Aflying ace,fighter ace orair ace is amilitary aviator credited with shooting down a certain minimum number of enemy aircraft during aerial combat; the exact number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an ace varies, but is usually considered to be five or more.
The concept of the "ace" emerged in 1915 duringWorld War I, at the same time as aerialdogfighting. It was a propaganda term intended to provide the home front with a cult of the hero in what was otherwise awar of attrition. The individual actions of aces were widely reported and the image was disseminated of the ace as a chivalrous knight reminiscent of a bygone era.[1] For a brief early period when air-to-air combat was just being invented, the exceptionally skilled pilot could shape the battle in the skies. For most of the war, however, the image of the ace had little to do with the reality of air warfare, in which fighters fought in formation andair superiority depended heavily on the relative availability of resources.[2] The use of the term ace to describe these pilots began in World War I, when French newspapers describedAdolphe Pégoud, asl'As (the ace) after he became the first pilot to down five German aircraft. The British initially used the term "star-turns" (a show business term).[citation needed]
The successes of such German ace pilots asMax Immelmann andOswald Boelcke, and especiallyManfred von Richthofen, the most victorious fighter pilot of the First World War, were well-publicized for the benefit of civilian morale, and thePour le Mérite, Prussia's highest award for gallantry, became part of the uniform of a leading German ace. In theLuftstreitkräfte, thePour le Mérite was nicknamedDer blaue Max/The Blue Max, after Max Immelmann, who was the first pilot to receive this award. Initially, German aviators had to destroy eightAllied aircraft to receive this medal.[3] As the war progressed, the qualifications forPour le Mérite were raised,[3] but successful German fighter pilots continued to be hailed as national heroes for the remainder of the war.
The few aces among combat aviators have historically accounted for the majority of air-to-air victories in military history.[4]
World War I introduced the systematic use of true single-seat fighter aircraft, with enough speed and agility to catch and maintain contact with targets in the air, coupled with armament sufficiently powerful to destroy the targets. Aerial combat became a prominent feature with theFokker Scourge, in the last half of 1915. This was also the beginning of a long-standing trend in warfare, showing statistically that approximately five percent of combat pilots account for the majority of air-to-air victories.[4]
As theGerman fighter squadrons usually fought well within German lines, it was practicable to establish and maintain very strict guidelines for the official recognition of victory claims by German pilots. Shared victories were either credited to one of the pilots concerned or to the unit as a whole – the destruction of the aircraft had to be physically confirmed by locating its wreckage, or an independent witness to the destruction had to be found. Victories were also counted for aircraft forced down within German lines, as this usually resulted in the death or capture of the enemy aircrew.
Allied fighter pilots fought mostly in German-held airspace[5][6] and were often not in a position to confirm that an enemy aircraft had crashed, so these victories were frequently claimed as "driven down", "forced to land", or "out of control" (called "probables" in later wars). These victories were usually included in a pilot's totals and citations for decorations.[7]
The British high command considered the praise of fighter pilots to be detrimental to equally brave bombers and reconnaissance aircrew – so that the British air services did not publish official statistics on the successes of individuals. Nonetheless, some pilots did become famous through press coverage,[3] making the British system for the recognition of successful fighter pilots much more informal and somewhat inconsistent. One pilot,Arthur Gould Lee, described his own score in a letter to his wife as "Eleven, five by me solo — the rest shared", adding that he was "miles from being an ace".[8] This shows that hisNo. 46 Squadron RAF counted shared kills, but separately from "solo" ones—one of a number of factors that seems to have varied from unit to unit. Also evident is that Lee considered a higher figure than five kills to be necessary for "ace" status. Aviation historians credit him as an ace with two enemy aircraft destroyed and five driven down out of control, for a total of seven victories.[9]
Other Allied countries, such as France and Italy, fell somewhere in between the very strict German approach and the relatively casual British one. They usually demanded independent witnessing of the destruction of an aircraft, making confirmation of victories scored in enemy territory very difficult.[10] The Belgian crediting system sometimes included "out of control" to be counted as a victory.[11]
TheUnited States Army Air Service adopted French standards for evaluating victories, with two exceptions – during the summer 1918, while flying under the operational control of the British, the17th Aero Squadron and the 148th Aero Squadron used British standards.[10] American newsmen, in their correspondence to their papers, decided that five victories were the minimum needed to become an ace.[12]
While "ace" status was generally won only by fighter pilots, bombers and reconnaissance crews on both sides also destroyed some enemy aircraft, typically in defending themselves from attack. The most notable example of a non-pilot ace in World War I isCharles George Gass with 39 accredited aerial victories.[13]
Between the two world wars two conflicts produced flying aces, theSpanish Civil War and theSecond Sino-Japanese War.
TheSpanish aceJoaquín García Morato scored 40 victories for the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Part of the outside intervention in the war was the supply of "volunteer" foreign pilots to both sides. Russian and American aces joined the Republican air force, while the Nationalists included Germans and Italians.
TheSoviet Volunteer Group began operations in the Second Sino-Japanese War as early as December 2, 1937, resulting in 28 Soviet aces.[14] TheFlying Tigers were American military pilots who were recruitedsub rosa to aid theChinese Nationalists. They spent the summer and autumn of 1941 in transit to China, and did not begin flying combat missions until December 20, 1941.
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InWorld War II many air forces adopted the British practice of crediting fractional shares of aerial victories, resulting in fractions or decimal scores, such as11+1⁄2 or 26.83. Some U.S. commands also credited aircraft destroyed on the ground as equal to aerial victories. The Soviets distinguished between solo and group kills, as did the Japanese, though theImperial Japanese Navy stopped crediting individual victories (in favor of squadron tallies) in 1943.[citation needed]
TheSoviet Air Forces has the top Allied pilots in terms of aerial victories,Ivan Kozhedub credited with 66 victories andAlexander Pokryshkin scored 65 victories. It also claimed the only female aces of the war:Lydia Litvyak scored 12 victories andYekaterina Budanova achieved 11.[15] The highest scoring pilots from the Western allies against the German Luftwaffe wereJohnnie Johnson (RAF, 38 kills) andGabby Gabreski (USAAF, 28 kills in the air and 3 on the ground).[16] In the Pacific theaterRichard Bong became the top American fighter ace with 40 kills. In the Mediterranean theaterPat Pattle achieved at least 40 kills, mainly against Italian planes, and became the top fighter ace of theBritish Commonwealth in the war. Fighting on different sides, the French pilotPierre Le Gloan had the unusual distinction of shooting down four German, seven Italian and seven British aircraft, the latter while he was flying forVichy France inSyria.[citation needed]
The GermanLuftwaffe continued the tradition of "one pilot, one kill", and now referred to top scorers asExperten.[N 1] Some Luftwaffe pilots achieved very high scores, such asErich Hartmann (352 kills) orGerhard Barkhorn (301 kills).[18] There were 107 German pilots with more than 100 kills. Most of these were won against theSoviet Air Force.[19] The highest scoring fighter ace against Western allied forces wereHans-Joachim Marseille (158 kills)[20] andHeinz Bär (208 kills, of which 124 in the west). Notable are alsoHeinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, with 121 kills the highest-scoringnight-fighter ace, andWerner Mölders, the first pilot to claim more than 100 kills in the history ofaerial warfare.[16][21] Pilots of other Axis powers also achieved high scores, such asIlmari Juutilainen (Finnish Air Force, 94 kills),Constantin Cantacuzino (Romanian Air Force, 69 kills) orMato Dukovac (Croatian Air Force, 44 kills). The highest scoring Japanese fighter pilot wasTetsuzō Iwamoto, who achieved 216 kills.
A number of factors probably contributed to the very high totals of the top German aces. For a limited period (especially duringOperation Barbarossa), many Axis victories were over obsolescent aircraft and either poorly trained or inexperienced Allied pilots.[22] In addition, Luftwaffe pilots generally flew many more individualsorties (sometimes well over 1000) than their Allied counterparts. Moreover, they often kept flying combat missions until they were captured, incapacitated, or killed, while successful Allied pilots were usually either promoted to positions involving less combat flying or routinely rotated back to training bases to pass their valuable combat knowledge to younger pilots.[citation needed] An imbalance in the number of targets available also contributed to the apparently lower numbers on the Allied side, since thenumber of operational Luftwaffe fighters was normally well below 1,500, with the total aircraft number never exceeding 5,000, andthe total aircraft production of the Allies being nearly triple that of the other side. A difference in tactics might have been a factor as well;Erich Hartmann, for example, stated "See if there is a straggler or an uncertain pilot among the enemy... Shoot him down",[23] which would have been an efficient and relatively low-risk way of increasing the number of kills. At the same time, the Soviet 1943 "Instruction For Air Combat" stated that the first priority must be the enemy commander, which was a much riskier task, but one giving the highest return in case of a success.
TheKorean War of 1950–53 marked the transition frompiston-engined propeller driven aircraft to more modern jet aircraft. As such, it saw the world's first jet-vs-jet aces. The highest scoring ace of the war is considered to be the Soviet pilotNikolai Sutyagin who claimed 22 kills.
TheVietnam People's Air Force had begun development of its modern air-forces, primarily trained by Czechoslovak and Soviet trainers since 1956.[24] The outbreak of the largest sustained bombardment campaign in history prompted rapid deployment of the nascent air-force, and the first engagement of the war was in April 1965 atThanh Hóa Bridge which saw relatively outdated subsonicMiG-17 units thrown against technically superiorF-105 Thunderchief andF-8 Crusader, damaging 1 F-8 and killing two F-105 jets.[25] The MiG-17 generally did not have sophisticated radars and missiles and relied on dog-fighting and maneuverability to score kills on US aircraft.[24] Since US aircraft heavily outnumbered North Vietnamese ones, the Warsaw Pact and others had begun arming North Vietnam withMiG-21 jets.[24] The VPAF had adopted a strategy of "guerrilla warfare in the sky" utilizing quick hit-and-run attacks against US targets, continually flying low and forcing faster, more heavily armed US jets to engage in dog-fighting where the MiG-17 and MiG-21 had superior maneuverability.[26] The VPAF had carried out the first air-raid on US ships since WW2, with two aces includingNguyễn Văn Bảy attacking US ships during theBattle of Đồng Hới in 1972. Quite often air-to-air losses of US fighter jets were re-attributed tosurface-to-air missiles, as it was considered "less embarrassing".[27] By the war's end, the US had nevertheless confirmed 249 air-to-air US aircraft losses[28] while the figures for North Vietnam are disputed, ranging from 195 North Vietnamese aircraft from US claims[29] to 131 from Soviet, North Vietnamese and allied records.[30]
American air-to-air combat during the Vietnam War generally matched intruding United Statesfighter-bombers against radar-directed integrated North Vietnamese air defense systems. AmericanF-4 Phantom II, F-8 Crusader and F-105 fighter crews usually had to contend withsurface-to-air missiles,anti-aircraft artillery, and machine gun fire before opposing fighters attacked them.[citation needed] The long-running conflict produced 22 aces: 17 North Vietnamese pilots, two American pilots, three American weapon systems officers or WSOs (WSO is the USAF designation, one of the three was actually a US Naval aviator, with an equivalent job, but using the USN designation of Radar Intercept Officer or RIO).[31]
The series of wars and conflicts between Israel and its neighbors began with Israeli independence in 1948 and continued for over three decades.
Brig. GeneralJalil Zandi (1951–2001) was an acefighter pilot in theIslamic Republic of Iran Air Force, serving for the full duration of theIran–Iraq War. His record of eight confirmed and three probable[32] victories against Iraqi combat aircraft qualifies him as an ace and the most successful pilot of that conflict and the most successfulGrumman F-14 Tomcat pilot worldwide.[33][34][35][36][37]
Brig. GeneralShahram Rostami was another Iranian ace. He was also an F-14 pilot. He had six confirmed kills. His victories include oneMiG-21, twoMiG-25s, and threeMirage F1s.[38]
ColonelMohammed Rayyan was an Iraqi ace fighter pilot who shot down 10 Iranian aircraft, mostlyF-4 Phantoms during the war.[39]
Air CommodoreMuhammad Mahmood Alam was an ace fighter pilot in thePakistan Air Force. During theIndo-Pakistani War of 1965, Alam claimed to have downed five aircraft in a single sortie on 7 September 1965 with four downed in less than a minute, establishing a world record. These claims, however, have been widely contested by Indian Air Force officials.[40][41][42][43]
On 13 October 2022, the Ukrainian government claims that Ukrainian pilotVadym Voroshylov shot down 5Shahed 136 drones before being forced to eject from hisMiG-29 aircraft after it was hit by debris from the last Shahed-136 that had shot down. Voroshylov had shot down two Russian cruise missiles the day prior.[44][45]
According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, during the fighting in Ukraine, Lieutenant ColonelIlya Sizov "destroyed 12 Ukrainian aircraft (3Su-24 aircraft, 3Su-27 aircraft, 3MiG-29 aircraft, 2Mi-24 helicopters, 1Mi-14 helicopter) and twoBuk-M1 anti-aircraft missile complexes.[46]
In February 2024, it was reported that Captain Earl Ehrhart V of theUnited States Marine Corps had shot down sevenHouthi drones while piloting anAV-8B Harrier II ground-attack aircraft from the amphibious assault shipUSSBataan.[47]
Realistic assessment of enemy casualties is important forintelligence purposes, so most air forces expend considerable effort to ensure accuracy in victory claims.[citation needed] In World War II, the aircraftgun camera came into general usage by the Luftwaffe as well as the RAF and USAAF, partly in hope of alleviating inaccurate victory claims.[citation needed]
In World War I thestandards for confirmation of aerial victories were developed. The most strict were the German and French ones which required both the existence of traceable wrecks or observations of independent observers. In contrast to this, the British system also accepted single claims of the pilots and deeds such as enemy planes "out of control", "driven down" and "forced to land".[48] Aerial victories were also divided among different pilots.[citation needed] This led to vast overclaims on the British and partially on the US American side. Some air forces, such as the USAAF, also included kills on the ground as victories.[citation needed]
The most accurate figures usually belong to the air arm fighting over its own territory, where many wrecks can be located, and even identified, and where shot down enemy aircrews are either killed or captured. It is for this reason that at least 76 of the 80 aircraft credited toManfred von Richthofen can be tied to known British losses.[49] The GermanJagdstaffeln flew defensively, on their own side of the lines, in part due to GeneralHugh Trenchard's policy of offensive patrol.[citation needed]
In World War II overclaims were a common problem. Nearly 50% ofRoyal Air Force (RAF) victories in theBattle of Britain, for instance, do not tally statistically with recorded German losses; but at least some of this apparent over-claiming can be tallied with known wrecks, and German aircrew known to have been in BritishPoW camps.[50] An overclaim of about 2-3[clarification needed] was common on all sides,[51][52][53][54] and Soviet overclaims were sometimes higher.[55][56] The claims of the Luftwaffe pilots are considered as mostly reasonable and more accurate than those according to the British and American system.[57][58]
To quote an extreme example, in theKorean War, both the U.S. and Communist air arms claimed a 10-to-1 victory/loss ratio.[59][60]
While aces are generally thought of exclusively as fighter pilots, some have accorded this status to gunners on bombers orreconnaissance aircraft,observers in two-seater fighters such as the earlyBristol F.2b, andnavigators/weapons officers in jet aircraft such as theMcDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. Because pilots often teamed with different air crew members, an observer or gunner might be an ace while his pilot is not, or vice versa. Observer aces constitute a sizable minority in many lists.
In World War I, the observerGottfried Ehmann of the GermanLuftstreitkräfte was credited with 12 kills,[61][62] for which he was awarded the GoldenMilitary Merit Cross. In the Royal Flying Corps the observerCharles George Gass tallied 39 victories, of which 5 were actually confirmed.[63] The spread was caused by the lavish British system of aerial victory confirmation.[48]
In World War II,United States Army Air Forces S/Sgt. Michael Arooth, aBoeing B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner serving in the379th Bombardment Group, was credited with 19 kills[64][65] and theConsolidated B-24 Liberator gunner Arthur J. Benko (374th Bombardment Squadron) with 16 kills. The Royal Air Force's leading bomber gunner,Wallace McIntosh, was credited with eight kills while serving as a rear turret gunner onAvro Lancasters, including three on one mission.Flight Sergeant F. J. Barker contributed to 12 victories while flying as a gunner in aBoulton Paul Defiant turret-equipped fighter piloted by Flight SergeantE. R. Thorne.[66][67] On the German side, Erwin Hentschel, theJunkers Ju 87 rear gunner of Luftwaffe pilot and anti-tank aceHans-Ulrich Rudel, had 7 confirmed kills. The crew of the bomber pilot Otto Köhnke fromKampfgeschwader 3 is credited with the destruction of 11 enemy fighters (6 French, 1 British, 4 Soviet).
With the advent of more advanced technology, a third category of ace appeared.Charles B. DeBellevue became not only the first U.S. Air Forceweapon systems officer (WSO) to become an ace but also the top American ace of theVietnam War, with six victories.[68] Close behind with five were fellow WSOJeffrey Feinstein[69] andRadar Intercept OfficerWilliam P. Driscoll.[70]
The first military aviators to score five or more victories on the same date, thus each becoming an "ace in a day", were pilotJulius Arigi and observer/gunnerJohann Lasi of theAustro-Hungarian air force, on August 22, 1916, when they downed five Italian aircraft.[71] The feat was repeated five more times during World War I.[72][73][74]
Becoming an ace in a day became relatively common during World War II. A total of 68 U.S. pilots (43Army Air Forces, 18Navy, and sevenMarine Corps pilots) were credited with the feat, including legendary test pilotChuck Yeager.
In theSoviet offensive of 1944 in theKarelian Isthmus, Finnish pilotHans Wind shot down 30Soviet aircraft in 12 days with hisBf 109 G. In doing so, he obtained "ace in a day" status three times.
During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Pakistani pilotMuhammad Mahmood Alam claimed to have downed five aircraft in a single sortie on 7 September 1965 with four downed in less than a minute, establishing a world record. According to some sources Alam is the only ace-in-a-day achiever in the jet age. These claims, however, have been contested by theIndian Air Force.[40][41][42][43]
Mohammed Mahmood Alam claimed five victories against Indian Air Force Hawker Hunters, four of them in less than one minute! Alam, who ended the conflict with 9 kills, became history's only jet "ace-in-a-day."
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