Creating Aces

[RLWP]

A perennial theme here goes along the lines of "X was allowed victories without proper confirmation" or "Y was encouraged to put in claims to make him a greater Ace" or "Z overclaimed to become the best Ace".

In particular it is implied that certain pilots who had large scores became "famous" Aces. These pilots would then be of particular value for propaganda purposes. e.g. "Here we see a photograph of the famous pilot X who has killed ## enemy pilots"

The underlying assumption is that "famous" pilots were valuable for publicity purposes, for instance taking the public attention away from the War in the trenches.

My question is (at last), is this what happened? Did newspapers of the time carry articles on the famous Leutnant X or the famous Lieutenant Y?

Richard

p.s. I didn't dare use A,B or C or any actual number

[Billy_Bishop]

Oh why not? Come on!!! We all know everyone wants to attack Billy Bishop, Hermann Göring, or even Manfred von Richthofen.

Anyone of any authority has previously stated that British did not publicize their top pilots. As I understand it, this policy did not necessarily extend to members of the Commonwealth. Which I guess is why we have Canadian newspapers running stories on Billy Bishop, among others.

The other exception was of course, the London Gazette. Whenever anyone in the British military was awarded some honour or other, they were posted in the London Gazette.

As to how anyone else publicized their top pilots. I have no real info, only conjecture and insinuations. It does however, appear likely that the Germans and everyone else, did publicize their top pilots' exploits.

Did any of this "create" heros? I don't know. In my opinion, war creates heros as a by product. I don't think that anyone has to go to any extraordinary lengths to "create" one.

But, that's just my humble opinion.

VBR,

Al Lowe

[RLWP]

Ouch.

My point was not do we have papers running stories now, which we obviously do, but did we then have papers running stories? If not there would not appear to be any point in an organisation trying to create or encourage a national hero as there was no way anyone could know.

The posting in the London Gazette I understand to be a long standing procedure from before WW1.

Richard

[Vigilant]

In my opinion (and it can be no more than that) the answer to your question is 'Yes'.

I did a bit of research on this subject on my degree course and since this subject comes up quite often at the Aerodrome, I have typed up a bit of an essay at:

http://members.lycos.co.uk/Vigilant/ww1/aces.html

It is actually quite difficult to find out how much the public were exposed to 'ace propaganda' from looking at old newspapers because libraries tend to stock The Times and nothing else. As you may be aware, The Times was the stuffiest British newspaper there was and was read by the educated elite, not by the majority of ordinary people. If only more libraries had thought that The Daily Mail would be of as great interest to future generations!

Regards,

Vigilant

[MilesC]

I can't say anything about the major European newspapers as being mouthpieces for their military, however, in Germany pilots were elevated in the public mind by the issuing of "profile" cards by the Sanke company. This appears to be the fore-runner of American baseball cards (I don't suppose the Germans had bubblegum with the Sanke cards?). The Sanke cards covered most of the, even remotely famous, German scout pilots as well as various German and Allied aircraft.

Miles

[stephen]

Vig's article is an excellent and worthwhile read. Thanks!

I read somewhere that the story of Ball's accomplishments were first reported in a French paper, then picked up by the British press. In effect, the genie was let out of the bottle through a back door. Vigilant: I enjoyed your research. Thanks for sharing that with us.

>but did we then have papers running stories?

The NSW State Aviation School appears consistently in the Hawkesbury Gazette. Since old man Potts was the Dean of the Hawkesbury Ag College, I was hoping his two sons which served in 1 Sqn would appear in the Gazette, but I dont recall seing any articles. That doesnt mean there wasnt any, I may have missed it. I missed a couple on Marduel as well.

I havent gone through any of the Sydney or Melbourne papers yet.



cam

[RLWP]

Vigilant,

thank you for the article. This is the sort of research that I had in mind when I posed the question (but was too lazy to start in the first place).

Surely the other papers are stored somewhere in the UK. I know that currently copies of all publications are stored in several major libraries. Would the newspapers from 1914-1918 be there?

Richard

[Vigilant]

There are copyright libraries in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff that hold every publication ever published in the UK. I just don't have the time to travel and trawl through them. Not at the moment anyway...

Vig.