Which nation's fighter pilots shot down more planes in WW2? USA or Germany?

USAAF fighter pilots claimed 14,682 victories of which 10,722 were in the ETO/MTO vs Germany. AAF known losses to fighter aircraft totaled 8,244 of which 6,800 were vs. Germany.

USN/USMC fighter pilots claimed 8,631 victories against 1,007 total known losses to fighters.

Thus US fighter pilots shot down 23,313 aircraft.

Anyone have any real numbers for German fighter victories? Did German fighters shoot down 16,513 additional Allied aircraft?

 

Problem is claims on both sides tended to be exaggerated and it varied considerably from unit to unit and time to time. Best way is to look at claimed own losses but even there I suspect some fudging was done occasionally. For instance were all operational losses purely operational or was battle damage a factor in some of them?

 

True, claims were not always confirmed, some are even overclaimed . Some aircrafts were shot down by several pilots at the same time. Some were recorded as shot down and yet made it home. Figures will always be debatable, one thing is certain though: German figures skyrocket compared to all other nations. U.S. figures are quite high considering they joined in after Pearl Harbour. One example: a U.S pilot with more than ten kills would be quite a recognized ace , in the Luftwaffe the same score would almost be considered insignificant with some aces scoring over hundred kills

 

LW fighter claims/victories were not give official credit after the end of October 1944, one of the reasons that the 1945 "kills" listing is nowhere complete as it is not available with any certainty, simply we will never know.........

 

I'm not so sure the number support this. The figures I posted earlier show that the axis and allies lost about the same number of planes. However a lot of the Soviet planes were destroyed on the ground or taken out by AA fire. The US also faced pretty heavy AA fire as did the British. However in the West once the Germans went on the defencive they seldom had to face it so losses from it would be rather low and the west was where the fighter arm was concentrated late war. The Germans did face a lot of fire from bombers but I'm not sure how many planes they actually shot down. Somewhere I've seen pretty good lists of US planes lost to opposing fighters as well as AA and operational losses. We need something like that for the other countries under consideration.

But the US had a lot more pilots and late war German pilots were not very well trained the same being true of late war Japanese pilots. Measuring the overall performance buy comparing the best is hardly a good way to go about it. Particularly when the US rotated it's best pilots back to training commands.

 

OTOH,four pilots with 11 victories got the RK,as did 6 pilots with 12 victories .

 

Sure the Japanese shot down most warplanes.I think.

 

I doubt they are in the top 2 perhaps not even in the top 4.

 

Has the definition of "shut down" been established yet? In other words does it matter if another aircraft shot you down or a flak unit?

Erich where are you?!

 

over a small group, I think the most shot down per sortie over a short period would be the Brit pilots in Malta, but for sure the Brits didn't have the highest figures overall - my guess would be the Germans shot down more because they had more to shoot at?

 

The thread title clearly states "fighter pilots".

 

will make it brief as I could probably add enough 2 centos to make a small multi-page booklet here.

yes German LW by far in all respects the numbers of available targets leads itself to incredibly numerous encounters thus the wearing down of the LW in 43 mostly on the Western front where eastern front pilots longing to increase their scores were faced by tremendous numbers of US bombers with incredible firepower. As deemed by the TR staff many units were ordered back from the Soviet Union to help sustain in their thoughts a formidable aerial arsenal to existing Western front JG's already in place where no British or American bomber/fighter could interfere. Ha ! remember the twin engine Zerstörers were all pulled back from the Eastern Front and ordered to form new tactics with a completely changed armament to thwart US bomber pushes over the Reich.................. they were slaughtered from the skies in almost a year's worth of service. then of course, and I am telling myself I am pushing the envelope but the formation then of Jet units from Kommando and staffel size to full Geschwader strength to finish the Defense mechanism idea which due to the late war chaos in all terms never was fulfilled.

 

I'm not at all sure the evidence supports the "LW by far" statement. Overall losses of allied and axis planes were pretty close to equal. The question then becomes what percentage of each were shot down by fighter pilots and what percentage the various nations had of their sides shoot downs. How to credit mixed kills is also a factor. For instance one document I read indicated that a signficant number of US bombers shot down were first damaged by flak does this count as a partial or a full for the fighters? How about the reverse or a fighter damaged by a bomber then shot down by an opposing fighter? I do know that I've read that late war ground attacks were considered more dangerous than dogfighting for US fighters. This suggest that a fair number of US fighters were lost to AA.

 

lets say some US bombers were damaged by Flak, no doubt combination's of a stricken bomber and then the final death throes during a fighter attack but in early cases the Flak units were drawn off to say they stopped firing while the fighters went in to do the carnage. LW claims or even kills far exceed whatever the Soviets could muster but the areas were large/vast so complete confirmation was hard enough. I go by the rule again what was available in Reich defense although it was the LW backyard attrition took them out while US crews could rotate out at a certain amount of bomber/fighter missions, this was not the case of the LW whether a young full fledged "stoked" pilot or a sound veteran of many air battles wearing the shiny thing around his neck. Lets also examine the night air war when it was the British in bombers dumping on the Reich and the LW putting up twin / single NF's to stop in vain Allied interdiction. Obviously they did not stop the BCommand from doing it's job but took a terrible tool of 7,000 plus bombers, so again we can credit the LW night fighter defenses with this, flak comes into play but marginally. The US P-61's units were partial with few kills, the Soviets almost nil, the British of course had some with individual protective Mossies and Beau fighters plus the radar jamming and intruding 100th group but again nowhere the kill %'s of the LW.

again I will go back to my statement the LW in the west during 43-45 had so many targets in front of them many Eastern front vets if they lived long enough could not believe their eyes.

 

just an additional note :

the LW Night fighter force also operated at night to bolster the LW day fighter defense with it's twin engines and sometimes the Wilde Sau singles were also called into this foray. Kills were also made in this regard until pulled back to night duties.

NJG 100 also was involved in night and day time activities on the Eastern Front putting in an admirable 400 kills along with a couple of additional twin engine NF units providing another 100 victories. Most of these operations on the Eastern front are lost in time but that is being worked out slowly as new information comes to light.

 

To make the comparing fair you would have to give some credit to the War machines that were able to cross the ocean to take the war to the mother lands of the enemy. We do not know what would have happened to German or Japanese aircraft if they had tried to face off U.S. Coastal Defenses. With some exceptions most of our homeland did not experience air attacks in the same manner our forces took the battle to our opposition.

 

The point I made earlier is that the axis and allies both lost around 160,000 planes (say + or - 10%) with the allies loosing a bit more during the war. Depeding on how these losses were distributed both among causes and among beligerants it's possible that either the US or Germans had the lead as far as fighter pilots are concerned. It would help if we had documents like this for other beligerants:
Army Air Forces in World War II
Army Air Forces in World War II
Army Air Forces in World War II
Army Air Forces in World War II
Army Air Forces in World War II
Army Air Forces in World War II

Oh and in regards to the damaged by Flak shot down by fighter cases from what I've read it often occured when a bomber took enough damage that it fell out of formation and was thus particualry vulnerable to fighter attacks. This page notes the mixed losses for 20th Air Force for the period June 44 to Aug 45:
Army Air Forces in World War II

 

Army Air Forces Statistical Digest, World War II along with Naval Aviation Combat Statisics, World War II are the two documents I used to derive the figures in post #21 above. Without valid statistics for the other combatants, its all idle speculation.

 

As individuals the German aces had better numbers, I don't belive an American ace scored above 50, being the the top allied ace as Ivan Mykytovych Kozhedub.

 

For Germans the term "Abschuss" means having shot down , saw the aircrafts crash (Abgestürzt) and the pilot or his observer (Beoachter) if and watch it hit the ground. Then a ground crew inspektor, or if not any available , a Staffelkaptän had to confirm the claim to transform it on a confirmed Abschutz in the logbook

For the allies the notion is not as accurate and a believed claim sometimes resulted in a shared half hit or even a quarter of a hit.