[drgondog]

Originally Posted by John Beaman

I may have this in the wrong forum--as a Moderator, I apologize but that's one of the privileges of being a Moderator.

As may of you know I live in North Carolina. The 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour-Johnson AFB in Goldsboro is having an exercise this week celebrating the fact that in April 1945, the 4th destroyed its 1000th enemy aircraft. As we all know this counted air and ground strafing.

In 1957, the USAF Fighter Victory Credits Board denied all claims for ground kills to both units and individuals, hence the 4th is down the list from 1000 destroyed.

Actually John, The USAF Victory Credits Board historians examined all the VCB credits and scrubbed the list of Ground Credits for the purposes of the study - which IIRC (and Frank can correct this) - was part of a USAF study engaged to determine statistically which attributes were common for fighter pilots who excelled in air combat.

The 4th achieved a higher victory total over the 56th by virtue of the ground scores. The 355th was third only because it achieved 500+ ground credits but only ranked 5th (in 8th AF) by virtue of only 340 air credits (behind 56th, 357th, 4th and 352nd).

When I pointed this out to the USAF 4th FG historian, he commented that he thought the 1957 FVCB was set up to only deny "Ace" status to those who had ground kills as a part of their claim to Acedom. My sense is that the Board was doing ALL kill claims for both units and individuals, not just whether you were entitled to "ace" status.

Can anyone comment on the "official" mission of the Board?

THX

Having said this the 4th is still the top wing for air credits (all combat)with 548.95 in WWII and 506 in Korea. The 'silly' .95 is a function of the three squadrons having a .64 a .65 and a .66 credit.

Summary - the 4th was the 'top' AAF Group in the 8th AF in the manner for which victory credits were awarded, the ground credits were eliminated for the purposes of quantifying Only air credits, and as such the USAF will look at WWII VC's as 548.95 instead of 1016 (or whatever the post VE Day summary was)... and Frank is 100% correct AFAIK regarding the other theatres as well as Korea and VietNam.

Vaguely I recall that ~ 16 ground scores were noted in reports but you wan't see them in VCB.