World War II saw air to air combat clashes in almost every theater of the globe imaginable. Though the western hemisphere was spared due to oceanic distances and fuel limitations of fighter aircraft in that era, still never has there been a greater number of warplanes at each other’s throats. From Burma to China, from Europe to the Russian eastern front, from the Mediterranean to North Africa, to the vast Pacific theater foreign air forces sought air superiority over their opponents.

The individual contest in the sky

Famous German Ace Gunther Ralls was neither nationalistic or patriotic to a single cause in his over view of fighter pilot capability whether it be the Luftwaffe, the RAF, the US Army Air Corps, or the Imperial Japanese, being one of the highest scoring aces of the war, his thoughts were objective. Having shot down 275 enemy planes during his tenure as a German fighter pilot, one should listen closely to his analysis. Much to the chagrin of some nationalist advocates who think a particular nationality was better because of who they were, Gunther stated that it was opportunity that afforded the greatest chance to pile up air to air victories, not necessarily ability. Even though training, equipment, and experience all contributed to capability.

The final determining factor

Being that the Luftwaffe was highly outnumbered early on against the Allied Air Forces, it was the superiority of combat strategy that gave the Germans such success in the early stages of World War II. For instance when Nazi Germany began the Battle of Great Britain there was roughly an equal number of British warplanes in ratio to the Luftwaffe, about a thousand aircraft each. Though by the end of the battle when Germany could no longer sustain the losses that had mounted over weeks of trying to establish air superiority and break the will of the English people, the RAF only had a little over 200 operational fighters left. Attrition in war controls the odds of victory and defeat.

Fighting to exhaustion

A difference in fighter pilot support also made a huge difference in the number of successful kills. The Germans, hard pressed to defend against Allied bombing missions supported by American and British fighters were constantly responding to attacks without being rotated out or given leave to recover from exhaustion. Whereas American and Allied fighter pilots were given leave and limited tours of duty. This helped save the lives of pilots who would be less effective if suffering from battle fatigue, but not for the Germans Gunther alongside, Adolf Galland, General and Commander of the Condor Legion, Erich Hartman, and nick named the “Knight” with 354 kills, so many German aces with over a hundred air to air victories emerged simply because the skies were saturated day and night with Allied bombing missions and fighting against stiff odds.

Unprepared yet ready to go

In contrast, the American pilots had little acrobatic combat training, basic gunnery tutorials, patrol time, and formation flying, they had no combat experience going into theaters of active war though many US pilots became aces. The British pilots who rose into the skies over London as German air raids crossed the British Channel had about 6 weeks to learn the deadly trade of air to air combat before meeting seasoned German pilots who had been at war for a year or more by 1940, possessed excellent Bf-109 fighters, and were well trained. Still these young men held their own, forcing the German air battle for Great Britain to be withdrawn.

A lack of intelligence tragedy

In the Pacific American, Australian, and Royal Air Force pilots faced the maneuverable Mitsubishi Zero that took down many an Allied pilot who used improper tactics to engage them with. Why Claire Chennault’s observations about the Zero and the best tactics to use against it were not shared with the US Navy or US Army Air Corps pilots in the Pacific Island hopping campaigns is mysterious as many a pilot’s lives could have been saved.

The skilled pilot wins

What were a pilot’s assets that made him a successful killer in the skies, was it his acrobatic air skills, his gunnery capability, or individual talent and creative use of his machine that made the difference between spiraling down into the ground on fire or living to fight another day? With some pilots it was their gunnery skills. Richard Bong with 40 victories got as close to the enemy aircraft as he could to increase his chances of accurate hits without wasting so much ordnance. Chuck Yeager proved to an RAF commander who argued with him that it was the superiority of the machine that dictated air to air success, as Chuck showed that any aircraft in the right hands with a talented pilot can overcome a supposedly better machine.

Not just the machine

First, the Colonel took his Spitfire up against the P-47 that Yeager flew and in a mock dogfight Yeager “Waxed his Fanny” another way of saying that the opposing pilot could not get the aggressor off his tale which was the ultimate kill position. The P-47 as with the P-40 Warhawk could dive away from most enemy fighters if they got in trouble while both aircraft could not only dish out punishment but take it too. Chuck did the same thing flying the British fighter while his counterpart flew the P-47 and demonstrated again what a plane can do in the hands of a superior pilot.

More targets more kills

Once again as in the words of German ace Gunther Rall was the concept of sheer opportunity that gave Axis pilots the means to score great numbers of victories as was the case with Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers With only 100 aircraft and no more than 25 of them operational at any given time the AVG airmen rose into the skies to engage the huge Japanese bomber formations and their Zero fighter plane escorts. The Flying Tigers had the greatest accumulated kills of any American aerial unit in US history and considering that Korea and Vietnam awaited future combat operations, that’s more than impressive. Even outnumbered 20 to 1 in the skies over Burma and China the AVG inflicted so many aerial losses upon the Imperial Japanese Air Force that they estimated that at least 400 Allied planes were harassing them and whenever they suffered losses after encountering the Flying Tigers they ceased air operations in that region.

Sheer numbers

Getting back to what distinguished an “Ace” from a typical pilot? Was it better reflexes, more courage, more experience, more aggressiveness, proper tactics against the right aircraft, or sheer luck? One could say that all the above would be correct. In one book the author stated that those pilots with highly unorthodox skills, flying in their own individual way, not necessarily by the book, but “by the seat of their pants”, not only kept them from being shot down, but made them unpredictable enough to succeed in numbers of  aerial kills. It seems strange that being largely outnumbered actually provided the right environment to produce aces with kills going into the hundreds fighting valiantly to defend their homeland. Once again as Gunther Ralls, the German ace, pointed out, some Allied pilots could fly 50 combat missions and not see one German FW-190 or an Me-109 when he and his colleagues were beseeched by hundreds of Allied aircraft every day from across the English Channel as the US 8^th Air Force conducted daylight bombing missions to the dreaded Eastern Front where the Germans faced 15 thousand Russian aircraft with many of them being US Warplanes as a product of the Lend Lease Act. It seems ironic how the results of battle are dictated in unusual ways.

Conclusion

The question remains, were Axis pilots actually better than their Allied counterparts? Not necessarily, in the opinion of Gunther Ralls. In the Pacific the war went full circle from the Japanese having an incredible numeric superiority to eventually being greatly outnumbered as US manufacturing kicked in and simply out supplied the war efforts of their enemies in the Pacific. This, in turn, produced some Japanese aces in the same way being desperately outnumbered toward the end of the war produced for some fighter pilots a target rich environment that seems contradictory to the inevitable loss of the war in the hands of a superior opponent. The fortunes of war, it seems, spawn unusual results.