[drgondog]

Paul - by the very nature of a very high population of 'aces', the Attack attitude against German fighters in any concentration was prevalent. So, by the very nature of the beast he is constantly engaging and thereby places himself at greater risk than those pilots at flight lead (or even squadron and Group lead) that were more content to hold escort positions rather than engage. So, I do expect more air to air losses in aces due to the increased combat probability and the very real possibility of being hit from behind while concentrating on someone in front of you. Frequently, the wingman was hit first... but once that type of fight has been engaged the ods of being shot down yourself are higher.

I agree that Goering's orders severely impacted the well tuned aggressiveness of the experienced LW day fighter pilots. The Split Ess and dive to obey orders and try to avoid combat killed a lot of German fighter pilots caught in the dive - rather than respond with a turn into the US fighter and engage in a tactically neutral position.

The other unintended consequences included letting US pilots hone advanced training skills by not attacking early and aggressively to kill the newly arrived pilots, thereby permitting a more paced exposure in many case to refine tactics and gain better awareness of relative strengths and weaknesses of the P-47 and Bf 109 and FW 190.

I don't have the statistics on air to air losses for the 332nd so can't comment other than to say that for Mustang groups that are compared to the 332nd from the June Ops date have far more air to air VC's in the same period as well as pilots that achieved ace status since the 332nd had zero despite having four squadrons in the group and two with significant experience in P-40s and P-47s before converting to P-51's.

IIRC the 332nd had ~ 100 air to air scores credited by USAF 85 from June through May 1945, but recall that all other FG's had only three squadrons?