Out of Control

[Vin]

1.5 %. Leave the OED or Webster on the shelf.

[Barrett]

BTW: I ran the numbers, and of the 800 some pilots listed in ATT, 315 "made ace" by WW II standards. More SE aces than Camel merchants.

[Lufbery]

Originally posted by Barrett@Jul 1 2004, 11:44 AM
[b] BTW: I ran the numbers, and of the 800 some pilots listed in ATT, 315 "made ace" by WW II standards. More SE aces than Camel merchants.

Of course, 'cause the Camel killed more British pilots than the Germans.

Regards,

[MikeW]

The most famous OOC that left a smoking hole in the ground that I can think of was Naval 10's Norman Miers Macgregor who claimed a Fokker Triplane as OOC - Kurt Wolff of J11 was killed.

On the other hand I can think of a good number of "destroyed", "broke up in the air", and "shot down in flames" conclusive claims that do not appear to correspond with any matching loss.


Mike

[Soderbaum]

Hi Graeme

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.

In this thread I actually tend to agree with Barret.. ...hm...

As the German Air Force actually lost more aircraft against the French Air Service...why should the British (if we follow the French standard) have more "so called" Aces then the French Air Service had real Aces..??


Gunnar

[Barrett]

Gunnar: that's most interesting, especially since (IIRC) the GAS was nearly always more heavily committed against the Brits than the French.

Hmmm...maybe Fonck wasn't such a braggart after all!

[R Pope]

Or maybe the French had a lot of pilots who got only four kills. Enough fours make up for quite a few fives.

[normanf]

Whatever one thinks about when talking about ooc's to destroyeds, please do no lose sight of the fact that in WW1 they decided upon a status quo, ie that ooc's would be counted in a pilot's score. We can all be clever today, but in the midst of the muck and bullets, they claimed and were credited with whatever was decided upon. What I always question however, is why so many pilots with all those probables got decorations for them. The answer is probably that the powers that be decided to award victory scores and therefore, medals. Although we can say that such and such a pilot only scored ooc's, some of the big aces had many more than 'five' ooc's in their final tally of claims.

[wulffo]

Throughout the times it has been found to be convenient to overstate kills for reasons of morale and propaganda. Hence there was every incentive to be lenient towards overstating.

Concerning aces that would not have been if it weren't for ooc's one should look at everyone that has fewer than 5 confirmed kills. Am sure that the list would increase most significantly.

And on a different note: are there any stats on what the percentage of survivers of getting shot down were per air service? Given the advent of chutes for the Germans the survival rate should be significantly higher and would explain some of the discrepancies between losses reported and kills claimed especially when, as it appears the Germans were focused on only reporting personel losses

[JG1Schorner]

Originally posted by wulffo@Jul 12 2004, 11:30 AM
[b] And on a different note: are there any stats on what the percentage of survivers of getting shot down were per air service? Given the advent of chutes for the Germans the survival rate should be significantly higher and would explain some of the discrepancies between losses reported and kills claimed especially when, as it appears the Germans were focused on only reporting personel losses

Even without chutes, actual German aircraft losses will greatly exceed reported losses. Many planes that were legitimately shot down did not result in the loss of crew (engine shot out and crash landed, etc.). This would be particularly true of the Germans given that they generally fought over their own lines.