andrewgeorge
Airman
- 87
- Mar 20, 2024
Presumably not poor eye sight if we're talking about aircrew!
No, I mean limited visibility, limited awareness, misapprehension, distraction, physical distortion of senses, overoptimism.
Let's say I'm a fighter ace and I close in on an enemy aircraft at the tail end of a formation and fire an accurate burst that surely scores hits. As I flash by and pull into a zoom climb, I see that his engine belches smoke and he dives out of control toward the earth. A victory. I say so over radio. Another member of my flight says he also got one on the initial pass. I reach the top of my climb, bank over, and dive back in to the scattered enemy planes. I get on the tail of one of them, and he tightens down the turn forcing a high angle deflection shot. I pull lead and fire another long burst. I see big pieces of his tail assembly break off as my rounds find their mark. I shot the tail off his plane and he's done for. I check my six and I see an enemy aircraft trying to pull a lead on me, so I try to jink him with a snap roll and dive into a split S. I'm pressed hard into the floor of the cockpit as my vision dims and the roar of the plane softens, on the verge of blacking out, but I stay conscious. As the blood returns to my head, out of the corner of my eye I see a fireball as an aircraft trailing black smoke hits the ground. Probably the one I flamed on my first pass. When we get back I claim two certain, another pilot claims one certain, and a third claims one probable that was in tatters when he had to break off due to fuel. One of our pilots didn't return. Four kills to one loss. We can't afford to lose any pilots, but at least we gave worse than we got.
Now let's say that that first claim was in error. Despite the tracers passing close by the nose of his plane, not one of my rounds hit. The enemy pilot only saw us at the last moment, and instinctively opened his throttle all the way, running rich and spewing a cloud of black sooty exhaust. At the same time, he maneuvered violently, diving to escape. Unknown to me, he actually returned to base undamaged.
It was also unknown to the other pilot in my flight who shot at that same plane and who, like me, was sure his hits had caused an engine fire. Two erroneous claims.
Now, also unknown to me at the time, when we pulled away into a zoom climb, one of the enemy planes got a good burst off at our tail end fighter and scored hits on his wing tank. His kite went up in flames and he hit the silk.
The second plane I did in fact hit with the last few rounds of my high angle deflection shot and one of my cannon rounds did explode on his vertical stabilizer, sending shrapnel flying and blasting small, shiny pieces of aluminum from his aircraft. However, since his aircraft was below my nose for the shot itself, I didn't see that most of the burst missed and I had only a brief glimpse of the results. Since his wingman cleared me from his tail, I never got another look at him. His plane was hit, but not seriously damaged and remained flyable. Three erroneous claims.
The plane that hit the ground was actually one of ours; the one that was lit up on the initial pass. Our pilot was still floating to earth eight thousand feet overhead, and he was going to end up a POW. But I didn't know that because I didn't really see the plane itself, just the explosion when it hit the ground. After all, I pulling a high-G defensive maneuver at the time.
The second plane I hit was engaged by two more fighters from my squadron. Although his plane was damaged, he managed to avoid their guns in a six-minute running dogfight that felt like it lasted an hour, until both of our boys got the call to break it off and head home. Our two pilots were both sure they had scored some hits, and the visible damage to his plane looked bad the last they saw him. Except they hadn't scored a single additional hit, the enemy pilot did return to base, and his plane was actually in flyable condition within days. Four erroneous claims.
So our squadron's ledger: 4 victories, 1 missing/unknown.
Reality: 0 victories, 1 loss.
My claims: 2 victories
Reality: 1 enemy plane damaged.
I'm not lying. Neither is anyone else in my squadron. But we just claimed four planes shot down on a day when every enemy aircraft returned safely to base.
