greatest shot allies and axis

[Readie]

Douglas Bader

1910-1982

Bader had 20 victories, four shared, six probables, one shared probable and 11 damaged. These numbers alone may not stand up to some of the others on this list but what makes his tally truly remarkable is that he achieved all of this despite having no legs (having lost them in a 1931 plane crash). Having enjoyed plenty of combat success in the early stages of the war, in 1941 his luck deserted him, when he was downed and captured by the Germans. He was held in such high regard though, that his captors, including the great German Ace Adolf Galland, arranged for a new prosthetic leg to be delivered from Britain, while he was incarcerated.

Another candidate.
Cheers
John

 

[CobberKane]

Re Stanford Tuck: he was bloody lucky the Germans didn't shoot him on the spot. Destroying a distillery - bastard!

 

[CobberKane]

Not sure how Bader's renowned tenacity is relevant to his marksmanship, but certainly an exceptional character. I believe one RAF pilot scored kills after losing an arm!

 

[michaelmaltby]

"... Re Stanford Tuck: .."

.... was quite a remarkable man .... a merchant seaman before the war, a good shot, used to amuse the skipper by potting sharks in the Indian Ocean, IIRC.

Escaped from the Germans near war-end and headed east .... was rescued by a Soviet foot soldier and hung out with him until he could be re-patriated. "Fly For Your Life" his auto biography.


Unquestionably, however, I vote for Beurling, the rabbit hunter from Canada.

MM

 

[Readie]

Re Stanford Tuck: he was bloody lucky the Germans didn't shoot him on the spot. Destroying a distillery - bastard!

That's your opinion...not many people would refer to RST as a 'bastard'


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxMJ2mX9UWo

BBC One - Where are they now?, Series 1, Episode 2, "An aeroplane beyond all compare"

How a German fighter ended up at a Jewish reunion in 1948 | Culture | The Guardian

A real gentleman
Cheers
John

 

[Aozora]

Not sure how Bader's renowned tenacity is relevant to his marksmanship, but certainly an exceptional character. I believe one RAF pilot scored kills after losing an arm!

Flt Lt James MacLachlan of 251 Sqn flying Hurricanes over Malta: he was shot down by Oblt Müncheburg of JG 26 on 16 February 1942 after which he lost part of his left arm. After a spell recuperating he joined 1 Sqn in Britain and became a night intruder pilot. James MacLachlan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[GregP]

Anyone who destroys a distillery or brewery is a bastard to the guy who wants that drink. There is no distillery or brewery I know of that is a legitimate military target.

That assumes, of course, that the alcohol was the drinking kind and not rubbing alcohol or methanol. If the alcohol was not the drinking kind, then he was, indeed, a gentelman, a scholar, and a judge of fine horseflesh rather than a bastard.

 

[tyrodtom]

If the distillery was supplying drink to the enemy, it certainly would be a military target.

If you could cut of the supply of alcohol, cigerettes, and condoms, the Wehrmacht would have fallen apart. Just like any other Army.

 

[GregP]

Nah, not a military target. I guess he was a bastard after all.

War is bad enough without drink, smoke, and ... well, I suppose you don't really need condoms in battle unless you are really kinky. You need them for R R. Take out their food, ammunition, clothing, but don't take away the alcohol!

 

[RCAFson]

The best Allied Marksman was probably George "Buzz" Beurling:

George Beurling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

His economic use of ammo was legendary.

 

[Readie]

I would stipulate that it is extremely hard, if not impossible to hit point targets with the .303s in the Spit, EXCEPT by spraying the target area profusely and hoping one of the hundreds hit the point you were aiming for.
The basis for this claim is that the mounting structure of the Spitfire wing was such that the Colt-Browning MG vibrated so badly that the "Typical" dispersion was, IIRC, 1.1 M, 45", at 100 Yards range. That means that the bullets holed the target like a shot gun making any hit on a target less than 4/5ths inch in OD simple luck. Read the book Flying guns of WW-II.
To compound this, the wing guns are mounted far from the line of sight and the bullet stream is near it at only one range, usually about 180 M. That means that the pilot has to aim off from the line of sight to get hits at other ranges. A very messy problem shared by all planes with wing mounted guns to a greater or lesser extent.
Please, I am not trying to start a row, just explain why it was the way it was. For all of them, not just the Spitfire.

Please read 'Fly for your life'. You will see that RST never claimed the shell that spilt open the AA gun to be anything more than a 'lucky shot'.
Cheers
John

 

[buffnut453]

I still think Pattle deserves an honourable mention. Achieving 15 kills when armed only with 4 x .303 machine guns is, IMHO, pretty impressive! Methinks he must have been an awesome shot!!

 

[Totalize]

One thing that seems to distinguish the greatest aces from amongst aces in general was their mastery of deflection shooting. Pilots like Hartmann, Marseille, Johnson, Finucane, Malan, Tuck, Bong, McCampbell and Beurling were experts at it. Within this group the ability to use the least amount of ammo to down an enemy aircraft can be noted as a key aspect of what set one apart from the other. For me my vote on the Allied side would go to Beurling and on the Axis side Marseille. Both these guys, especially Beurling had hard evidence to prove they downed various enemy a/c with very minimal ammo often using deflection shooting (Beurling's preferred shot being to pump shells into the cockpit of the enemy a/c) as their main shot. For Marseille, his kills were all achieved against Western Allied a/c and pilots which I believe had better training and tactics than the Soviet pilots in 1942.

 

[tyrodtom]

One thing that seems to distinguish the greatest aces from amongst aces in general was their mastery of deflection shooting. Pilots like Hartmann, Marseille, Johnson, Finucane, Malan, Tuck, Bong, McCampbell and Beurling were experts at it. Within this group the ability to use the least amount of ammo to down an enemy aircraft can be noted as a key aspect of what set one apart from the other. For me my vote on the Allied side would go to Beurling and on the Axis side Marseille. Both these guys, especially Beurling had hard evidence to prove they downed various enemy a/c with very minimal ammo often using deflection shooting (Beurling's preferred shot being to pump shells into the cockpit of the enemy a/c) as their main shot. For Marseille, his kills were all achieved against Western Allied a/c and pilots which I believe had better training and tactics than the Soviet pilots in 1942.

Two of the pilots on your list admitted method of downing aircraft was " get so close you can't miss "
Both Bong and Hartmann were from that school of thought.

I think Hartmann was downed 7 or 8 times, every one from impacts with his victim's debris.

 

[stona]

One thing that seems to distinguish the greatest aces from amongst aces in general was their mastery of deflection shooting.

Or simply not having to open fire from a significant angle off. Some of those you mentioned much preferred to open fire from close range and from six o'clock, preferably on an enemy who didn't know that they were there.
Cheers
Steve

 

[silence]

I seem to recall hearing somewhere that Rall was the best LW deflection shot. I love Marseille's method, though: I used it waaaaaaay back in Aces Over Europe and it worked like a charm.

EDIT: just to add on I also read somewhere else that Moelders liked to use just his MGs and was quite effective that way too. However, I can't say when this was; its possible it was with the early 109Fs with the 15mm MG 151.

 

[Denniss]

Two of the pilots on your list admitted method of downing aircraft was " get so close you can't miss "
Both Bong and Hartmann were from that school of thought.

I think Hartmann was downed 7 or 8 times, every one from impacts with his victim's debris.

AFAIR he (was forced) to used this tactic only for the Il-2 as it wasn't really easy to hit their weak spot (oil cooler) from longer range and their tree-top flying style. I doubt he could use it vs single engined fighters. I wouldn't call it downed - he crash landed multiple times because of debris damage and at least one time he was forced to bail out due to lack of fuel (chased by P-51s).

 

[Totalize]

Beurling I would say was also one of those that liked to get in close that he couldn't miss. From reading about his kills. I think quite a few of them were low angle off close in shots where like it was said you couldn't miss but instead of a lengthy burst to hose down the enemy A/C his timiing was such that a very short burst that often ended up in the cockpit of the enemy a/c was enough. Having said that though he was known (like some of the luftwaffe aces) to fire when the enemy a/c wasn't even in his reticle but out below the nose of his a/c the rounds impacting the a/c as it flew into his bullet stream. One one occasion he shot down an enemy a/c with such a high angle off and at such a long distance that his gun camera didn't even record the kill. I think the camera in this instance stopped recording after firing but the rounds were still outbound when the enemy a/c flew into them and was destroyed. When the kill was eventually confirmed many in the RAF said it was an almost impossible shot. This was another example of the kind of timing his possessed and his ability at deflection shooting. Of course Beurling was also shot down a few times so on more than one occasion he was the victim rather than the victor.

 

[CobberKane]

Hans-Joachim Marseilles was very good at this; in one engagement he shot down six P-40s with an average of two 20mm rounds and sixty 7.92mm rounds per plane.

I have an account of the Allied squadrons who were supposed to have been on the receiving end of this feat of Marseilles. As I recall the claim was greeted with a fair amount of amusement. That said, anecdotal evidence suggests Marseilles instincts for marksmanship were indeed barely second to his talent for self-promotion. Buerling apparently practised marksmanship relentlessly, and Bong was also very good at this.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Don't be to hard on Marseille his claims were probably accurate to with 10% or so. Which given the era was pretty impressive.
You could say that for all the aces and expertin, most of their claims were within a reasonable degree of accuracy.

It was all the rest that overclaimed by 200%,300% and so on. Part of the reason for the better (though not perfect) claiming accuracy was that the expertin were the stars and the other planes were there just to support and protect them while they did all the killing.

You look at many (though there were honourable exceptions of course) of them and the rest of their squadrons usually made very few claims. Marseille's was an example of that, only a few in their JG made any claims and even the better scoring ones were tiny compared to him. Caused a lot of friction within the Luftwaffe that little issue, especially with their wing men and the non-officers.

Usually 5% of pilots make 70%+ of claims, they are the 'hunters'. The Luftwaffe of the time made a fetish of that.

In the RAF and USAAF (etc) the very high scoring aces were probably pretty accurate too, mainly because they were usually very good shots and had very good eyesight.
The people who scored just a few (especially all those suspiciously 5 claims people that just made 'ace' status) were probably the greatest over claimers overall (of the fighters .. USAAF bombers were 1,000%+ out).

Most of that was genuine of course, you take a shot, maybe hit a plane, probably not, see one going down (which was shot by someone else) and make a claim.
Most pilots didn't have the skills to get in close and get a definite kill, rather they sprayed away.
The greater the size of the 'furball' the greater the inaccuracy of claims, on all sides. The smaller the numbers the greater the accuracy.