Just a few more thoughts:
There is no doubt that the skill needed to be a successful scout/fighter pilot in the Great War was considerable, and that most 'aces' were very skilled and indeed brave. However bravery and skill do not necessarily make one a hero. It is hard to define a hero, but Geoffrey Cubbitt described them as an individual who in their own lifetime or afterwards is endowed with great emotive value.
When you try to properly define what makes a hero it becomes incredibly subjective and therefore tricky. I would suggest that there is no such thing as an objective hero in that regard. However if we take 'hero' to mean a person as Cubbitt described, we can get the ball rolling. It is easy to see why the ww1 pilot would be perceived as heroic - the aviator is already a heroic figure before the war itself. The heroic mould is transferred from peace to war.
However what is often alluded to as the basis of their heroism is the downing of planes. When looking at the citations for the awards to fighter pilots, specific phrases and words are mentioned time and again: 'conspicuous and consistent bravery' - this is interesting due to the concept of consistent bravery as a means to award such a medal. Other phrases/words are: 'exceptional courage, determination and skill'; 'conspicuous skill and gallantry'.
Considering many of the awards are for single acts it is odd that DSOs and VCs are awarded to pilot for actions taken over periods as long as a week. Granted that some ground VCs like Chavasse's 1st VC was for a period over a day/2 days, but this is taken as part of the same engagement. The air combats of say Ball, Mannock, McCudden are separated and apart from each other. It would appear that the goal posts in this case are significantly shifted/altered to accommodate an important arm of the British forces, however the most important arm of the RFC, its recon flyers, are not as well represented in terms of VCs, DSOs or other awards in history, media and popular memory as say the fighter pilot is. Most of the VCs given out to RFC/RNAS men are for fighter pilots, some like say Rhodes-Moorhouse and Liddell are more or less forgotten - they died as a result of their recon/bombing attacks early in the war - no enemies to battle in the clouds with. Ball, McCudden, Hawker, Mannock etc are more well known and depict a popular view of the RFC, when in fact the majority of pilots never shot a plane down because they were flying bombing, ground-attack or recon mission over enemy lines. If fighting other planes makes one heroic in this sense, then there are several questions that need to be asked...
Is it heroic to shoot down a plane?
Re: the above question - If not in general, then is it purely based on the circumstance?
Is it heroic to have shot down e.g. 80 aircraft over a career?
Is it more heroic to shoot down a large number of planes in one sitting?
Is flying recon/bombing missions over enemy lines heroic?
If the above is heroic, then why are they not considered heroic in wider popular literature and memory?
I am almost edging to the notion that fighter pilots are not necessarily heroic in a sense - they are brave, skillfull, dutiful yes, but if we take heroism to be a single act, they cannont be heroic as their acts take place over a wide and separate period of time. If individuals can be consistently heroic over a period of time, then this raises some problems and serious issues - are the soldiers at the front heroes by this idea then? They are at the front for sustained periods of time and are subjected to artillery, gas, attacks, counter-attacks, raids, the elements etc. If awarding a pilot for downing 11 planes over the course of a week is worthy of a VC, then why is not a week of frontline action?
The only possible answer I can see to the last question made above is this: aviators had success as easily quantified, by the number of downed planes. Through the sporting ethos that was prevalent throughout the air services the 'score' was a means of measuring success but added to that are connotations of sportsmanship and chivalry as a way to compensate for the personalized killing - it is 1v1 afterall. An infantryman has no such measurement of success other than ground gained, but then the infantryman is as part of a large mass of men, not an individual as characterized in popular thought like the airman. The airman, specifically the fighter-pilot, is heroic to the public not necessarily because of the acts they do but because of the very nature of their job - flying. Flying is perceived as heroic even before man has flown.
Aviators are the harbingers of new technology, a new golden age, or perhaps mankind's destruction. When the act of flying is seen as heroic in itself, then when war is thrown into the mix, with the already jingoistic, imperialistic and militaristic juvenile and popular literature of the time the mix is deadly and creates a prefabricated image of a heroic military aviator! As such the airman is heroic before he even sets out to war and this image is manipulated and moulded to fit the realities of aerial warfare in the Great War.
This is not to say that fighter pilots are not brave, skilled, determined - they are all these things. But if we take pre-1914 models of military heroism, they don't quite fit to the notion of a single act which tends to be associated with heroism. The media, society, military etc accommodate the fighter pilot and change the specifics of heroism to fit them in as such.
), there must be a reason for Britain to break with the practise from WWI while Germany continued with the old practise (and expanded it).
