Were "out of control" victories officially acknowledged by the RAF after mid 1918.

Yes!! Don't be fooled because they did not always get into the communiques. There were too many of them and space was at a premium. There were, of course, too many ooc's in any event, and if all RAF pilots truly believed they all crashed, why didn't the RAF wipe out the German airforce many times over. It was a problem arising from always fighting over German territory. Norman Franks

During 1918 apparently about 40% of total RFC/RAF claims were OOCs. Consequently, many pilots listed as aces never destroyed an enemy aircraft.

Barrett

You really must control this youthful impulse for hperbole :D

Regardless of the year, I've identified only a dozen RFC/RNAS/RAF aces who claimed solely out of control victories, these being:

B P H de Roeper (5)
W J Gillespie (5)
F H Laurence (5)
C A Lewis (8)
N C Millman (6)
J T Morgan (5)
R H Mulock (5)
O J Orr (5)
H J Pratt (5)
R H Sloley (9 or 10)
N R Smuts (5)
F D Stevens (5)

Not that many, really. ;)

Graeme

I once did a quick read of the top British/Commonwealth aces and subtracted OOCs. If you subtract OOCs McCudden turns out to be the top British ace with something like 48 confirmed, mostly because he brought down alot of high fliying two seaters over British territory. No doubt about the victory when there is a smoking hole to look at. Bishop and Collishaw drop to the low 30s while Mannock is in the high 30s.

Playing with numbers to get an apples/apples comparison of victories is pretty well impossible. The British often fought over German lines so physical evidence of the victory just wasn't available to them. This is especially true later in the war as combats got larger, altitudes increased, and confusion reigned. The British allowed both OOC and shared victories, which further inflated individual victory counts when compared to their German counterparts. Some like to look for corresponding German losses, but this short changes the British as Germans did not generally record losses unless the pilot was killed. It is generally accepted that bringing down a plane without killing the pilot still counts.

What can be stated with some degree of accuracy is that the vast majority of OOCs claims were inaccurate. Speculation on my part, but I would be willing to guess that many were not even damaged. It was a common tactic of all sides to spin out of a fight when in difficulty.

To add to the confusion it should also be noted that many "confirmed victories" on all sides were false claims. Again, without access to wreckage, I would think that this would be more of an issue with the Allies than the Germans, but the Germans seem to be just as inaccurate when combat takes place over Allied lines.

Billy Bishop threads aside, it is generally conceded that the claims where honest and, to the best of the reporting pilot's knowledge, accurate. It's just that when you are a young man in the middle of a swirling, confused melee, fighting for your life, a bit of inaccuracy is to be expected :).

Another observation that I made was that by removing OOCs the distribution of British aces started to look alot more like Germany and France. Germany had only three pilots that scored more than 50 victories, France had only two. With OOCs in the mix the British had a whole bunch: Bishop, Mannock, Collishaw, McCudden, Beauchamp-Proctor, MacLaren, Fullard, Dallas, and Barker. Remove OOCs and suddenly the British scoring pattern looks more "normal".

Final note: none of the above is intended to belittle the efforts or accomplishments of British pilots. Even if all OOCs could be put aside these men still scored over 30 victories, nothing to sneeze at. I suspect that eliminating all OOCs is a bit too harsh, as some of these certainly did crash. I suspect that if OOCs were not allowed several of these victories would be confirmed while many would be rejected. The end result would be final tallies that were significantly less than what is generally repeated but probably more than (official victories - OOCs).

That is not to say that none of these pilots destroyed enemy aircraft. Accounts of dogfights record that a pilot might shoot at an enemy, see the bullets strike the aircraft or even the enemy pilot, the enemy aircraft falls away but our author is too engrossed in the battle to follow it down and his fellow pilots likewise too preoccupied to witness the victory.

Hi Vin

I totally agree.

However, the point was to quantify Barrett's statement that "many" pilots listed as aces didn't actually destroy an enemy aeroplane. The only way to come up with a number was to identify those pilots whose claims were of the "out of control" variety only. 12 out of 800-odd would not appear to merit the epithet "many", regardless of whether or not any of the enemy machines was destroyed.

Graeme

G'day Graeme

With blokes like you around, you have to be careful about what you post. My contribution was intended to support yours. Having read a few accounts of dogfights, I am sure that at least some OOC claims were really destroyeds. Mind you, there are others....

How many "many's" can dance on the head of a pin?

"Many" isn't percentages; "many" is more than a few. Twelve of anything is more than a few. The value of X (or "many") could be 12 million out of 800 million, but it's still "many."

Additionally, if we're gonna speculate on how many (that word again!) "OOC aces" may have actually have left a smoking hole in the ground, then how many (!) "aces" with some confirmed destroyed didn't ek-chually do the deed? :blink: