Highest Scoring Fighter Ace, Still Living?

Juha said:

I would like to emphasize that IMHO researchers HAVE the right to question victory claims from which there are not paper evidence on even claimant side, which was the situation in the Closterman case, if I have understood it rightly..

But at some point he became known as 33 kill ace in popular literature, I remember that myself, and IMHO it is ridiculous to accuse researches, who put thinks right by checking the primary sources, in court.

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True, the historians should do their jobs. Closterman had always 23 RAF kills, transformed to 33 by French homologation system based on 1940'th rules.
Of course there was political reasons, but Marcel Albert from Normandy also had collective victories inside his 23 kills.

IMHO it is well known that claim accuracy varied during the pilots' careers, but from what I know, or from what I think I know, some were more reliable claimers than others, mostly because they had more realistic view of their abilities, better ability to critical analyze, better situational awareness and maybe they were less interesting of personal glory. In other words fighter aces were humans as we all.

On Rudorffer or any other ace, many pilots were poor in a/c recognition; it would be simpler to check other side's single-engine losses and twin-engine losses.

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It's an exageration too far. Why not four-engine losses? I understang that Rudorffer and others took some LaGG-3, P-39 or at least a La-5 for a Yak during this 41 claims on that type, but not a Pe-2 or a Boston, even so!

IMHO vast majority of overclaims were made in good faith, there were only a few cases of deliberate overclaiming. On Rudorffer, there seems to have been some good indications on that in his case but nothing is proven, so only hearsay.

Juha

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I said until all his claims and Rall ones will be not verified and valideted or unvalideted by russian archives, nobody can say that he was a bigger overclaimer than the other Luft pilots.

I visited with Kenneth Dahlberg yesterday for about 30 minutes. He had 15 victories in the ETO flying P15s and P47s. He received the DSC, DFC, Silver and Bronze Stars, and a dozen or so Air Medals... shot down three times, evaded capture twice and returned to action. Third time was the charm in April '44. He spent the remainder of the war at Stalag #7 near Museberg.

There are probably others with more victories, but I just wanted to brag that I had met him.

You lucky so and so!

Adler,

The RAF and Commonwealth aces are already well documented in the book "Aces High" by Chris Shores. There's a second volume which corrects errors in the initial release and incorporates all the DIVER aces.

Hope this helps.