Air ace life spans

[Orlunu]

The Bf-109 wasn't really inferior to the Spitfire, but it was an equal.

Generally a good analysis, but I disagree with this opening line. The Spit had it beat for level flight speed, had a higher lift and higher drag profile, had a smoother stalling surface across the wings, and had better visibility. The Bf 109 could only rely on higher roll rate and better max speed in a moderate dive.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

No, it's not. It's a response to a post claiming both sides ran away.

Well I never made any argument like that. Generally what happens with misclaims is that the shooter had not landed enough rounds in a vital location to bring down his target, and the damaged enemy dove away to escape, being subsequently mistakenly recorded as a kill. This didn't happen to the Germans exclusively though, so people like this...

If you would actually be interested in this, why not look at the statistics? German kill records were already investigated and corrected, whereas some, especially Soviet ones, have never been looked at by anybody ever.

... are also speaking nonsense. Allied ace claims have been scrutinized against German records and they show the same 60-80% verification range as when German ace claims are scrutinized against Allied records. And I'm talking about the claims of the Aces themselves, not whatever the propaganda ministry says the Aces claimed. We do have Luftwaffe internal records to differentiate the two.

 

[Orlunu]

No, it's not. It's a response to a post claiming both sides ran away.

So, what you're saying is that that prevents it being a comparison. You took two separate events, evaluated how they were similar and dissimilar, but it wasn't a comparison because of the type of post you were responding to?

You also seem to have completely misunderstood the post you were responding to. It wasn't about "running away", it was about the fact that most pilots in the war were completely capable of losing sight of the person they were fighting and not being able to find him again, of emptying their ammo before they scored a kill, of running low enough on fuel that they had to disengage, of having to move on for the sake of the mission and so on. Most air engagements were indecisive, but that wasn't because people ran off en masse, it was because it was just plain difficult to shoot down an evading fighter.

 

[keynes2.0]

Well I never made any argument like that.

No, you did not. Orlunu however claimed that the explanation for the dearth of 2 and 3 victory pilots is because apparently every pilot in the BoB who wasn't an ace turned tail and ran. Which is silly. And which he still seems to be claiming.

He furthermore said this was because they weren't any good. To which I pointed out that a lot of them were good, considering that they went on to be aces later on. Which apparently is an unfair comparison and not y'know, stating the freaking obvious and pointing out the pretzel shapes he has twisted the data in to try and justify this ridiculous hypothesis.

 

[Orlunu]

Orlunu however claimed that the explanation for the death of 2 and 3 victory pilots is because apparently every pilot in the BoB who wasn't an ace turned tail and ran. ... which he still seems to be claiming.

He furthermore said this was because they weren't any good. To which I pointed out that a lot of them were good, considering that they went on to be aces later on. Which apparently is an unfair comparison and not y'know, stating the freaking obvious and pointing out the pretzel shapes he has twisted the data in to try and justify this ridiculous hypothesis.

Well, I'm about to go to bed, so I'm glad to see that you've already set up an imaginary me to argue with, even if he's not as smart, witty, or handsome as the original. (I'm assuming you just had a typo with dearth, right? Because what you've got there is the exact opposite of what I was saying. Not many three kill pilots got shot down compared to pilots with fewer kills.)

Surprisingly, you tend to be better at something after lots of practice than before it. Even more surprisingly, you tend to do better in highly advantageous conditions than highly disadvantageous ones. To give an example, when I said that the pilots sometimes had to disengage before a decisive end because of fuel problems, do you think that this was more common when operating at maximum range or on a fifty mile round trip?

I'm pretty happy having been able to make a pretzel shape out of, what, two data points? Proud of myself.

cyas

 

[ObssesedNuker]

No, you did not. Orlunu however claimed that the explanation for the dearth of 2 and 3 victory pilots is because apparently every pilot in the BoB who wasn't an ace turned tail and ran. Which is silly. And which he still seems to be claiming.

Uh...

SIt wasn't about "running away", it was about the fact that most pilots in the war were completely capable of losing sight of the person they were fighting and not being able to find him again, of emptying their ammo before they scored a kill, of running low enough on fuel that they had to disengage, of having to move on for the sake of the mission and so on. Most air engagements were indecisive, but that wasn't because people ran off en masse, it was because it was just plain difficult to shoot down an evading fighter.

That does not remotely sound like "every pilot who wasn't an ace turned tail and ran". Rather it sounds like "non-aces lacked the same degree of weapons skill and situational awareness that allowed for reliably downing the enemy and accurately claiming the kill". Which is correct.

Surprisingly, you tend to be better at something after lots of practice than before it.

Well... not everything that set aces apart from non-aces were the results of practice. They were men with invariably perfect eyesight, fantastic co-ordination, and the ability to visualize a three dimensional space in their heads and either plan out their actions, or instinctively intuit the proper manuevers. And, again, this goes just as much for Allied aces as German ones... and non-German Axis ones, for that matter*. Aces really come from a mix of training and natural ability.

*A Finnish ace once downed a Russian bomber by putting a three round burst of 20mm into the bomber pilot's head.

 

[keynes2.0]

I was typing my reply while he was typing and didn't bother to read his new post before responding to you. It's still a silly theory. There is no reason for this to only affect pilots at 2 or 3 victories and not 4 or 5.

The far, far simpler and more logical hypothesis is that aces were just as full of bullshit as everyone else.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

I was typing my reply while he was typing and didn't bother to read his new post before responding to you. It's still a silly theory. There is no reason for this to only affect pilots at 2 or 3 victories and not 4 or 5.

It's perfectly logical: since Ace pilots combine far superior shooting skills with roughly-equally superior situational awareness, their not only more likely to kill their target but also to know that their target was killed compared to other pilots. This drives down their overclaiming.

I know video games are not the best of evidence about this kind of thing, but flight sims manage to highlight how this looks. I've chatted with a guy who used to play the online simulator Battleground Europe and he noted that while he could maintain a 20:1 kill/death rate, he's seen several pilots who have managed to go hundreds of missions in a campaign without EVER being shot down. One pilot survived a two month campaign with a 500:0 kill/death rate! This is all against other live opponents - there are no AI targets in the game. You simply cannot manage that kind of kill ratio in infantry FPS (since they arrange the terrain and weapons in a way to make that impossible) games, but flight simulators emphasize disparities in skill, tactics and natural ability... just like real life air combat does.

Of course, equally key to being an ace is to know when and how to strike: In a contest of pilot vs pilot, what matters most is position and initiative. So many of their kills really look more like the execution of targets whom didn't knew they were there then actual battles of skill. One of the aces themselves, in a post-war interview, described it as "aerial assassinations". But nobody said war was fair...

 

[mursolini]

Wiki says - Japan used about 400 aircraft during the Battles of Khalkin Gol , Russia used more than 900 aircraft.

Russia lost 208 aircraft.
Japan lost 162 aircraft.

Looking at airlosses, Japan seems to be the winner.

The side that wins air war (almost) always takes notably more loses. You can look at German early campaigns and see how they lost more planes than Poland, and more planes than France. And Allies lost notably more planes when they had almost complete superiority over Germany in 1944-1945.
After all, air war is waged not to get favourable kill ratio, but to get bombers and reckon planes to do their job.

Actually, the fact that the Soviets had 2-3x as much fighters sealed the deal. The i-16 was an inferior fighter plane to the KI-27.

It was inferior in some types of copmbat, which, forced Soviets to innovate tactic. Oh, exactly like Americans in 1941, which, wait for it, was my entire point.

Even so looking at the following stats I dont think the Soviets had complete air superiority, and the definitely did not wipe the japanese.

Soviets ended up with complete air superiority. Soviets had 900 aircraft’s, and lost and sent to repair slightly over half of their force.

The Japanese combat losses were 97 fighters, 25 bombers and 41 other (mostly reconnaissance), while 128 fighters, 54 bombers and 38 other required repairs due to combat damage.

So, out of 400 aircraft’s, 220 were lost, and almost every single remaining was heavily damaged, and probably repaired a few times over.

That, shows that by the end of conflict, Japanese air arm was fully exhausted, while Soviet one was perfectly operational. Hence, Japanese were wiped, and Soviets convincingly won.

 

[Zaku]

It was inferior in some types of copmbat, which, forced Soviets to innovate tactic. Oh, exactly like Americans in 1941, which, wait for it, was my entire point.

Innovative tactics = send 2-3 x as many fighters then our enemy has.

Soviets ended up with complete air superiority.

The statistics say otherwise.

By September 13, the Japanese army air force had arrayed 255 warplanes, including 158 fighters along the front. Air battles swirled in Mongolian skies in the first and second weeks of September and climaxed on the 15th, as 200 Japanese warplanes struck Soviet air bases in Mongolia. Fierce aerial combat ensued as 120 Japanese fighters fought 207 Russian adversaries. All combat came to an end, however, when a cease-fire agreement was signed on September 16.

September was the last month of the skirmish. The Russians were far from air superiority in the area, because the Japanese were actually bombing their bases even on the last day...

 

[Opanashc]

September was the last month of the skirmish. The Russians were far from air superiority in the area, because the Japanese were actually bombing their bases even on the last day...

And population of London would take to shelter from death from above even in 1945. Air superiority does not equal complete elimination of enemy air force.

 

[keynes2.0]

It's perfectly logical: since Ace pilots combine far superior shooting skills with roughly-equally superior situational awareness, their not only more likely to kill their target but also to know that their target was killed compared to other pilots. This drives down their overclaiming.

Which isn't responding to the "where are the 2 and 3s" point at all. You make these big useless points that argue about something I never said and meanwhile ignore really straightforward things. If there are a bunch of people with 5 victories and 6 victories and no people at all with 2 victories and 3 victories, the data make no sense.

I also think your "they dont overclaim" because theory is silly. You are assuming something without evidence to explain something that is hypothesized but not observed.

Try a little something out for me, it only takes 15 minutes. Take these numbers and copy and paste them into excel. http://jpgleize.perso.neuf.fr/aces/ww2lbob.htm

Select the victory numbers and plot them, just select the column and hit "scatterplot". You will notice a nice continuous function. However it's a function that's way too high. We know that only 900 and change victories were claimed total and these guys are almost there themselves.. So we will adjust them downward. Create a simple 25% reduction. Type into a cell off to the side "=D1*.75". Then copy that cell, select the all the cells in the column you want to copy into and paste. We now have our "corrected" numbers according to this "aces were only 33% overestimating" standard. Create a scatterplot for this new column. Look at the same distribution but shifted downward. Is it plausible to you that this continuous distribution immediately drops to one? Human brains can find patters even when they dont exist. Can you find a pattern that would explain that?

 

[ObssesedNuker]

If there are a bunch of people with 5 victories and 6 victories and no people at all with 2 victories and 3 victories, the data make no sense.

Because your looking at the wrong data. Your looking at a list of Aces. Aces are defined as people who shoot down a minimum of 5 enemy aircraft. So of course there are no people on that sheet listed with 2 or 3 victories, because such pilots are not considered aces.

You are assuming something without evidence to explain something that is hypothesized but not observed.

Except for the fact their claims are verified by the oppositions own records.

 

[keynes2.0]

Because your looking at the wrong data set. Your looking at a list of Aces. Aces are defined as people who shoot down a minimum of 5 enemy aircraft. So of course there are no people on that sheet listed with 2 or 3 victories, because such pilots are not considered aces.

Which isn't what I'm saying, like at all. I'm talking about extrapolating the rest and how you can't come up with a plausible extrapolation if you start with the assumption that the aces weren't inflating their kill claims very much. Look at post 90 in this thread.

 

[Greenboot]

Calculating the "best" pilots be the amount of planes they shot down is somewhat misleading, as it was easier for a pilot on the Eastern front to shoot down 100 planes than on the Western. Evidenced by the huge amount of German aces who are dead on that list, especially compared to other countries.

Something like how history was misleading would be fine with me. I could see a DLC for Air Combat. Has anyone noticed if air units gain experience yet? If not then I think a DLC might make some interesting improvements. Followed by Tank ACEs DLC, Ships, Subs, Camels, Elephants..... Keep the DLCs coming PDS and take my money. =)

 

[Greenboot]

Cant really say I spend much time studying sport statistics, It really doesnt matter anyway. Fact still stands, Axis fighter aces had ALOT higher amount of wins than the Allied dito.

Top Axis/German ace, Eric Hartman 352 aerial victories.
-A couple of hundred Axis aces before first Allied pilot.

Top Allied/Russian ace, Ivan Kozhedub witt 66 aerial victories.

I'm sure you know how terrible the Russian training was and the number of terrible planes they threw at experience better equipped German fighters. It would be watching North Korea throwing MiG-21s at F-22s, Eurofighters, Rafale, or Su-30MK fighters. It would be lambs to a slaughter.

 

[Loke]

I'm sure you know how terrible the Russian training was and the number of terrible planes they threw at experience better equipped German fighters. It would be watching North Korea throwing MiG-21s at F-22s, Eurofighters, Rafale, or Su-30MK fighters. It would be lambs to a slaughter.

I have no idea how terrible the Russian training was.
I am not updated on how terrible aircraft the Russians used.

I have linked to the Wikipedia source, you have not provided any links at all.

 

[Marfach]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_flying_aces

I would guess that roughly the top 100 air aces did not participate in the Korea war as they were German.

That is because you are not comparing like with like, most German aces earned their kills shooting down Russian planes. The British aces (and some German aces) earned their kills shooting down better pilots in better aircraft on the Western front.
Realistically, the whole point is mute after 1942 because British air power was advancing faster than German air power, the best period to look at is probably 1940-1941 before the introduction of griffon engine Spitfires and before Barbarossa inflated the Luftwaffe's kill counts.

 

[Loke]

That is because you are not comparing like with like, most German aces earned their kills shooting down Russian planes. The British aces (and some German aces) earned their kills shooting down better pilots in better aircraft on the Western front.
Realistically, the whole point is mute after 1942 because British air power was advancing faster than German air power, the best period to look at is probably 1940-1941 before the introduction of griffon engine Spitfires and before Barbarossa inflated the Luftwaffe's kill counts.

You know you are free to make such a list and Wikipedia will gladly have it.

 

[Marfach]

You know you are free to make such a list and Wikipedia will gladly have it.

I havent the time, but Werner Molders is a good example of a German ace from early in the war that fits the criteria.