Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
I agree, he must have had a certain "knack" for Spitfires. 68 of them to be exact. The very idea that he fought from the beginning, to the last 4 months of the war as a front line fighter pilot on the western front, is amazing. A most impressive amount of time. Granted, most of his time at a rank and position where he was flying every day presented Spitfires as the main opponent. (He got 15 hurricanes as well.) This being said, when his job was Reich defense, he knocked down 11 four engine U.S. bombers, as well as 5 fighters. So, there is that.He certainly had the Spitfire's number. It was probably some flying trait of the RAF that he noticed and nobody else did. You generally fight like you train, so there must have been some central trait of either the pilots or the Spitfires that Priller noticed and capatalized on.
At least I'd THINK so. Maybe he was just lucky with Spitfires, but he did it long enough for luck to be an unlikely predominant factor. Maybe he was just a better combat flier with a lot more experience, but the RAF weren't exactly slouches for the most part.
It is VERY unlikely that he somehow found the less-talented pilots for THAT many victories.
What makes you think American and British CAS aircraft flew any higher then VVS CAS aircraft?
Could be Milosh.
But after the Battle of Britain I thought the primary German focus was on shooting down the bombers that were attacking them. And Spitfires weren't used all that often as escorts ... so somehow, this gyt managed to come across the relatively short-ranged Spitfires on a damned regular basis. I'd love to see something like some average for bomber kills versus fighters kills for some of the Luftwaffe aces ... but that would be asking a lot given the state of the data from Germany.
I seem to remember reading - probably in one of Caldwell's books - that the RAF was able to confirm every single one of Priller's awarded kills.