missing information.

*NO* possible evaluation can be on target if any significant amount of information is missing. But the mathematical one which I am proposing gets around all of the objections of the form, "You're just considering the number of kills." I don't really understand what your objection is; this is a place where math and computer science can come in handy. Isn't it better to use a rigorous and comprehensive method than relying on people's gut feelings?

Kruska said:
I have 54 posts and tomorrow a new forum member will post his first statement in regards to a Black Hawk, according to your mathematical assertion you would bet on me, but the new guy might be D.A.I.G.'s elder brother, best friend or whatever.

The new guy "might" also be a moron and you "might" win your bet.

Since when does a mathematically based assertion come up with the definite result of Amount accounts for or is relevant to Quality or knowledge? It might and it may not.

If the Japanese pilot is a veteran with 5 years of flying experience and the US boy just arrived from fighter school, is the US pilots kill less worth then that of the RAF pilot with 2 years flying experience who downed the 109 whose pilot just arrived from flying school??? Now where are you going to find all the relevant data of the Pilots that Hartmann or Baer shoot down???

How are you going to evaluate the pilot who shoot down Hartmann or Baer, wouldn't he be automatically the better pilot – so best pilot in WW1 was the Canadian? pilot who shoot down Richthofen right?

So for all these examples your mathematically based assertions due to missing information might proof to be wrong.

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I am only making one mathematical claim here, and that is the model which I propose for comparing pilots. Is it perfect? No. But is it as objective and comprehensive as is possible? Pretty close.

I wasn't making any other mathematical assertions other than that. Although at some point the law of averages does kick in on those other topics.

Best WW2 Fighter Pilot Poll Round 2

Best Pilot Pt. 2

Erich "Bubi" Hartmann, Germany

Heinz Bär, Germany

Hans-Joachim Marseille, Germany

George F. Beurling, Canada

Adolf Galland, Germany

Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Japan

Saburo Sakai, Japan

Ivan Kozhedub, Soviet Union

Aleksandr Ivanovich Pokryshkin, Soviet Union

James Edgar "Johnnie" Johnson, UK

Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, USA

Robert S. Johnson, USA

Witold Urbanowicz, Poland

The Pop-Tart Whisperer

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rotartsinimdA

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"THE GREAT GAZOO"

Senior Airman

Airman

Airman

Airman

Senior Airman

Airman

Private Chemtrail Disperser

Major

Airman

rotartsinimdA

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