Hi,
Yeah, I already saw this on the web. Here we go again, with statisticians reaching conclusions with incomplete data and knowledge of the air war. How could these two study the "records of all German fighter pilots of the First World War" when such records don't exist? Where did they get these records? Most of the few available war diaries, pilot's diaries etc show that even the very successful aces engaged in many fruitless flights and inconclusive combats - it was the nature of the beast. As SCMc says, the "average" fighter pilot scored no victories at all. How can they say the "average" German fighter pilots' rate of success as 80 percent? 80 percent of what? There are no records available which show every flight, nor every combat, engaged in by every German fighter pilot.
I would bet that these two studied the data avilable in
Above the Lines and maybe
The Jasta Pilots from Grub Street. As great as those books are, the first represents only the most successful German pilots, and neither can tell the entire story.
Yes, there was always luck involved in a fighter pilot's success - but to suggest that MvR and other high-scoring aces were merely luckier than everybody else is pretty absurd.
Gee, I hope these two researchers study the records of British fighter pilots next, with all of their OOCs and 'moral victories'. Heaven help us with those results.
Greg VanWyngarden