Warbird Information Exchange

I'll point out now that I'm not questioning the honesty of anybody or disrespecting the aces, just asking something that I've always wondered.

Along with fraternization with the enemy, the drinking and the Baa Baa Black Sheep TV series, anytime Pappy Boyington is brought up, one of the first things people say is "he lied about his kills". I believe it was his last mission that he claimed two kills that weren't confirmed by anybody else. Those kills, plus the ones with the AVG (confirmed or not) made him the top Marine Corps ace of all time. In my mind, Joe Foss should have that title because all of his kills were made as a Marine, not a member of the AVG.

We all know that kills were inflated on all sides, through human nature, politics or accident.

What I'd like to know is this. How many of the aces had EVERY SINGLE KILL verified? I don't believe I've ever heard anybody question the kill numbers of other well known aces besides Boyington. Is it because of all the other contraversy that followed him around or what? Are there other aces that might not rank as high if they were examined as hard as Boyington?

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Brad

I think most would have a different number attached if you could go back and find the wreckage of every kill.

Some say Bong had a lot more then 40.

A lot of the early P38 aces had claims that were not backed up by postwar checking of Japanese losses.

Folks claim Mersailles over claimed. His 17 in a day was challenged by Johnnie Johnson no less.

I think it's obviously tougher to check on Allied claims from the time they started back on the offensive and the Axis were fighting over their own territory.

I seem to recall reading that 109s for example would poor black smoke out of the stacks when they went full throttle. I can imagine that looked like damage to someone shooting at them and all of a sudden streams of black smoke start coming back.

I also think Pappy's claims bore some scrutiny as it pushed him past the 26 barrier of Eddie Rickenbacker. That was the one everyone was trying to pass at the time and I think it's fair to say he was aware of that.

Dan

This is off the top of my head...so, correct me if I'm wrong..and you will !
But, wasn't the original "beef" with Boyington's kills regarding his AVG
tally? The AVG counted the tally by "air kills", but Boyington "adjusted"
his AVG tally when he included 2 or 3 aircraft as "kills" which he had strafed on the ground?

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DBF

I was always under the impression that ground kills counted in the overall tally, but were not counted in the first five toward "ace" status.

Oakey-Doakey Randy!...maybe I'm confusing that with how the AVG "pay tally" was structured?

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He bowls overhand...He is the most interesting man in the world.
"In Peace Japan Breeds War", Eckstein, Harper and Bros., 3rd ed. 1943(1927, 1928,1942)
"Leave it to ol' Slim. I got ideas...and they're all vile, baby." South Dakota Slim
"Ahh..."The Deuce", 28,000 pounds of motherly love." quote from some Mojave Grunt
DBF

Aloha All,
The task to check up on air-to-air talley is MOST difficult. Such talley checks begin with the unit's intelligence officer in the immediate post combat interviews. Having only records from one side is extremely difficult. Thus I greatly appreciate such intelligence officers and their super human effort to weed facts from the tales which rose from the heat of battle.

Yet, with both sides talley of losses...to know who did what, where and when gives the researcher pause when faced with the dilemma of Solomon. Use of the written record is many times so inadequate that a recreation of the aerial encounters are impossible. Just counting the losses per day may be the only near factual information due to the overkill reports of victories.

Thankfully, enough data came from the vets of both sides to resolve the losses and victors -rather than the surviving written reports- for the first American combat with the Zero. Read the combat action at: http://www.flightjournal.com/articles/lost_p-36/sterling1.asp

Malama pono,
David Aiken

An interesting area I have often thought about myself.

"I was always under the impression that ground kills counted in the overall tally, but were not counted in the first five toward "ace" status."

That's a very strange way to do it. Is this how the USA did it? I've not heard of this.

The RAF and Empire air forces did not count ground "kills" at all in a pilot's "kill" tally as far as I understand it, though they did count trucks, trains and other things shot up on the ground including aeroplanes. But the latter items shot up on the ground did not go towards his tally of "killed aircraft". Who's to say the aeroplane is not patched up and flying a week later after being strafed? That's NOT a kill. In my opinion a ground kill is not a kill at all. Especially since most airfields had dummy targets that looked like planes - how can you be sure of what you've hit?

I also wonder how many aerial kills were not counted when a plane was shot up and it returns to base only to be found so damaged it's written off the books. The attacker probably claimed it as damaged, but has no idea it is now totally unserviceable - therefore it is a kill for all intents and purposes.

Also the planes that crashed on landing or even simply after it had escaped the view of the claiment. He didn't see it crash, his guns did not film a kill. So no accurate claim made.

No-one would ever be able to say for sure exactly who shot down what, and what was mistaken - especially since many records have disappeared since the war.

Some pilots never bothered to even claim kills. Cobber Kain, the first ace of WWII, apparently didn't claiim half of what he actually shot down, and his official tally was pretty high for such a short term of combat. His squadron mates after his death put it on record he had been seen to shoot down 40, perhaps 50 aircraft. He never claimed anywhere near this, and even his official tally is apparently sketchy. My theory of his under-crediting himself was because he was not all that interested in the media attention he was getting. He was apparently quite shy so I guess if it was known just how many he'd downed, they'd have hounded him more.

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The reality of the matter is the the pilots involved are generally *very bad* sources of information for the intel officer.

I was surprised over in OIF when my 2-ship would debrief with Intel...often the stories told by all 4 people in the flight (F-15Es, so two guys per jet) would differ from each other when it came to BDA or who/what shot at us. What was more interesting was what we recalled seeing 'with our own eyes' compared to what was captured on the HUD or targeting pod tape. Again, it would often differ and sometimes significantly differ.

One engagement I had with an Iraqi SAM was interesting...when the Intel officer asked me what kind of countermeasures I'd used against the SAM, I said I hit the chaff button 'a couple of times'. Turns out that *83* bundles of chaff had come off the jet in about 30 seconds, which equates to pushing the button somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 times.

Bearing this in mind, it's no stretch of the imagination to see how there was such diversity in attributing kills back when there was limited gun camera footage. I can absolutely see how two guys might claim the same kill, yet the airplane might not even have been actually shot down.

There is, indeed, significant 'fog' in combat, so being able to make claims in absolutes about kills is really just impossible.

Getting back to Brad's original question...I have no idea!

Only the 8th AF out of England counted ground kills, which is why you can see some fairly large kill boards on 8th Fighters. Apparently it was used as an incentive to get the guys down on the deck.

The other USAAF Air Forces did not count ground kills.

I remember sitting in on a discussion with some WW2 vets and Bud Anderson was describing shooting down a 109. The 12th AF ground attack Jug driver next to him laughed and said he had never "Shot down" a 109 but he'd definately "shot up" a few

Dan

The 8th. AF originally counted ground kills but later changed the policy to only aerial victories and victory counts were adjusted, if I recall right.

I can guarantee that many early P-38 pilots lost confirmations because the gun camera was mounted in the nose and the resulting shake from being in such close proximity to the guns rendered the footage useless. Jack Ilfrey probably lost several because of this and so did many other P-38 drivers in the MTO. Jack never quoted me a figure but he said he lost "several" just because of this.

As Randy pointed out, because of differing stories from other pilots in the area I am sure there were others that weren't confirmed. Also add in the "cripple" factor, where one pilot clobbers an enemy aircraft and breaks off the attack because the enemy is obviously going down then another pilot steps in and hits the a/c a handful of times and claims either a full or partial victory. Towards the end of the war, there were many instances of this, especially when Me-262s were hit and pilots from a number of different FGs were involved.

Believe it or not there were also pilots who gave kills away. Art Heiden of the 79th. Fighter Squadron is convinced that both Harold Rau and Cy Wilson (20th. Ftr. Grp. C.O.'s) had confirmable kills and they gave the credits away to wingmen or newly arrived pilots to help boost their scores.

From an interview I did with Capt. Heiden:

Q.: In the past we have talked about the discrepancies in records that have led up to many arguments over many pilots confirmed number of air victories, what is your take on all of this?

AWH: "The whole subject of confirmed victories is a mess. God only knows. As an example, I seriously question victory records, especially (20th. Ftr. Grp. C.O.) Rau, Lt. James Bradshaw and (20th. Ftr. Grp. C.O.)Wilson's. As to the two I got, I really don't have a comment. (Officially Heiden is only credited with a 1/2 vic.)

"I am guessing here, that the Claims Review Office was confronted with the problem of comparing the claims, from day to day, with the intelligence gathering of Luftwaffe combat capabilities. These would differ as much as 100%. Reality had to prevail. I could see Rau & Wilson telling Claims Review to deduct from their claims before those of the line pilots. Also, there was the fact that they were busy leading and distracted from trying to make certain of their gunnery."

Q.: What were the requirements, as you remember them, for a confirmed victory?

AWH: "Victory claims requirements were to have seen the enemy aircraft on fire, or crash, or pilot bailout, or disintegrate. Best to have another witness. A big problem was smoke as an engine at full throttle could lay down lots of smoke. Obliviously, a 'smoker' was generally claimed and that was the problem and others that appeared out of control. Rau and Wilson would not have had time to follow any cripples to confirm that they crashed. At debriefings, a pilot had no real proof other than to let the gun-camera be the witness. Even then, the P-38 gun camera film was so bad that it was next to useless because the camera was mounted in the nose with the guns. On P-38L's the camera was relocated to the external mounts pylon."


Jack Ilfrey was credited with six kills while with the 94th. Ftr. Sqdn. but later on one of the credits was split between him and another pilot. This action is what caused the confusion as to who was the first ace in the P-38, Ilfrey or Virgil Smith. Outside of that all of the remaining kills were confirmed (some sources still cite Ilfrey as having eight) and his final kill was definitely confirmed as he collided with a Me-109 over Germany and the entire squadron saw both planes spiraling out of the air. Jack managed to pull out with about 4 feet of his wing looking like "shredded wheat", the German pilot was not as lucky. Jack managed to bring the plane home too.

I've rambled on long enough, sorry folks, I've also probably muddled the water a bit... Facts are no one really knows, like Randy said above.

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interesting topic, but I think we'll never find a proper answer for it
every country applied its own score system, and modified the rules during the war years. What is for sure is that the propaganda machine was the same everywhere. Whenever there was a pilot who had some brilliant results, he was helped by the propaganda and his comrades to raise the tally, this seemed to happen within all the airforces. What is impressive is the huge difference between the scores of germans and the other pilots. Ok, something might have been touched, but nonetheless the divarium is enormous!

Alex

after all these years i think egos prevailed most of all, regardless of theater, personality etc.. as humans, who wouldn't want to be identified as the big cheese??? don't forget over the years, stories as the such of this have the habit of being stretched, embellished, b.s.'d etc. regards, tom

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VietNam (and probably the middle East) have changed the situation a little bit. Instead of chaotic free-for-alls, intercepts were rare and missile engagements usually catastrophic. There was little doubt about a shootdown.

My first squadron in Viet Nam accounted for 8 kills and two damaged, and there was sufficient intelligence and visual confirmations to make the numbers very credible.

Two sidelights. Our Air Force exchange pilot knocked some slats off of a MiG with a Sidewinder, couldn't confirm a kill, but got credit for a damaged... one of the few, I would imagine, where the expanding rod warhead didn't complete the job. And one of my best friends (and my youngest daughter's godfather) saw his 'winder go up the tailpipe of a MiG and explode just before he was blown out of the cockpit by 37/57 AAA. He spent 5½ years in Hanoi before coming home to find his MiG claimed by another pilot. The other pilot had beat feet a few minutes before and wasn't anywhere in the area.

So... the numbers are good but not exact.

Hey Guys:

Right now I' reading a book w/ a chapter about Tom McGuire. Just from reading it, it doesn't look like ground kills were counted for the overall kills by a pilot. Also, Boyington did count a few ground kills in China into his overall score.

Very interesting topic and follow-up posts.

Agree with Brad, Joe Foss dosn't get enough recognition.

Bill