most decorated fighter?

[shepsair]

The Bf109F-4Z in Canada - 10132 >> of Horst Carganico also has a number of kills. Not sure how many he picked up on this airframe. One I wished had been restored to flying.

10132 has around 15 victories.

http://109lair.hobbyvista.com/walkaroun ... /10132.htm

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/carganico.html

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/archive/i ... 13526.html

regards

Mark

[old iron]

The Smithsonian Me.262 was used by a German ace (Heinz Arnold, 40+ kills) and this particular aircraft was credited with 7 kills.

see http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19600328000

[bentwingbomber]

Fighter Collections Spitfire Mk V EP120

http://fighter-collection.com/pages/air ... /index.php

[whistlingdeath77]

i can just make them out still. I'm guessing they want to kep the plane in it's original state? But why the german symbols? Did we sell they to Germany years before the war?

Ooooh pleeeeze, shoot me now...your kidding, right???

The "NEW" WIX is starting to get on my nerves....

Terribly sorry that i got on your nerves. Instead of posting like a circus clown, why don't you simply explain the correct information like everybody else did? If not, get back into your tiny clown car and drive off.

[corsair166b]

I'm sorry, but I gotta say it...that WAS kinda funny....almost spit my coffee on the keyboard when I read that comments. But yes, we ARE here to educate and to share and we should do so generously and without prejudice. That said......it was still funny. I guess nothing (news flash) is perfect, is it?

At this point I should relate a story that almost got me escorted back to Heathrow and thrown on a plane by my English host...we were walking around near Coningsby having just seen the BBMF planes and a Spitfire engine run up and were headed back to the car park when my American cohort that I came over with (I will mention no names to protect the innocent) asked a simple question...."Why do they paint targets on the side of British airplanes?" or something of the like. This person was not the lifelong aviation historian and enthusiast that I am and had no idea that the RAF Roundel was the marking of RAF planes from time immemorial to the present day...she just thought it was a target, not a marking for a nation's planes. My host handled it well after the initial kneejerk reaction to drive us to the airport from whence we came, but it still became a running joke. Advice to all.....think about the question you're about to ask before you ask it. And another thought gleaned from a movie I once saw whose message rings true to this day...."When you ask somebody something, it depends on what part of the world you're standing as to how smart or how dumb you are." If you can name the movie, you're at least over 40.

My 2 cents....

Mark

[whistlingdeath77]

In my defense i did post for references for U.S aircraft. It just happened that other wixers were pointing out some other aircraft from different nations that were famous for confirmed kills. What threw me off was that I have seen captured B-17's that the germans would use and put their symbol on them. We did it with the captured zero as well. Japan had the C-47 design too so i was a little confused. Oh well, shame on me. But now I at least learned something new!

[Baldeagle]

http://www.uk-warbirds.net/warbirdhistories.html




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[Mudge]

Among American types, I'm thinking one of the Mig-Killer Phantoms still extant is likely the "most decorated" fighter. If you are talking more than just kills, IIRC, isn't the Skyraider at USAFM the one that earned the pilot a Congressional MOH?

OK...I'm sure I'll hear about this, but one of my pet peeves is the reference to the "Congressional" Medal of Honor. Not correct. It is simply the "Medal of Honor"

Mudge the peevish

[AviaS199]

There was a good article in the April 2008 issue of Flight Journal on the whereabouts of Medal of Honor aircraft. A few have been preserved, but most were scrapped in the short-sightedness of the moment.

I think I read some other article that said RAF ace Johnnie Johnson's Spitfire had the most victories of any single aircraft, via both Johnson and a few other pilots who flew it. Scrapped as well.

I agree with Mr. Haskin that we cannot all be expected to know everything. This is an information exchange. Let's feel free to ask questions. I've asked my share of naive questions in my time on this board. In the immortal words of my TI at Lackland, "The only stoopid question is the one yew don't ask!"

Mudge is quite right about the Medal of Honor. One of the most persistent urban legends holds that George M. Cohan received the "Congressional Medal of Honor." He didn't. Congress awarded him a rather meaningless honorary medal. Being a self-promoting showbiz type, Cohan soon inflated the medal's importance all out of proportion. By the time the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy" came out, the story had been accepted as fact, and it seemed almost unpatriotic to dispute it.

[Jim MacDonald]

Isn't the Fighter Collection's F6F-3 or at least part of the fuselage a combat vet flown by Alex Vraciu?

Mac

[Dan K]

Isn't the Fighter Collection's F6F-3 or at least part of the fuselage a combat vet flown by Alex Vraciu?

Mac

Already covered three posts before yours.

[mustangdriver]

The P-38 at the NASM is a combat vet. Bong flew it at one point (but at that point it was at Wright Field).

I always thought the P-51D at the NASM was a real combat vet, but I think we learned that it was not.

Kind of sad that so few US WWII combat vet fighters exist.

[Steve Nelson]

Chris: are any of the WWII fighters in the NMUSAF collection combat vets? I can't really think of any offhand.

All: has anyone determined the combat histories of the fighters pulled out of Lake Michigan? Those aircraft were almost all combat vets sent to training units once they became obsolete or high-time. The Air Zoo's SBD is a Torch veteran, and I think one other SBD was confirmed as having fought at Midway, but I haven't really heard anything about the fighters. I'm especially interested in the combat histories of the recently recovered F6F and Birdcage Corsair.

Don't be too hard on Whistlingdeathcorsairs, guys. No offense to those of Finnish ancestry among us, but how many Americans have even heard of the country, much less know how their aircraft were painted. For the record, they were actually using the swastika before the Nazis, but once the symbol became permanently associated with that horrific regime, Finland changed their insignia to a simple blue and white roundel. One of the reasons the Nazis co-opted the swastika was because is was so universally known as a "good luck" symbol.

SN

Last edited by Steve Nelson on Mon Jul 04, 2011 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

[old iron]

MustanDriver wrote:

http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19600295000

I think the NASM P.38 has an entirely stateside history.

see http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19600295000

I don't think any of the WWII American NASM fighters have combat histories, although the cowl of the Grumman F4F was at Wake Island.

[mustangdriver]

I can't think of any WWII US Fighters there either. It seemes like at one point they went after the last examples in service. They have a few of them. As for the other eras there are some very historic fighters

Robin Old's F-4 "Scat"

Bernie Fisher's A-1 in which he won the Medal of Honor

P-80C combat vet from the 8th Fighter-Bomber Wing

T-6D Mosquito original combat vet