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80-501: Leutnant Otto Parschau (11 November 1890 – 21 July 1916) was a German World War I flying ace and recipient of the Pour le Mérite , Royal House Order of Hohenzollern , and Iron Cross , First Class. He was noted as one of the pre-eminent aces on the Fokker Eindecker . He was one of the world's first flying aces. Parschau and Leutnant Kurt Wintgens were the pilots chosen to fly

160-467: A Parabellum MG 14 machine gun for its armament. This airplane functioned as the prototype Fokker Eindecker for Parschau's use and combat evaluation. Because Parschau was recognised as an experienced and proficient pilot, he was selected to go to Feldflieger Abteilung 62 (FFA 62) at Douai as an instructor on monoplanes. Feldflieger Abteilung ("Field Flying Company") was the title of the pioneering German field aviation units. The FFAs were organized under

240-528: A common problem. Nearly 50% of Royal Air Force (RAF) victories in the Battle 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 British PoW camps. An overclaim of about 2-3 was common on all sides, and Soviet overclaims were sometimes higher. The claims of

320-530: A crash landing. The unarmed Immelmann landed nearby, and approached Reid; they shook hands and Immelmann said to the British pilot "You are my prisoner" and pulled Reid out of the wreckage and rendered first aid. Immelmann became one of the first German fighter pilots, quickly building an impressive score of air victories. During September, three more victories followed, and then in October he became solely responsible for

400-570: A gunner in a Boulton Paul Defiant turret-equipped fighter piloted by Flight Sergeant E. R. Thorne . On the German side, Erwin Hentschel, the Junkers Ju 87 rear gunner of Luftwaffe pilot and anti-tank ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel , had 7 confirmed kills. The crew of the bomber pilot Otto Köhnke from Kampfgeschwader 3 is credited with the destruction of 11 enemy fighters (6 French, 1 British, 4 Soviet). With

480-520: A hawk, I dived ... and fired my machine gun. For a moment, I believed I would fly right into him. I had fired about 60 shots when my gun jammed. That was awkward, for to clear the jam I needed both hands – I had to fly completely without hands ... Lieutenant William Reid fought back valiantly, flying with his left hand and firing a pistol with his right. Nonetheless, the 450 bullets fired at him took their effect; Reid suffered four wounds in his left arm, and his airplane's engine quit, causing

560-507: A letter to his wife as "Eleven, five by me solo — the rest shared", adding that he was "miles from being an ace". This shows that his No. 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

640-494: A minute, establishing a world record. These claims, however, have been widely contested by the Indian Air Force . Max Immelmann Max Immelmann (21 September 1890 – 18 June 1916) PLM was the first German World War I flying ace . He was a pioneer in fighter aviation and is often mistakenly credited with the first aerial victory using a synchronized gun , which was in fact achieved on 1 July 1915 by

720-786: A pilot in Johannisthal , Darmstadt , and in Hanover and received his licence on 4 July 1913. Upon the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 Parschau was already serving with the Luftstreitkräfte , and soon found himself flying two-seaters in operations on the Champagne front and then in Flanders and Alsace-Lorraine before being posted to West Prussia and Galicia , on the Eastern Front . Parschau

800-537: A production Fokker E.I for his own use before the end of July 1915. It was with the E.13/15 aircraft, armed with the synchronized lMG 08 Spandau machine gun , that Immelmann gained his first confirmed air victory of the war on 1 August 1915, a fortnight after Leutnant Kurt Wintgens obtained the very first confirmed German aerial victory on 15 July 1915 with his own Fokker M.5K/MG production prototype E.5/15 Eindecker, one of five built, following two unconfirmed ones on 1 and 4 July, all before Immelmann: Like

880-512: A prominent feature with the Fokker 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. As the German fighter squadrons usually fought well within German lines, it was practicable to establish and maintain very strict guidelines for

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960-430: A propeller could have shaken the fragile craft to pieces. At 2,000 metres, the tail was seen to break away from the rest of Immelmann's Fokker. The wings detached or folded, and what remained of the fuselage fell straight down. Immelmann’s body was recovered by the German 6 Armee from the twisted wreckage, lying lifeless over what was left of the surprisingly intact Oberursel engine, sometimes cited as under it. His body

1040-425: A string of six victories over enemy airplanes between 11 October 1915 and 2 July 1916 as part of the Fokker Scourge . On 3 July 1916, he shot down an enemy observation balloon . In July 1916 he transferred to FFA 32, gaining his 8th victory on 9 July 1916. He was awarded the Pour le Merite the following day. On the 14th, AKN was severed from FFA 32 and Parschau was appointed to its command. On 21 July 1916 Parschau

1120-475: A suspicion of possible "theft to order". The present-day Luftwaffe has dubbed Squadron AG-51 the "Immelmann Squadron" in his honour. [REDACTED]   Kingdom of Saxony [REDACTED]   Kingdom of Prussia / [REDACTED]   German Empire Miscellaneous German Other Immelmann will forever be associated with the Fokker Eindecker, Germany's first fighter aircraft , and

1200-415: A total of seven victories. 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. The Belgian crediting system sometimes included "out of control" to be counted as

1280-435: A victory. The United 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, the 17th Aero Squadron and the 148th Aero Squadron used British standards. American newsmen, in their correspondence to their papers, decided that five victories were the minimum needed to become an ace. While "ace" status

1360-467: Is a straggler or an uncertain pilot among the enemy... Shoot him down", 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. The Korean War of 1950–53 marked

1440-588: 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). The series of wars and conflicts between Israel and its neighbors began with Israeli independence in 1948 and continued for over three decades. Brig. General Jalil Zandi (1951–2001) was an ace fighter pilot in the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force , serving for

1520-497: The 379th Bombardment Group , was credited with 19 kills and the Consolidated 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 on Avro Lancasters , including three on one mission. Flight Sergeant F. J. Barker contributed to 12 victories while flying as

1600-509: The Battle of Đồng Hới in 1972. Quite often air-to-air losses of US fighter jets were re-attributed to surface-to-air missiles , as it was considered "less embarrassing". By the war's end, the US had nevertheless confirmed 249 air-to-air US aircraft losses while the figures for North Vietnam are disputed, ranging from 195 North Vietnamese aircraft from US claims to 131 from Soviet, North Vietnamese and allied records. American air-to-air combat during

1680-639: The Champagne front during October and November 1914. Following this were periods in Flanders and Alsace-Lorraine before Parschau was posted first to West Prussia and then on to Galicia on the Eastern Front. His travels were marked on the Fokker's fuselage. In late May 1915, this airplane was the first one to be fitted with a workable synchronization gear : the Fokker Stangensteuerung synchronizer, along with

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1760-629: The German Army at the outbreak of hostilities. The airplane was painted in a shade of green that was the same as that used by von Buttlar's previous Marburg -based Jäger Regiment 11. Parschau had served with the same, Brieftauben-Abteilung Ostende unit , abbreviated as BAO in German military communications of the time, in Belgium as Oberleutnant von Buttlar did in November 1914, where the two German officers could have first made contact. As A.16/15 still bore

1840-608: The L.V.G. two-seaters with which his units were equipped, but never with any success. On 3 June 1915, he was shot down by a French pilot, but managed to land safely behind German lines. Immelmann was decorated with the Iron Cross , Second Class, for preserving his aircraft. Two very early examples of the Fokker Eindecker fighters were delivered to the unit, one Fokker M.5 K/MG production prototype numbered E.3/15 for Oswald Boelcke 's use, with Immelmann later in July receiving E.13/15 as

1920-648: The Second Sino-Japanese War . The Spanish ace Joaquín 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. The Soviet Volunteer Group began operations in

2000-772: The Soviet Air Force . The highest scoring fighter ace against Western allied forces were Hans-Joachim Marseille (158 kills) and Heinz Bär (208 kills, of which 124 in the west). Notable are also Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer , with 121 kills the highest-scoring night-fighter ace, and Werner Mölders , the first pilot to claim more than 100 kills in the history of aerial warfare . Pilots of other Axis powers also achieved high scores, such as Ilmari Juutilainen ( Finnish Air Force , 94 kills), Constantin Cantacuzino ( Romanian Air Force , 69 kills) or Mato Dukovac ( Croatian Air Force , 44 kills). The highest scoring Japanese fighter pilot

2080-414: The " ace " emerged in 1915 during World War I , at the same time as aerial dogfighting . It was a propaganda term intended to provide the home front with a cult of the hero in what was otherwise a war 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. For a brief early period when air-to-air combat

2160-521: 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". Aerial victories were also divided among different pilots. 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. The most accurate figures usually belong to

2240-691: The British with shooting Immelmann down. On the German side, many had seen Immelmann as invincible and could not conceive the notion that he had fallen to enemy fire. Meanwhile, British authorities awarded McCubbin the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Service Medal and sergeant's stripes for Waller. The German Air Service at the time said the loss was due to friendly anti-aircraft fire. Others, including Immelmann's brother, believed his aircraft's gun synchronisation , designed to enable his machine gun to fire between

2320-603: The Fliegertruppe. By October 1916, the Fliegertruppe had evolved into the Luftstreitkräfte , the air service of the German army. (The German navy had their own air service, the Marine-Fliegerabteilung .) Amongst Parschau's students at FFA 62 were the notable pioneer German flying aces, Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke . Despite his earlier complaints of his Parabellum machine gun jamming , he managed to reel off

2400-609: The German ace Kurt Wintgens . Immelmann was the first aviator to receive the Pour le Mérite , colloquially known as the "Blue Max" in his honour, being awarded it at the same time as Oswald Boelcke . His name has become attached to a common flying tactic, the Immelmann turn , and remains a byword in aviation. He is credited with 15 aerial victories. Max Immelmann was born on 21 September 1890, in Dresden , to an industrialist father who died when Max

2480-466: The German ace began an Immelmann turn , McCubbin and Waller descended from a greater altitude and opened fire, shooting down Immelmann. Waller pointed out later that the British bullets could have hit Immelmann's propeller. Damage to the propeller resulting in the loss of one blade could have been the primary cause of the structural failure, evident in accounts of the crash of his aircraft. The resultant vibration of an engine at full throttle spinning half

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2560-561: The Luftwaffe pilots are considered as mostly reasonable and more accurate than those according to the British and American system. To quote an extreme example, in the Korean War , both the U.S. and Communist air arms claimed a 10-to-1 victory/loss ratio. While aces are generally thought of exclusively as fighter pilots, some have accorded this status to gunners on bombers or reconnaissance aircraft , observers in two-seater fighters such as

2640-714: The Second Sino-Japanese War as early as December 2, 1937, resulting in 28 Soviet aces. The Flying Tigers were American military pilots who recruited sub rosa to aid the Chinese Nationalists . They spent the summer and autumn of 1941 in transit to China, and did not begin flying combat missions until December 20, 1941. In World War II many air forces adopted the British practice of crediting fractional shares of aerial victories, resulting in fractions or decimal scores, such as 11 + 1 ⁄ 2 or 26.83. Some U.S. commands also credited aircraft destroyed on

2720-857: The Ukrainian government claims that Ukrainian pilot Vadym Voroshylov shot down 5 Shahed 136 drones before being forced to eject from his MiG-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. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, during the fighting in Ukraine, Lieutenant Colonel Ilya Sizov "destroyed 12 Ukrainian aircraft (3 Su-24 aircraft, 3 Su-27 aircraft, 3 MiG-29 aircraft, 2 Mi-24 helicopters, 1 Mi-14 helicopter) and two Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile complexes. In February 2024, it

2800-555: The Vietnam War generally matched intruding United States fighter-bombers against radar-directed integrated North Vietnamese air defense systems. American F-4 Phantom II , F-8 Crusader and F-105 fighter crews usually had to contend with surface-to-air missiles , anti-aircraft artillery , and machine gun fire before opposing fighters attacked them. The long-running conflict produced 22 aces: 17 North Vietnamese pilots, two American pilots, three American weapon systems officers or WSOs (WSO

2880-593: The Warsaw Pact and others had begun arming North Vietnam with MiG-21 jets. 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. The VPAF had carried out the first air-raid on US ships since WW2, with two aces including Nguyễn Văn Bảy attacking US ships during

2960-491: The advent of more advanced technology, a third category of ace appeared. Charles B. DeBellevue became not only the first U.S. Air Force weapon systems officer (WSO) to become an ace but also the top American ace of the Vietnam War , with six victories. Close behind with five were fellow WSO Jeffrey Feinstein and Radar Intercept Officer William P. Driscoll . The first military aviators to score five or more victories on

3040-484: 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 to Manfred von Richthofen can be tied to known British losses. The German Jagdstaffeln flew defensively, on their own side of the lines, in part due to General Hugh Trenchard 's policy of offensive patrol. In World War II overclaims were

3120-535: The air defense of the city of Lille. Immelmann became known as The Eagle of Lille ( Der Adler von Lille ). Immelmann flirted with the position of Germany's leading ace, trading that spot off with Oswald Boelcke , another pioneer ace. Having come second to Boelcke for his sixth victory, he was second to be awarded the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern for this feat. On 15 December, Immelmann shot down his seventh British plane and moved into an unchallenged lead in

3200-456: The aircraft gun camera came into general usage by the Luftwaffe as well as the RAF and USAAF, partly in hope of alleviating inaccurate victory claims. In World War I the standards 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,

3280-482: The competition to be Germany's leading ace. Immelmann was the first pilot to be awarded the Pour le Mérite , Germany's highest military honour, receiving it on the day of his eighth win, 12 January 1916. The medal became unofficially known as the "Blue Max" in the German Air Service in honour of Immelmann. His medal was presented by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 12 January 1916. Oswald Boelcke received his medal at

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3360-504: The death or capture of the enemy aircrew. Allied fighter pilots fought mostly in German-held airspace 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. The British high command considered

3440-549: The early Bristol F.2b , and navigators/weapons officers in jet aircraft such as the McDonnell 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 observer Gottfried Ehmann of the German Luftstreitkräfte

3520-623: The feat, including legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager . In the Soviet offensive of 1944 in the Karelian Isthmus , Finnish pilot Hans Wind shot down 30 Soviet aircraft in 12 days with his Bf 109 G . In doing so, he obtained "ace in a day" status three times. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Pakistani pilot Muhammad Mahmood Alam claimed to have downed five aircraft in a single sortie on 7 September 1965 with four downed in less than

3600-497: The first pilot to down five German aircraft. The British initially used the term "star-turns" (a show business term). The successes of such German ace pilots as Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke , and especially Manfred von Richthofen , the most victorious fighter pilot of the First World War, were well-publicized for the benefit of civilian morale, and the Pour le Mérite , Prussia's highest award for gallantry, became part of

3680-424: The first such aircraft to be armed with a machine gun synchronised to fire forward, through the propeller arc. Immelmann, along with Oswald Boelcke and other pilots, was one of the main exponents of the Fokker Eindecker, resulting in the Fokker Scourge which inflicted heavy losses upon British and French aircrews during 1915. Initially, Immelmann shared the same E.3/15 machine with Oswald Boelcke, but late in

3760-542: The full duration of the Iran–Iraq War . His record of eight confirmed and three probable victories against Iraqi combat aircraft qualifies him as an ace and the most successful pilot of that conflict and the most successful Grumman F-14 Tomcat pilot worldwide. Brig. General Shahram Rostami was another Iranian ace. He was also an F-14 pilot. He had six confirmed kills. His victories include one MiG-21 , two MiG-25s , and three Mirage F1s . Colonel Mohammed Rayyan

3840-606: The green color of von Buttlar's old unit, the aircraft became distinctive as Parschau's 'Green Machine', right from the outbreak of World War I. Parschau flew this machine on a roving commission for nearly a year, serving with FFAs 22 and 42 and the aforementioned "BAO" unit, which was actually a group of four FFA units operating as one for the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL), the World War I German Army's High Command office. In this period, Parschau flew his distinctive machine on

3920-537: The ground as equal to aerial victories. The Soviets distinguished between solo and group kills, as did the Japanese, though the Imperial Japanese Navy stopped crediting individual victories (in favor of squadron tallies) in 1943. The Soviet Air Forces has the top Allied pilots in terms of aerial victories, Ivan Kozhedub credited with 66 victories and Alexander Pokryshkin scored 65 victories. It also claimed

4000-612: 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 at Thanh Hóa Bridge which saw relatively outdated subsonic MiG-17 units thrown against technically superior F-105 Thunderchief and F-8 Crusader , damaging 1 F-8 and killing two F-105 jets. The MiG-17 generally did not have sophisticated radars and missiles and relied on dog-fighting and maneuverability to score kills on US aircraft. Since US aircraft heavily outnumbered North Vietnamese ones,

4080-550: The lines near Arras , with the intent of photographing the German infantry and artillery positions within the area, when Immelmann's flight intercepted them. After a long-running fight, scattering the participants over an area of some 80 square kilometres (30 sq mi), Immelmann brought down one of the enemy aircraft, wounding both the pilot and observer. This was his 16th victory claim, though it went unconfirmed. At 21:45 that same evening, Immelmann in Fokker E.III, serial 246/16 encountered No. 25 Squadron again, this time near

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4160-482: The night of Sunday 31 January 2021, Max Immelmann's memorial grave in Tolkewitz was robbed and desecrated. The Pöppelmann grave figure "Eagle of Lille", weighing around 100 kilograms, and approximately 180 centimetres in height, was dismantled and taken away by two men using a handcart to transport it to a pick-up truck parked nearby. A local resident observed the robbery and informed the police, who are also investigating

4240-540: The number of targets available also contributed to the apparently lower numbers on the Allied side, since the number of operational Luftwaffe fighters was normally well below 1,500, with the total aircraft number never exceeding 5,000, and the 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

4320-410: 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

4400-719: The only female aces of the war: Lydia Litvyak scored 12 victories and Yekaterina Budanova achieved 11. The highest scoring pilots from the Western allies against the German Luftwaffe were Johnnie Johnson ( RAF , 38 kills) and Gabby Gabreski ( USAAF , 28 kills in the air and 3 on the ground). In the Pacific theater Richard Bong became the top American fighter ace with 40 kills. In the Mediterranean theater Pat Pattle achieved at least 40 kills, mainly against Italian planes, and became

4480-450: 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, 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

4560-569: The prototype of the revolutionary Fokker Eindecker fighter plane with a machine gun synchronized to fire safely through its propeller arc via use of a gun synchronizer . Parschau was born in Klausen (now Klutznick, Poland), in the Allenstein district of East Prussia . He became a commissioned officer a year after having joined the Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 151 in 1910. Parschau was trained as

4640-414: 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. 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

4720-525: The same date, thus each becoming an "ace in a day", were pilot Julius Arigi and observer/gunner Johann Lasi of the Austro-Hungarian air force, on August 22, 1916, when they downed five Italian aircraft. The feat was repeated five more times during World War I. Becoming an ace in a day became relatively common during World War II. A total of 68 U.S. pilots (43 Army Air Forces , 18 Navy , and seven Marine Corps pilots) were credited with

4800-551: The same time. Boelcke scored again two days later. Immelmann would chase him in the ace race for the next four months, drawing even on 13 March at 11 each, losing the lead on 19 March, regaining it on Easter Sunday (23 April) 14 to 13, losing it again forever on 1 May. It was about this time, on 25 April, that Immelmann received a salutary lesson in the improvement of British aircraft. As the German ace described his attack on two Airco DH.2s , "The two worked splendidly together ... and put 11 shots into my machine. The petrol tank,

4880-411: The struts on the fuselage, the undercarriage and the propeller were hit ... It was not a nice business." On 31 May, Immelmann, Max von Mulzer , and another German pilot attacked a formation of seven British aircraft. Immelmann was flying a two-gun Fokker E.IV , and when he opened fire, the synchronizing gear malfunctioned. A stream of bullets cut off the tip of a propeller blade. The thrashing of

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4960-450: The summer of 1915 would receive his own machine, bearing the IdFlieg serial number E.13/15 on its fuselage. Both these E.3/15 machine earlier shared with Boelcke, and his own E.13/15 aircraft, both used to secure Immelmann's first five victories between them each had a seven-cylinder 80 horsepower Oberursel U.0 rotary engine for their power. According to Immelmann, the latter E.13/15 aircraft

5040-777: The top fighter ace of the British Commonwealth in the war. Fighting on different sides, the French pilot Pierre Le Gloan had the unusual distinction of shooting down four German, seven Italian and seven British aircraft, the latter while he was flying for Vichy France in Syria . The German Luftwaffe continued the tradition of "one pilot, one kill", and now referred to top scorers as Experten . Some Luftwaffe pilots achieved very high scores, such as Erich Hartmann (352 kills) or Gerhard Barkhorn (301 kills). There were 107 German pilots with more than 100 kills. Most of these were won against

5120-421: The transition from piston-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 pilot Nikolai Sutyagin who claimed 22 kills. The Vietnam People's Air Force had begun development of its modern air-forces, primarily trained by Czechoslovak and Soviet trainers since 1956. The outbreak of

5200-483: The two suspects in connection with other thefts. The public prosecutor's office in Dresden, which brought charges against the alleged perpetrators, estimated the value of the grave figure at around 50,000 euros. After restoration the figure was returned to Immelmann's grave. A number of historically significant First World War artefacts have been stolen from the graves of soldiers in the Tolkewitz cemetery during 2021, with

5280-460: The unbalanced air screw nearly shook the aircraft's twin-row Oberursel U.III engine loose from its mounts before he could cut the ignition and glide to a dead-stick landing. In the late afternoon of 18 June 1916, Immelmann led a flight of four Fokker E.III Eindeckers in search of a flight of eight F.E.2b fighter/reconnaissance aircraft of 25 Squadron Royal Flying Corps over Sallaumines in northern France. The British flight had just crossed

5360-448: The uniform of a leading German ace. In the Luftstreitkräfte , the Pour le Mérite was nicknamed Der blaue Max /The Blue Max, after Max Immelmann, who was the first pilot to receive this award. Initially, German aviators had to destroy eight Allied aircraft to receive this medal. As the war progressed, the qualifications for Pour le Mérite were raised, but successful German fighter pilots continued to be hailed as national heroes for

5440-399: The village of Lens . Immediately, he got off a burst, which hit RFC Lt. J. R. B. Savage, pilot of F.E.2b pusher serial 4909, mortally wounding him. This was his 17th victory claim, though Max Mulzer was later credited with the victory. The second aircraft he closed on was piloted by Second Lieutenant G. R. McCubbin , with Corporal J. H. Waller as gunner/observer. McCubbin was credited by

5520-429: The whirling propeller blades without damaging them, had malfunctioned with catastrophic results. Early versions of such gears frequently malfunctioned in this way and this had happened to Immelmann twice before, while testing two- and three-machine gun installations. On each occasion, he had been able to land safely. McCubbin, in a 1935 interview, said that immediately after Immelmann shot down McCubbin's squadron-mate,

5600-771: Was Tetsuzō 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 during Operation Barbarossa ), many Axis victories were over obsolescent aircraft and either poorly trained or inexperienced Allied pilots. In addition, Luftwaffe pilots generally flew many more individual sorties (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. An imbalance in

5680-616: Was an Iraqi ace fighter pilot who shot down 10 Iranian aircraft, mostly F-4 Phantoms during the war. Air Commodore Muhammad Mahmood Alam was an ace fighter pilot in the Pakistan Air Force . During the Indo-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. On 13 October 2022,

5760-551: Was assigned the Fokker A.III aircraft bearing both the Fokker factory serial number 216 and the IdFlieg military serial number of A.16/15 . This airplane had previously been flown by Oberleutnant Waldemar von Buttlar. This unarmed monoplane had been privately purchased in 1913 by von Buttlar. It was requisitioned by the Fliegertruppe and von Buttlar was commissioned as an officer in

5840-551: Was called to active service, transferred to the German Army 's air arm, Die Fliegertruppe des Deutschen Kaiserreiches (later known as the Luftstreitkräfte ) and was sent for pilot training at Johannisthal Air Field in November 1914. He was initially stationed in northern France . Immelmann served as a pilot with Feldflieger Abteilung (Field Flier Detachment) 10 from February to April 1915, and then in FFA 62 by early May 1915. On several occasions he engaged in combat while flying

5920-558: Was credited with 12 kills, for which he was awarded the Golden Military Merit Cross . In the Royal Flying Corps the observer Charles George Gass tallied 39 victories, of which 5 were actually confirmed. The spread was caused by the lavish British system of aerial victory confirmation. In World War II, United States Army Air Forces S/Sgt. Michael Arooth, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner serving in

6000-523: 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 is Charles George Gass with 39 accredited aerial victories. Between the two world wars, there were two theaters that produced flying aces, the Spanish Civil War and

6080-472: Was identified by his initials embroidered on his handkerchief. Immelmann was given a state funeral and buried in his home city of Dresden . His body was later exhumed and cremated in the Dresden-Tolkewitz Crematorium. Immelmann, along with Max Ritter von Mulzer , scored all of his victories flying different types of Eindeckers, becoming one of the most successful pilots in the type. During

6160-481: 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 and air superiority depended heavily on the relative availability of resources. The use of the term ace to describe these pilots began in World War I, when French newspapers described Adolphe Pégoud , as l'As (the ace) after he became

6240-402: Was mortally wounded during combat with Royal Flying Corps aircraft over Grévillers . The fatal wound was to the chest; he also suffered a glancing bullet wound to the head, possibly from rounds fired by John Oliver Andrews . He retained enough control to land his plane behind German lines. He was rushed to a field hospital but died on the operating table. Flying ace The concept of

6320-537: Was reported that Captain Earl Ehrhart V of the United States Marine Corps had shot down seven Houthi drones while piloting an AV-8B Harrier II ground-attack aircraft from the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan . Realistic assessment of enemy casualties is important for intelligence purposes, so most air forces expend considerable effort to ensure accuracy in victory claims. In World War II,

6400-622: Was young. In 1905 he was enrolled in the Dresden Cadet School. He joined the Eisenbahnregiment (Railway Regiment) Nr. 2 in 1911 as an ensign , in pursuit of a commission. He left the army in March 1912 to study mechanical engineering in Dresden. He returned to service at the outbreak of war in 1914, as a reserve officer candidate. Assigned to Eisenbahnregiment Nr. 1 , he soon transferred to aviation. When World War I started, Immelmann

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