The Greatest Fighter Pilot of WWII... Finalized....

HELMUT LENT
111 airial victory's.
kommodore of NJG3.
Wore the diamonds to the knight's Cross..the first of only two nightfigthers.
looks good in his uniform.

piet said:

HELMUT LENT

Click to expand...

And why do you think so?

It is much better to tell people why than just blurt out one name posts, it helps the conversations continue...

You guys sure think up difficult polls - it's like getting a kid to choose JUST ONE item from a candy store

Anyway, I went for Marseille for the following reasons:
1.) He was a brilliant shot.
2.) He seemed quite happy to"mix it" rather than the standard zoom and boom.
3.) He was innovative.
4.) He liked Jazz
5.) Apparently he was also very popular with the girls.

... what more could one want.

On what iv read i personally think gunther rall was the best and IMO if Rall didn't have his thumb shot off he would of exceeded hartmann's score of 352 he was very skilled fighter pilot and responsible and smart leader new when to call the shots.
The man was tuff as Nails seriously he broke his back in three places Doctors told him was finished as a pilot and he would not be able to walk again but defied the odds and returned to combat almost a year later. now that's determination.

I'd have to pick Galland, just because he downed 50+ Spitfires, the majority while using a 109. To be fair though, I don't know enough about the other Aces to make a fair assessment, so I'm really choosing my favorite =P

I'd also go with finnish top ace Eino Ilmari Juutilainen - final tally 94,17 kills. App. 1/3 of his kills were achieved while flying Brewster fighter. 2/3 of his kills were achieved with Bf109 - couple also with Fokker D.XXI.

More remarkable, no enemy pilot was ever able to score hits into Juutilainen's plane - the damage that his aircraft sustained during operational sorties, was due to AA fire!

-JJ-

Voting for Sakai based on the 24 June 1944 incident over Iwo Jima where he
fought off 15 U.S. Navy Grumman F6F Hellcats singlehandedly, in a chase that lasted over 20 minutes. Landed unharmed, without a single bullet hole in his Zero.
Plus, he performed this airborne miracle with only ONE eye!

How many other WWII jocks could have passed a test like that?

Cool and fun thread. Impossible to choose just "one best". Too many
different circumstances. Still, Germans that shot down ~50 Spitfires,
Russians that scored heavily on the LW in 2nd class planes with gunsights painted
on the windshield, or Nishizawa who apparently downed over 40 Wildcats, Hellcats, Corsairs
and P-38's in one-on-one dogfighting, and never downed himself even once

Those rise to the top in my book.

Voted "Jochen", aka Hans Marseille.

He had to the maximum all the qualities a fighter pilot needs to excel..Master of his machine, mastery of tactics, unique gunnery skill, perfect eysight..add to that a great sense of humor and an easy going attitude far from that of a military professional.

I,ve gone for Aleksandr Pokryshkin on this one.I base my vote on many factors not just outright kills which is not telling the entire story especially in Pokryshkins case.The first factor i examined is his tactical input and overall contribution to his airforces success and his re-writing of the VVS combat tactic training manual to improve pilot performance and reduce losses was pivotal to the change in fortune against the Luftwaffe later in the Eastern front campaign.Secondly he had a gift that he could climb into any fighter type quickly evaluate its good and bad traits and adapt his flying accordingly nobody else in the VVS managed to score kills in such a diverse selection of aircraft than old "100".The next factor i,m onto going back to kill scores i think history and historians criminally under scored Pokryshkin by as many as 45 to 50 kills due to a variety of means,his own log books and that of his own squadron colleagues place his score nearer to 90 in fact Pokryshkins own kill record puts him at in excess of 100!.During 1941 at the height of the Luftwaffe onslaught his confirmed kill documents on 15 enemy shot down were destroyed during a hurried evacuation from an airbase so not recorded,he also shot down at least 15 enemy aircraft while illegally flying combat missions while officially grounded by stalin unclaimed for obvious reasons!.Also he on many occasions gave his kills to fallen comrades to help feed their families a common practice according to other pilots testimony,so even with a modest 40% probabilty that these additional claims are correct his true score would be closer to 85.A brilliant fighter pilot and certainly the greatest allied pilot of ww2.

Difficult decision, Bong, Galland and Pattle well worth noting.
But my vote went for Johnnie Johnson.
My reasoning being he shot down only other fighter planes. His opposition were usually well trained and experienced LW pilots in good fighters.
He was also extremely well thought of by his peers. He also served after the war in other conflicts.