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Perhaps they mean June 3, 1942 when Marseille claimed 6 Kittyhawks (per some sources, though 7 in OKL claims list)? He made no claims on the 6th. On the 3rd his claims and those of JG53 occurred at about the same time. A total of 9-10 Kittyhawks were claimed; 5 Sdn SAAF lost 4 Kittyhawks plus another 'force landed' back at base, an unknown RAF unit lost 2 Hurricanes apparently at around the same time; the South Africans downed at least 3 Ju-87's the Bf109's were escorting; per "Fighters Over the Desert" by Shores and Ring p. 120. The maximum claim accuracy of 70% (counting the force landing and assuming the Hurricanes were really lost in the same incident) is excellent, the minimum of 40% (counting only 4 Kittyhawks and assuming the Hurricane losses might have been to other causes) is still probably no worse than the WWII average.
Wow, isn't it funny how people love to vote patriotically... Come on, you can't *seriously* think that Illu Juutilainen was the *best* pilot of the whole war! You're just saying that because you're Finnish!
I want someone from Bulgaria to weigh in on this debate and argue that Stoyan Stoyanov was the best pilot of the war.
Why not? Because Juutilainen wasn't the best pilot of the war by ANY stretch of the imagination, and voting for him the best just because of what it said on his passport is completely uncompelling.
Then go ahead and say, "Hey, check out so-and-so; he was a great pilot!". That doesn't mean that you have to vote for him as being the BEST pilot ever!
I'm all for learning. I encourage you to encourage us to learn about pilots like Sonderman. But it's absurd to suggest that he was the best fighter pilot of the war!
I am here to learn, but I simultaneously find it to be absurd when people vote for someone who has one tenth as many kills as the top Germans as the best pilot ever, and ESPECIALLY if they do it just because the guy came from their country!
Do you understand that you can tell us about a pilot without automatically claiming that he was the best fighter ace of the war?
On a related note, does anyone else here find it to be absurd that Beurling has more votes than Rall, Barkhorn, and Nowotny ALL PUT TOGETHER?!? Their combined kill total was 834, and Beurling shot down only 31. Does this make any sense?!? (And I'm Canadian!)
Seriously people, it's pretty absurd that Witold Urbanowicz has more votes than any of these three German pilots. Where's the objectivity here?!?
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of the kill table on this page:
List of World War II air aces - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Your opinion
How on earth would you know? Maybe he was better than any of them, but he didn't fly in the war for more then 4 days, so hadn't a chance to prove himself. I'm not saying he was, but I'm only showing you that there can be different ways of looking at "best".
If you think most kills means best then that is your opinion.
Let others have their own. People tend to pick their heroes from their own country, I don't think you should judge that here. If you have a problem with that, just keep it for yourself.
I think I did in post 50, so yes. But remember, "best" is subjective at best, please let other people have their own opinion.
Hey chill out allright!
He gave the reasons he voted for that person and he has every right to do so. Just like you are entitled to your opinion, he is entitled to his. So back off!
If World War II taught us anything, it's that nationalism is bad.
That line really got me going. Nationalism is bad?
What is wrong with having pride in where you come from?
We should all be one global community, nameless and faceless?
Marcel had every right to list Juutilainen and from what little I've read about him, he was an excellent pilot.
Going by your list, even Marseilles only achieved three or four out of the eight you stated.
If he had said he voted Juutilainen because he likes the color of his eyes, I would support you in your contention.
Discussions like this are hardly black and white. Like Adler said its for fun and thats a very big grey area because personal opinion is involved.
Don't see anyone on that list that shouldn't be there except for the last entry of Bishop with one kill
Why? I believe that World War II taught the world exactly how bat nationalism is. This is a discussion forum pertaining to World War II. If people here are being nationalistic, then I argue that it's fair game to criticize them for it, especially if they are saying things which are unsound.
Fine, so you don't mind me criticizing yours?I'm all for people having their own opinions, but if their opinions are nationalistic, then I think that it's ok to criticize their reasoning. Why not?
While you seem to have an scientific approach, you really haven't, as you seem to pick your criteria to be in favor of your own bias towards German pilots and some are still subjective. Your subjectiveness (and this counts for all people here) can be seen by the criteria you pick. And your criteria are flawed to say the least. For instance criteria 1. So based on this you'll pick the german that shot down 5 I-15's over a Brit who shot down 3 Bf109's?Not really; there are only so many 'reasonable' criteria on which a pilot can be judged, and we've already seen many of them in this thread:
1. Total number of kills,
2. Kills / combat mission ratio,
3. Marksmanship,
4. Piloting ability,
5. Variety of planes flown,
6. Number of fronts fought on,
7. Number of times shot down vs. kills,
8. Quality of opponents and enemy equipment,
etc.
Judging pilot skill inevitably boils down to some kind of weighted combination of these measures. My claim is that for *any* 'reasonable' weighted combination of these 'reasonable' measures, the top pilots will be German.
That's not particularly subjective.
Not really. You can't base your definition of 'best' on complete hypotheticals. Well, you can, but it isn't very reasonable.
I don't want to discuss your ideas about nationalism here, as I feel it belongs to the "political" forum. But you must remember that people vote for things they know best and usually that are things from their own corner of the world.
While you seem to have an scientific approach, you really haven't, as you seem to pick your criteria to be in favor of your own bias towards German pilots and some are still subjective. Your subjectiveness (and this counts for all people here) can be seen by the criteria you pick.
And your criteria are flawed to say the least. For instance criteria 1. So based on this you'll pick the german that shot down 5 I-15's over a Brit who shot down 3 Bf109's?
Furthermore several of your criteria are not relevant as they depend on circumstances rather than the quality of the pilot. Number of fronts fought on really isn't in the pilot's hands and neither is the variety of planes flown.
To show your flawed logic I will make an example of comparing Hartman vs Sonderman. It's not to take away any of the greatness of Buby, but just to show the mistake you make. Hartman shot down most planes but it took a while and many combat missions before he started to pile up victims. Sonderman shot down 4 planes in his first (and only) 5 combat missions. This is already better, but also gives Sonderman a ratio of about 1:1, which is better than any German ace discussed here.
Further more, Sonderman did this with inferior material against superior numbers (Dutch numbered to Germans 1:10) and superior tactics, also a combination no German pilot can claim.
The Germans never had inferior planes and most of the time had a better strength then 1:10. So now I proved that Sonderman was superior to Hartman by carefully choosing my criteria. So what I'm saying is there is no objective way to chose here.
P1234567890
" Because Juutilainen wasn't the best pilot of the war by ANY stretch of the imagination…"
Now Juutilainen had clearly better exchange rate than Marseille, who seems to be your choice, 91:0 vs 158: at least 6, four planes lost at Kanal front (against 7 claims) and IIRC he was shot down at least twice in North Africa. We can argue how important the exchange rate was. To Finns, who didn't have a/c industry to speak of, it was very important indeed. Germany wasn't ready to sell but a token number of 109s to Finland before the summer 44. Finns had to even in 1943 bought more Morane-Saulnier M.S.406s and Curtiss Hawk 75s from German war booty debots, some of which had probably stand outdoors almost 3 years before the deal, to get even some sort "new" fighters to replace those lost or too wore. And when the fighter recon Flight of Recon Sqn 16 finally got rid from its Gloster Gladiator Mk IIs during the summer 44 its "new" planes were Polikarpov I-153s, so still old biplanes.
Juutilainen got kills in 3 different planes, Fokker D.XXI, Brewster Model 239 and Bf 109G. All rather different types needing very different tactics if one want to be successful. Marseille got all his kills while flying Bf109s.
Now it was much easier to shoot down Hurricanes while flying Bf 109F than shoot down newer Soviet fighters while flying Model 239, I would say that it was easier to shoot down Hurricanes when flying Bf 109F than when flying Model 239.
Having pride in where you come from may be how things start, but they get out of control *very* quickly when it comes to nationalism.
If you want to have pride, then let it be pride in yourself.
I'm not, I'm just using Sonderman to get my point through.Except that the topic of nationalism is relevant here because people like you are promoting pilots from your own country who have less than 10 kills as being the best pilot of the war.
Yes, the reason was that his air force surrendered after 5 days, nothing to do with himself.It's great that you're teaching us about obscure Dutch pilots, but ultimately there's a reason why he's obscure and why the people on the list above are not.
Okay what about this: Being able to take off under fire, being out gunned, out numbered(vastly), against a tactically and technically superior and experienced opponent. Having no speed or altitude advantage whatsoever. And still being able to shoot down 3 opponents without being shot himself. That must count for something. It proves that he was one hell of a pilot. The best? I don't know, but neither do you.Not really. We can all get together and decide on any reasonable criteria we want for judging pilot skill. Then we can create some kind of weighted metric on it, and apply it.
And I claim that you'll never be able to have an unbiased opinion. You put out these "metric" out of your own hypothesis that the German pilots were the best. But you do not see that yourself. You proved that by your first reaction on Juha's choice. "No way that anyone could have been as good as the Germans." The reason that you had to reconsider after tremendous facts from Juha enhances my view about you. You reacted out of your own bias without considering even the facts. And I don't think you were wrong in doing that. I only think it was wrong that you condemn people because of having a biased opinion, while your own opinion was as biased as theirs abnd preaching against themI claim that this is as objective a measure as we could possibly come up with, and I further claim that for any reasonable metric, the Germans will come out at the top of the list.
No it shows he had the time to fly different planes and his airforce was in the war long enough.Variety of planes flown in which the pilot scored kills should count for something. It shows versatility. For example, it's impressive that Juutilainen scored kills in three different planes. Is it as important as total kill count? No, but it should count for at least something.
Yes on the last question, he had it undoubtedly in him, but nothing to prove as he didn't fly more.. And consider the circumstances in which he got his kills. No altitude advantage, totally surprised by superior numbers of enemies, no speed, nothing of that kind. Can you say that about the Germans? As I said, you must be one hell of a pilot to be able to do that.And this would help Sonderman's score using the metric I am suggesting, but ultimately you have to factor in total number of kills, number of missions flown, etc. in which Sonderman is WAY behind. If you ONLY use ratio, then sure, Sonderman does very well. But that's a totally unreasonable way to measure pilot skill. You have to measure all of the relevant criteria involved, which is what I'm suggesting. For example, ratio should obviously be tempered by number of missions flown, and it isn't hard to make the argument that a ratio of 0.58 over 442 missions (Nowotny) is a whole lot more impressive than a ratio of 1.0 over 5 missions. Do you seriously think that Sonderman would have been able to keep up that ratio if he'd flown hundreds of missions?!?
According to your standards. I think there were many pilots that could be considered the best, not only the list above. These are unknown, unsung men, never made a name for themselves because of circumstances, independent of themselves. Using clinical statistics like you do doesn't do justice to them. I'm only using Sonderman as an example, but there are many more from every nationality.And again that would reflect well in Sonderman's overall rating, but it isn't NEARLY enough to lift him above the top Germans.
Now you get the hang of it, exactly my point.Your criteria are unreasonable because you cherry-picked them in order to make Sonderman look good.
Yes it is, you choose yourself which is important and judge by that, that's subjective.The bottom line is this: Under any set of reasonable criteria which does not ignore any important facts and which is weighted in some reasonable way, the top Germans will always come out on top.
This shows that it's not all subjective.
I'm new here, so I'm not familiar with the culture. I saw some other posts in this thread which made it seem like it's ok to debate.
I'm not trying to insult anyone, but I do think it's ok to criticize people for voting nationalistically. If World War II taught us anything, it's that nationalism is bad. If it is not ok for me to do this, then just say so and I'll stop doing it. No problem.
Are you kidding?!? Yes, nationalism is VERY bad! Neither world war would have been possible without nationalism! Thinking that your own group of people is superior to another group of people NEVER ends well!