Best WW2 Fighter Pilot Poll Round 2

[tango35]

Again you forgot the Top fw 190 ace Kittel in your list !

But its always very difficult to value who was the best pilot ( ok you can count the kills, thats easy ), but maybe a good pilot is a B-17 pilot who brought his flak crippled aircraft back, or the young german fighter pilot at the end of the war with lack of training who started with no chance of return.
Or the pilots of the 332nd FG who fought a war against 2 enemies.

I think its ok to make a poll about the aces, but we shouldnt forget the unnumbered pilots; they fulfilled their duties like the aces, too.

greets

Thomas

[Njaco]

There was no Luftwaffe pilot who downed 40+ bombers. The closest would be Major Georg-Peter Eder who downed 36 viermots.

Aces of the Luftwaffe - Georg-Peter Eder

"On the Eastern Front he scored 10 victories and on the Western Front 68, of which no less than 36 were four-engined bombers. With the Me 262 he scored at least 24 victories (most of them couldn`t be officially confirmed). He was the leading scorer against the four-engined bombers, although Eder himself was shot down 17 times, baling out 9 times. He was wounded 14 times."

What pilot were you thinking about?


Tango, like Adler said, this is the second part of a poll. The first part invited numerous pilots for voting and this section was rounded down. You will see pilots missing from this because of that.

[Kruska]

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

You can no longer add anyone to the poll. This is Pt. 2 to a poll that was allready started with the winners of the last poll.

Hello D.A.I.G. ( it's a long name you got there

Sorry I didn't mean to interrupt the polls, so I will stick to Heinz Baer (so far he looks good in the polls).

Hello NJACO, hey thanks it was Eder correct and it was 36, sorry for the 40/40+ (actually I was thinking about the pilot maybe being Lent).

Regards
Kruska
Attachment 62199

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by tango35

Again you forgot the Top fw 190 ace Kittel in your list !

But its always very difficult to value who was the best pilot ( ok you can count the kills, thats easy ), but maybe a good pilot is a B-17 pilot who brought his flak crippled aircraft back, or the young german fighter pilot at the end of the war with lack of training who started with no chance of return.
Or the pilots of the 332nd FG who fought a war against 2 enemies.

I think its ok to make a poll about the aces, but we shouldnt forget the unnumbered pilots; they fulfilled their duties like the aces, too.

greets

Thomas

No we did not forget anyone in the polls. These are the winners of the last poll which was a much larger poll that you could also add pilots too.

The is the 2nd Round and we are going to dwindle it down until we have our forums top pilot.

[Njaco]

Kruska, no problem. Unless, like you say, it might have been a night-fighter. Forgot about that myself. They were bombers like Lancs and Wellingtons, etc. Could be Lent with 102 night and 8 day victories.

Who was your uncle?

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by tango35

Again you forgot the Top fw 190 ace Kittel in your list !

But its always very difficult to value who was the best pilot ( ok you can count the kills, thats easy ), but maybe a good pilot is a B-17 pilot who brought his flak crippled aircraft back, or the young german fighter pilot at the end of the war with lack of training who started with no chance of return.
Or the pilots of the 332nd FG who fought a war against 2 enemies.

I think its ok to make a poll about the aces, but we shouldnt forget the unnumbered pilots; they fulfilled their duties like the aces, too.

greets

Thomas

I think if you look some of the older post and threads recognition has been given to bomber and fighter pilots alike and it is also recognized that during WW2 air-to-air combat and dropping bombs was just one aspect of aerial warfare. Patrol, logistics, and my personal favorite, flying through the "soup" could all be just as hazardous (or even more) than dropping bombs and/ or shooting or getting shot at air-to-air.

Personally I think it's just as hazardous to shoot an old NDB beam approach and breaking out of the overcast at 300' than it is flying through flack or getting bounced by a gaggle of -109s.

[Kruska]

Originally Posted by Njaco

Kruska, no problem. Unless, like you say, it might have been a night-fighter. Forgot about that myself. They were bombers like Lancs and Wellingtons, etc. Could be Lent with 102 night and 8 day victories.

Who was your uncle?

Hello Njaco,

well the No.1 (4 engine a/c) could have been Lent, but according to offical stats. it was Eder - who knows?

My uncle is O. v. Kruska, he is pictured on a group photo in the book "Holt Hartmann vom Himmel" sitting in an armchair and (sorry long time ago - 25 years -that I read this book) he was the Fliegerschulen Leiter or 2nd in command during the training flying course in which Hartmann was enroled.

Regards
Kruska
Attachment 62236

[Juha]

I voted Bär
on German top aces I would have difficulties to chose between Rall and Bär but because Rall didn't get into 2nd round, the choise was rather easy. Bär fought through war, had experience from every front and had at least enough cockyness for an excellent fighter pilot.

Juha

[RabidAlien]

I've always favored Maj. Thomas McGuire. Seems to me, from the reading that I've done, that the way "kills" were counted in the Pacific made it much more difficult to rack up a score than in the ETO. Aircraft shredded on the ground didn't count. Aircraft that were "shared" kills were settled with a coin toss. McGuire ended up with 38 before crashing while swatting at a Zero on his wingman's tail, so who knows how many kills he would've accumulated had he won a few more coin tosses or been able to count planes on the ground? I love the fact that he never lost a wingman on any combat mission...that, and he practically wrote the book on P38 tactics.

...then again, I haven't read much from the German side, either. Yet.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

And McGuire is not an option in this poll because he did not recieve eneogh votes in round one.

If you want to discuss him in this thread that is fine, but you can only vote for one of the ones up there.

[Njaco]

Kruska, Did he ever speak to you about his time at the school or about Hartmann? That is a very interesting part of the Luftwaffe.

[Kruska]

Originally Posted by Njaco

Kruska, Did he ever speak to you about his time at the school or about Hartmann? That is a very interesting part of the Luftwaffe.

Hello Njaco,

Sorry, unfortunatly he was KIA on the Eastern Front and I was born about 15 years later. According to his sister and my father as well as another pilot-uncle (not really related) whom I met many times, he was a Flieger of great humor and as such very liked by his students.

If I recall Hartmann's book correctly, nobody actually thought before 1942 that this "Bubi" would make it one day to be the top scorer or even a good fighterpilot. So I wouldn't be surprised about my uncle maybe not even having taken notice about him - just as one of many during flight-school.

Regards
Kruska
jd-pr-067[1].jpg

[KrazyKraut]

Hello everyone!

I still go with Hartmann for 2 reasons:

1. He was fine comrade and soldier: Never lost a wingman killed and refused to leave his squadron on the eastern front even though he had a few opportunities. He paid bitterly for it: 10 years of various Soviet POW camps including countless "interrogations", solitary confinement in darkness (probably comparable to what you see in "Pappilon") and he still came out unbroken.

2. While many disregard his kills in the east as easier, he certainly knew what his job was as a fighter pilot. You know how many Luftwaffe pilots in the BoB saw JaBo- or bomber escort-duties as direct insults because they failed to fully grasp the nature of the war they were fighting. Hartmann's 300+ kills include many Il-2s, the plane that was probably the most dangerous to the men fighting the battles on the ground.

[Soundbreaker Welch?]

Good argument!

[Kruska]

Originally Posted by KrazyKraut

Hello everyone!

I still go with Hartmann for .......

2. While many disregard his kills in the east as easier, he certainly knew what his job was as a fighter pilot. You know how many Luftwaffe pilots in the BoB saw JaBo- or bomber escort-duties as direct insults because they failed to fully grasp the nature of the war they were fighting. Hartmann's 300+ kills include many Il-2s, the plane that was probably the most dangerous to the men fighting the battles on the ground.

Hello KrazyKraut,

Surely I want to refrain from “maybe” putting words in your mouth, but regarding your expressed opinion to Hartmann’s IL2 attacks or BoB I want to forward the following;

Pilots or even fighter pilots were not “free” to fly around at random deciding on the target, they were given a mission or ordered/briefed about their tasks. As such Hartmann was simply given the order to support German ground troops and by doing so encountered or attacked IL2’s or whatever a/c that he happened to run into during his mission.
There is a lot of heroic bull….t, tales or exaggeration of the Jaeger or Experten mystical status in many books. Mainly due to the Nazis or Goering’s desperate PR efforts regarding his “falcons”.

Regards
Kruska