AviationDiscuss #1 American Killer, ETO??? in the World War II - Aviation forums; In all my researching and reading, I have never been able to find enough info to settle this debate for ...
As an add on, Tetsuzo Iwamoto scored an impressive 202 aerial kills, and although this # seems to vary from different sources, the 202 seems to be the most common # posted...
If you mean the top American Ace in the ETO, it would be Gabby Gabreski with 28 air-to-air kills. But I'm not really sure what you are asking for. Could you explain it better?
By the way, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa is sometime acreditted with 202 victories though a total of 87 is more commonly accepted. Estimates for Iwamoto's final tally range from 250 to 66 with 80 seeming to be the most likely number.
Tracking that down would be pretty hard to do. The Germans on the Western front had relatively modest scores as compared to those on the Eastern front. I doubt anyone in the ETO shot down more Americans than Nishizawa or Iwamoto.
I found a website that has a great stat listing that has been compiled from offical German films from the Eastern front, 1941-1944... Lists pilots name, date, location, aircraft downed and so forth... Zip file... Pretty interesting reading...
If i can locate one of these for the Western front, we might have something here...
If anyone is interested in this zip file, just say so and ill email u it...
will have to dig deep as this is an interesting question..... as it could be the combination of bombers/fighters or one or the other ? let me know and we can go from there. Walter Dahl has in some references been known to be the top Mustang killer but although his claims are impressive further research has found that some of claims are in fact bogus and may have been credited to his wingman or other pilots under his leadership.............kinda crappy but it was not uncommon to have a leading personality/knights cross winner be built up for propaganda reasons. this my feelings for Herr Rudel and his tank busting feats. I surely do not beleive at all the 519 claimed in his favour.
Yea Erich... These are some specific statistics that may not even exist for all i know...
I read about Dahl before and agree with what ur saying about puffing up his totals...
But Rudel??? I fully believe in as many sorties as the man had, that those #'s are definatly acievable... He fired over 5,000 37mm rounds, and when he was to be presented with another award, he would make it conditional that he should be allowed to continue flying sorties...
Against even Hitlers requests...
When he recieved his final Award, Hitler reluctantly agreed, but latter on that agreement was revolked, and Rudel was grounded... He went back to the front in direct disobiedience of the Greman Higher Authority...
The man wanted to kill as many Russians as possible before the war ended...
Some of these men, Like Galland, scored most of their kills before America even entered the war. I'm not sure who all that rules out, but it probably rulls out several.
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