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

Discussion in 'WWII General' started by Wolfy, Feb 15, 2009.

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  1. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    If we use (debatable-rightly or wrongly) German victory figures,then we have
    2 German fighterpilots with more than 300 victories
    12 with more than 200 victories
    90 with more than 100 victories .
     
    LJAd, Apr 20, 2011
    #41
  2. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    let me go back to an earlier statement I made on this thread and from several other threads from times lost on this forum.

    after October/November 1944 the official OKL did not recognize German LW day fighter claims and only the Geschwader historian/Stfl.ktp or Geschwader Kommodore had the right to recognize and contribute into the pilots flugbuch the victory claim as confirmed. on many many occasions Us bombers were shot out of formation, the pilot given the HSS for this and then finished off by other fighters of the staffel or gruppe and not as a result of Flak damage. From my first statement on this post it reveals we will never know the full extent of the LW claims/kills in 1945 nor in reality the Night fighter crews either
     
    Erich, Apr 20, 2011
    #42
  3. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    Even when confirmed some of these claims were debatable. I have examples of NJG4 pilot who claimed shots in July 1944 over France and whose claims were confirmed by the Staffelkaptän in November while the Geschwader wasn't even in liberated territory anymore and could not possibly send inspektors to confirm the crash.
     
    Skipper, Apr 20, 2011
    #43
  4. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    yes reason to have Dr. Boitens volumes in hand when researching which is all part of the historical accuracy search. There are too many assumptions and I will put in a plug for one of my future volumes on K. Welters night fighter Me 262-jet Kommando. most of the claims/kills are given to him even when he did not even fly on the particular evenings operation.
     
    Erich, Apr 20, 2011
    #44
  5. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    The best methodology seems to be to ignore the claims and look at the reported losses for each side. I.e. US losses reported by the US, German by Germany, Japan by Japan, etc. I would think that allies should have pretty decent data on this although Soviet data might be difficult to get and/or problematic. For the axis the data should be pretty good up into 1944 although the Japanese burned a lot of records. If you start counting damage and such it starts becoming more problemtatic and the question arrises how many "operational" losses were really due to combat damage but we'd at least be on firmer ground as mccoffee has suggested. Does anyone have good data for countries other than the US?
     
    lwd, Apr 20, 2011
    #45
  6. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    now lwd you are talking years of collective research at least for the German LW side, there is still nothing concrete 100 % even with the famous Tony Woods listings from Freiburg. 1945 year does not exist. Ideally one would have to cross check every claim made from both sides and I am assumming that someone has probably taken on this task which will take a life time to process.
     
    Erich, Apr 20, 2011
    #46
  7. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    You don't really need to cross check claims to get a good idea of the answer to this. If we just had a good idea of how many German planes were lost to fighters and on what front. Same for the Britts, Japan, the Soviets, and Italians. I don't think anyone else lost enough to make a difference. The uncertainties of just how the data was derived would probably overwhelm anything else.
     
    lwd, Apr 20, 2011
    #47
  8. Eirk Ritari

    Eirk Ritari Member

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    I think loses are important but you have to look at individuals as well. Or am I wrong? If I am not wrong the Germans hands down produced the best/most aces.
     
    Eirk Ritari, Apr 20, 2011
    #48
  9. Spartanroller

    Spartanroller Ace

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    If you can believe wikipedia...;

    Equipment losses in World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    although it doesn't give stats for what shot down or destroyed the aircraft, it is clear that there were about the same number of planes lost by the allies and by the axis, although just taking Europe and eastern front into account, the allies lost more in total than the Germans and Italians. The western front is in the allies favour.

    This site gives the kills and losses per 1000 sorties for both sides, which seem to also indicate it was significantly in the allies favour in the west;
    </title> </head> <body bgcolor="#f5f5f5" text="#000000" link="#2f4f4f" alink="#2f4f4f" vlink="#2f4f4f"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://hb.lycos.com/hb.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"><![CDATA[//><!]]></script> <script type="te
     
    Spartanroller, Apr 21, 2011
    #49
  10. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    I believe what you say spartan not necessarily Wiki. as for the Western Sphere yes the Allies on top in early 1944 till wars end not before over the Reich. Clearly in 1943 the Bomber support for the US was almost squashed and stopped due to terrible Bomber and crew losses without at the time the total effort of fighter command.
     
    Erich, Apr 21, 2011
    #50
  11. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    In the West,LF 3 lost from june 1941 till december 1942 735 aircraft .
     
    LJAd, Apr 21, 2011
    #51
  12. ronrose12

    ronrose12 recruit

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    I haven't read the entire thread, but the answer to this question is one of my favorite "easy beer" questions. One person got the number correct: at least twenty German Luftwaffe pilots had more than 200 kills in WWII. But the ace of aces (who was also shot down himself 12 times, tried to surrender to the Americans, spent 12 years in a Soviet prison and later became a general in the post-war Luftwaffe) with 352 kills was the "Blond Knight of Germany", Erich Hartmann. Most kills were at the Eastern Front against the Russians, but he had his share of victories against the Americans on the Western Front, too. He flew mainly Me-109s. Hope that interests some.

    Too bad this isn't a Vietnam-era fighter thread - that is my real forte - on both sides.
     
    ronrose12, Apr 27, 2011
    #52
  13. mcoffee

    mcoffee Son-of-a-Gun(ner)

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    No beer just yet.

    The question as posed is which nations fighter pilots collectively had the most shootdowns. Since no one has been able to come up with valid numbers for the total GAF victories, the answer is really indeterminate.

    Welcome aboard.
     
    mcoffee, Apr 27, 2011
    #53
  14. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    Hartmann's great score is not confirmed just as a side notation
     
    Erich, Apr 27, 2011
    #54
  15. Shooter2018

    Shooter2018 Member

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    IIRC, the Nazis had over 2,800 Aces who shot down over 45,000 EA There were about 3,200 more pilots who shot down up to 4.X planes and thus failed to make ace, for about 15,000 more EA. Only the Americans shot down as many as 30,000EA making them much less than half as effective as the Nazis! ( 300K/30K=0.1 Victories per plane total ) The Nazis on the other hand only had ~125K planes to down >60K EA =0.48V/P! Interesting from this perspective, is it not?
     
    Shooter2018, Aug 28, 2018
    #55
  16. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    Curious...

    German Ace of Aces Erich Hartmann shoots down 352 EA...But, it takes him about 1,400 sorties to do it.

    American Ace Robert S. Johnson shoots down 27EA in only 89...Which puts him on track to score about 425, had he been allowed to fly as many missions as Hartmann

    Whoa! That doesn't look to good for those many Nazi Aces!

    Seems that the Germans were not that effective after all.
     
    Takao, Aug 28, 2018
    #56
    George Patton and USMCPrice like this.
  17. CAC

    CAC Ace of Spades

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    upload_2018-8-29_10-13-50.jpeg
    Clive Robert Caldwell - 28.5 confirmed in 318 sorties.

    "the Germans were aware of the aggressive Australian and were referring to him by a sobriquet of their own: “Tiger” Caldwell."

    [​IMG]
    Caldwell stands with the Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk that brought him home after an intense dogfight on August 29, 1941. The rugged P-40 absorbed everything the attacking Messerschmitt Me-109s could dish out, leaving Caldwell with just a few cuts and scratches
    - Gives a little credibility to the chase scene in "pearl Horbour"


    Since we are on the subject - My WW2 hero Caldwell.

    Robert S. Johnson - sounds like a very dangerous man in the air..id like to think he'd get on well with Clive.
     
    CAC, Aug 28, 2018
    #57
  18. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    It's a well known fact that the allies found Germany to be a very target poor environment by 44 as far as plane in the air were concerned. While the Germans had a very target rich environment for most if not all the war.
     
    lwd, Aug 29, 2018
    #58
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