High Number Of Kills For German Aces

Why the German Aces had such a high number of aerial kills. Gunther Rall, who shot down some 275 aircraft gives a brief explanation one minute into this interview...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STFdRrWBW2w

Ghostdancer said:

Why the German Aces had such a high number of aerial kills. Gunther Rall, who shot down some 275 aircraft gives a brief explanation one minute into this interview...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STFdRrWBW2w

Click to expand...

Pretty good and believable explanations.

Examples.

As an example my father had 7 air to air in four total engagements over 40 missions in 90 days... then never was able to engage for next 30+ missions despite being in lead as Sq CO or Group Deputy CO..

Gabby Gabreski got 28 over the span of 14+ months when the German LW was eager to fight and plentiful. He got all of his air scores in 19 total engagements in over 100+ missions.

Rall and other top LW experten probably had more engagements every 30 days than Gabby had during his entire experience w/56th FG.

Net - LW aces fought in target rich environment which enabled them to engage on nearly 1/2 to most of their missions - they just had to survive to score high.

I show 166 missions for 28 credits for Gabreski. As a comparison Gunter Rall had 275 claims in 621 missions. If I do my math right this would have statistically given Gabreski over 100 kills in the same span when comparing the two. You'd have to factor the "target rich environment" and also almost all of Ralls kills were over the eastern front.

FLYBOYJ said:

I show 166 missions for 28 credits for Gabreski. As a comparison Gunter Rall had 275 claims in 621 missions. If I do my math right this would have statistically given Gabreski over 100 kills in the same span when comparing the two. You'd have to factor the "target rich environment" and also almost all of Ralls kills were over the eastern front.

Click to expand...

I knew it was high Joe but put 100+ because I didn't know what the final number was before he went down strafing.

And yes, Gabby was killing Rall types not Rall prey types. It was the 56th that put him out of the War.

Anothe point about Gabby - had the 4th converted to 51s his numbers surely would have been a lot higher as the Penetration/Withdrawal Support missions limited 56th to far fewer encounters April - July

drgondog said:

I knew it was high Joe but put 100+ because I didn't know what the final number was before he went down strafing.

And yes, Gabby was killing Rall types not Rall prey types. It was the 56th that put him out of the War.

Anothe point about Gabby - had the 4th converted to 51s his numbers surely would have been a lot higher as the Penetration/Withdrawal Support missions limited 56th to far fewer encounters April - July

Click to expand...

Agree as well...

I wonder how his Korean tour sizes up here as well. I know different place, aircraft, enemy, tactics, ect.

This is a little skewed, but speaking of Gabby has lead me to another question, has a book been written on "Mike" Gladych? I have read about him in Gabby's book and a few others. I would have to say he should have one heck of a story!