by courtesy of Dominique MASSARD

Forewords : if comparisons of the Luftwaffe Fighters Pilots, with Russian pilots or English pilots or any other pilots from other countries, would lead quickly to some results without great significations (due to the too big differences and complexities of stakes parameters between the forces in presence), it is absolutely not the same stand when referring to the specific comparison between Luftwaffe and USAAF pilots.

Indeed , Americans had on their side :

• the best technology (with ”the best fighter of WWII”, namely the P51 Mustang ; or with the biggest and strongest bombers at that time : B17 and B24 )
• the world best industrial strength;
• a very wide human resources capacity;
• and an efficient organisation ( good training programs; operations tours allowing fighters pilots to get some rests before being exhausted; therefore an excellent optimisation of the resources use)

All these parameters force to build the assumption that USAAF can be considered as the strongest air-force reference during WWII; and comparisons with a such high reference can only end ultimately with interesting and indisputable conclusions about the counterparts who are compared in such process, in term of skill and efficiency.

In this way, the following table gives the list of the Luftwaffe pilots who exceeded the US top-scorer victories tally on European theatre namely 28 air victories (highest US score reached by R.S. Johnson and F. Gabreski) against US opponents only, in order to allow a quick and simple comparison between pilots from both sides (same time, same battlefields)

The result is self-explanatory: it can be noted that at least 30 Luftwaffe aces achieved to exceed Top-US score against USAAF opponents, the 1^st ranking ace (Georg-Peter Eder) by even achieving twice this top-US score with exactly 56 victories against the sole USAAF opponents !

Better than all other statistics, this two facts define perfectly the real brand and stuff of the Luftwaffe Fighters Pilots.

Last but not the least : it has to be reminded that those victories against US opponents represent, for some of these Luftwaffe pilots, only a small part of their complete victories list. Most of them were indeed able to gain numerous other victories against British, Russian, Pole, French, Belgian, Greek, Yugoslavian or other foes (refer to the attached table for the complete and final individual scores, and to each pilot`s page for the precise victories lists)

The reasons of such individual successes, could be found in the bravery and sacrifice the Luftwaffe Fighters Pilots had to shown in their daily fights to survive (some of them never stopped fighting during the 5 years of the conflict !) .... when they succeeded to do it: no less than one third of these very skilled and outstanding pilots, finally lost their life too in this attrition war...

Legend:

US kills: total of US downed aircrafts , credited to the pilot; Those US victories were gained on the 2 following theatres: West Europe: total of victories claimed on the Western European front (refer to Kanaljäger table for the complete list)
Mediterranean / North Africa: total of victories claimed on the Mediterranean / North Africa front.
Grand Total: Grand total victories tally, including all theatres of operations (West + Mediterranean / North Africa + East)

Last update 16.06.2007