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lesofprimus said:If I'm not mistaken, there were a couple of Russians and 1 American in Korea that scored 16 or more kills in Korea.... Joseph McConnell had 16 kills by 5/18/1953, with the Top Scorers being Evgeni Pepelyaev and Nick Sutyagin with 23 kills....Baer's 16 kills in the ME262 made him the leading jet ace in WW2 and also until 1973 the leading jet ace of all nations.
And once again for the record, Heinz Baer in my book is just about unmatched in this catagory....
lesofprimus said:Ur welcome and Im pretty sure I am... The Russian stats are always alittle flunky, but in recent articles and info, these #'s all seem pretty tight...
CurzonDax said:evangilder said:Having spent a good chunk of my growing up years in Wisconsin, I got to hear plenty about Richard Bong. There was even an Air Force base in Wisconsin named after him. It was long since closed though.
I guess growing up in PR, I got a more Euro slant on the war, until I got to high school.
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evangilder said:Ah ok. It's funny, lasst night on the Military Channel on Legends of Airpower, the had an episode on Richard Bong! He was a quiet, unassuming guy on the ground, but a hell of a pilot. If General Kenney had not pulled him out of combat, there is no telling what his tally might have been.
A couple of amazing stories about his piloting skills:
When at Hamilton field, near San Francisco, he flew loops around the center span of the Golden Gate bridge and flew low enough down market street to wave to the secretaries and stenographers!
Barry Goldwater was his gunnery instructor at Luke Field in Arizona. He said that Bong was an exceptional student. While at Luke, flying an AT-6, he flew an engagement against a P-38 with an experienced pilot. No matter how hard he tried, the P-38 pilot could not shake Bong, who was flying the AT-6! The P-38 pilot said that Bong was the finest natural pilot he ever met.
A p-38 versus an AT-6 is not even a match and the P-38 holds all of the advantages, yet Dick Bong stuck to the P-38.
While in the Pacific, he became known for his "silent landings". He would come in with both engines feathered, perform a loop and then land!
He was an amazing pilot.
Hunter368 said:lesofprimus said:If I'm not mistaken, there were a couple of Russians and 1 American in Korea that scored 16 or more kills in Korea.... Joseph McConnell had 16 kills by 5/18/1953, with the Top Scorers being Evgeni Pepelyaev and Nick Sutyagin with 23 kills....Baer's 16 kills in the ME262 made him the leading jet ace in WW2 and also until 1973 the leading jet ace of all nations.
And once again for the record, Heinz Baer in my book is just about unmatched in this catagory....
That is possable I was going by my memory. Thanks Les if you are correct.
CurzonDax said:I understand all of this. But when I was growing up the only ace that was famous was Pappy because of his infamous series, maybe Yeager and many forget he was an ace in a day. You only seemed to hear about Galland, Hartmann, Johnson, Bader, etc, etc, etc. The first time I ever read about American aces was in Gene Gurney's Five Down and Glory. It was years before I saw other books and these were the Hammel books. I guess, because when I was growing up, the major WWII documentary was The World at War, which had a more Euro slant and so were many of the books at the time. I still have to thank Bantam and thier WWII series for saving my historical mind. Even today it seems that US aces are still in the wings, exept for Pappy or Yeager.
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DerAdlerIstGelandet said:CurzonDax said:I understand all of this. But when I was growing up the only ace that was famous was Pappy because of his infamous series, maybe Yeager and many forget he was an ace in a day. You only seemed to hear about Galland, Hartmann, Johnson, Bader, etc, etc, etc. The first time I ever read about American aces was in Gene Gurney's Five Down and Glory. It was years before I saw other books and these were the Hammel books. I guess, because when I was growing up, the major WWII documentary was The World at War, which had a more Euro slant and so were many of the books at the time. I still have to thank Bantam and thier WWII series for saving my historical mind. Even today it seems that US aces are still in the wings, exept for Pappy or Yeager.
:{)
Like I said, I think there were a lot of great American Aces. Many Many Many that were just as good and skilled as the top Luftwaffe Aces. I personally just think that the numbers of the top Luftwaffe Aces and Experten speaks for all for itself. I mean look at Erich Hartmann alone, he even tought at a USAAF flight school in the United States after the war, well after he was released from POW camps in Russia and returned to Germany. These men really accomplished something in Aviation History that will probably never be broken. It is really hard to put others up on the pedistals with them.
Hunter368 said:I agree 100%, there was alot of pilots from USA or UK that could fly a plane as well as they could, but no other nation asked and demanded of their pilots the way that Germany did, and still have the pilots do such a successful job at the same time.
DerAdlerIstGelandet said:Hunter368 said:I agree 100%, there was alot of pilots from USA or UK that could fly a plane as well as they could, but no other nation asked and demanded of their pilots the way that Germany did, and still have the pilots do such a successful job at the same time.
I agree however the British did just that during the BoB. They depended on the RAF for there survival and the RAF fought valiently and one at incredible odds that were stacked against them.
Hellbird said:I'm new to this so don't call me stupid. How many kills did you need to be an ace? And wasn't Chuck Yeager an ace?