Chogy
PROFESSIONAL
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- Jun 17, 2010
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With the possible exception of Marseille, I don't believe the extreme high scoring German Aces were necessarily so vastly superior to allied pilots; it was their length of service and target-rich environment that allowed them to rack up those enormous tallies, along with their talent.
If you have thousands of pilots that start flying for years on end, some of them will survive the whole war, and of those, a few will rack up 200, 300 kills using a stalk and shoot methodology that says more about visual acuity, stealthy maneuvering, and delivering the hammer blow, rather than raw stick and rudder skills.
It really is an impossible question to answer. Would Boyd take Hartmann with both in F-100's? Probably. Train Richtofen in an F-16, would he be better than the many superb pilots in that platform?
I admire the WW1 pilots most of all, because they literally invented an art form, the aerial ballet that is BFM. Most died - those that survived took what they knew, added to it, and passed it on to new guys.
IMO, the very best pilots are those that can simultaneously fight their own opponent, and also continue to aid/control other members of his flight with his superior situational awareness - and get them all home again. I have seen superb pilots who never progressed much beyond wingman, because they lacked this multitasking ability. How can you quantify all of these intangibles? It is very difficult.
If you have thousands of pilots that start flying for years on end, some of them will survive the whole war, and of those, a few will rack up 200, 300 kills using a stalk and shoot methodology that says more about visual acuity, stealthy maneuvering, and delivering the hammer blow, rather than raw stick and rudder skills.
It really is an impossible question to answer. Would Boyd take Hartmann with both in F-100's? Probably. Train Richtofen in an F-16, would he be better than the many superb pilots in that platform?
I admire the WW1 pilots most of all, because they literally invented an art form, the aerial ballet that is BFM. Most died - those that survived took what they knew, added to it, and passed it on to new guys.
IMO, the very best pilots are those that can simultaneously fight their own opponent, and also continue to aid/control other members of his flight with his superior situational awareness - and get them all home again. I have seen superb pilots who never progressed much beyond wingman, because they lacked this multitasking ability. How can you quantify all of these intangibles? It is very difficult.