Aces Falling

[Dej 17]

I've been doing some number crunching of data over at The Aerodrome, looking at the attrition rate of aces throughout the war and what the loss of an ace meant in terms of their experience... expressed as the number of victories thay had achieved before their demise.

 

I came up with the attached bubble chart which may be of interest. It's slightly distorted as I've had to scale the bubbles to 50% to avoid complete overlap, which knocks out the year/month alignment slightly.

 

What surprised me was that I'd always 'felt' that Entente superiority in 1918 resulted in German aces suddenly falling like ninepins, but if you look at the 3 month moving average lines, the German 'aces attrition rate' was much more steady that that of Britain, who really got hit hard in the same period. It also shows a trend for a higher average in the number of victories per German ace vs. a plethora of Brits who only just make the grade, so to speak.

 

Edited May 13, 2011 by Dej

[Olham 164]

Not so easy to understand, but after looking at the chart for some time, it seems to say,

that the British made their "breakthrough" successes with high numbers of casualties.

 

The higher victory number of German aces may result from three factors:

 

1. the Germans were trained much better at the beginning of the war, even in early 1917 the British pilot training was damn short

 

2. German pilots could not go home after half a year, as the British fighter pilots could* - they had to serve through the whole war

 

3. German fighter pilots did not have to cross the lines much, and so they were safer from becoming PoW

 

(* if I understand Arthur Gould Lee correct)

Edited May 11, 2011 by Olham

[DukeIronHand 8]

Very interesting and clearly much work.

 

I'll save that to my history folder for future study and I'll try to seek trends and causes.

 

Thanks Dej!

 

Edit: Grammar...geesh.

Edited May 11, 2011 by DukeIronHand

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

Fine and very interesting work, Dej. Sad for the distortion, but with some known points of reference, it's still highly readable. Thank you for posting.

[Dej 17]

Ground-strafing in an attempt to stem the German advances in the first half of 1918 saw the demise of many of the British minor aces and accounts in some part for the peak in that period. One can also trace the changes in air superiority lent to either side by technological advance... but not so markedly as one might anticipate. In general, the German Air Service was consistently better, some reasons for which Olham has given above.

 

Leaving the Italian Front aside, and with no disrespect to any other nation, the main protagonists in the air war are rather obvious... and more so were one to include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada into 'British'

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

It must be remembered that the criteria for qualifying as a confirmed ace largely differed depending on the nation. When browsing the scores of minor British/ Commonwealth aces (5 kills) on The Aerodrome, you find numbers of them (armfuls actually) whose all 5 kills were planes "seen out of control" without confirmed crash, or downed over places far away behind the front line (with aerial eyewitnesses only, when witnesses) - i.e. in circumstances where not a single one would have been confirmed in the French air force. The Germans rarely had this problem, as due to their defensive stance for most of the war, most of their Allied victims crashed on German-controlled territory.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Very interesting chart Dej, that must have taken you some time to assemble. Well done Sir.

 

Capitaine Vengeur, you are spot on with your observations. And concerning the British, they did not have a hard and fast kill number to even apply to the term "Ace". It was very subjective.

 

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[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

Moreover, a fair number of British aces were observers on fighter two-seaters (Brisfits mostly), sharing all of the crew's victories with the pilot, and could rise to high scores when flying with crack pilots (see Keith Park's, for example). The largest part probably really contributed to the crew's successes, but some may have never hit a barn gate and still become aces, it was the vicious part of the system. And one single Brisfit down could mean two aces out.

 

An interrogation I have, Dej. I can see no American bubble for Sept. 1918, but I can remember it was a bleeding month for the Yanks with at least three aces down for a total of 40 kills (Puttnam, Wehner and Luke, for the ones that come to my mind).

 

----------------------------------------

 

My definition of a "seen out of control" kill:

 

- Hello, Lieutenant Prune. Some kills today?

- You bet, Sir. A nice big red Fokker. Or pink, perhaps... I'll put red in the report, it will sound more a manly kill.

- Did you put him aflame? Did you see him crash?

- Well, not actually. I swooped down upon him, fired a burst at him, and then saw him dive.

- Dive?

- Yes, dive through the clouds. Damn, a fine burst. I'm almost sure one or two of my bullets had hit him. Yes, almost.

- But you didn't see him anymore thereafter, on the ground or in the air?

- No, I was too busy making my victorious barrel roll. But what? At the moment, the Hun must be stone dead, and frying in Hell with Lucifer!

- Or stone drunk, and frying sausages with his Fraulein... Congratulation, you champion!

 

 

 

 

[Dej 17]

You are correct, Monsieur. I too noticed (only this morning) that the US series was a few months short. I have revised the graph and replaced the original. I appreciate your attention to detail.