Who was the youngest person to become an ace?

Sorry about the delayed response.

I´m no expert on the Pacific Air War and made the faulty assumption that the US aces in the Pacific had their scores revised in the same manner as their counterparts in Europe.

It is not true that they needed the wreckage, an eyewitness that would confirm that the enemy aircraft had crashed would do nicely. But it is also largely ingnored that the system became a lot less rigid towards the end of the war, and that claims often were confirmed at face value. But let´s have a look at one example of how the tough confirmation system of the Germans worked :

The Battle of Heligoland Bight; December 18, 1939. 34 victories were claimed by JG1 of which 7 were actually rejected by the RLM, leaving a total of 27 confirmed kills for the pilots of JG1. Actual British losses : 12 Wellingtons lost, a further three damaged.

A resently published article actually concludes with Hartmann´s score reduced to 'only' 80 kills. We know that a number of Hartmann´s kills were confirmed by his wingman only. We also know that Hartmann was caught up in the German propaganda apparatus, and that a lot of his claims bypassed the bureacracy of the RLM and was confirmed at face value. I don´t know what the thruth is, but Hartmann was probably not the highest scoring German ace. His actual score was most likely a lot closer to 80 than 352.

 

I dunno

Hartmann himself was shot down numerous times.. I can't recall 6 or 26 times

When you talk about aces, consider fighter to fighter kills

One German 'claims' what ever, 79 heavy bombers.

Hartman shot up alot of Il2's and observation planes


The USA and Britian both claim over 1200 different individual aces in WWII

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/aces/aces.htm#wwii


Germany 882 (967 scores of 20 or more, probable 5000+ total aces)


hmmm

5000 * 5= 25,000 planes possible

 

Lily Litvak (f) 12 WWII USSR
Katya Budanova (f) 11(6?) WWII USSR

babe aces :bang:

 

There are two nations whom kill records you should always take with a grain of salt with you. The first is Japanese (no invidiual kill records archived and their consept of an aerial victory is somewhat vague) and the second is USSR (if you didn't kill the facists planes in the air, you were cosidered useless in the face of the communist party and one would end up in a jail or bullet in the back of your head. So the squadron commanders would exaggerate their squadrons kill numbers).