Good evening,
the ranking I-16 pilot is one of the top aces that is most difficult to determine, because
- the I-16 fought in 5 different wars
- the victory logs of the aces given by different sources hardly ever match
- the decimals of the shared kills are often unknown
To address the last point I calculated the average of all the Soviet shared kills whose decimals I ever found. The result was 0,35, which I assume might be to high.
Based on this I tried to compare the I-16 scores of the most promising aces:
- if we take the scores given in the book of Polak serious, Golubyev indeed might be the top I-16 ace with about 23+12sh kills in that type
- based on the scores in the book of Bykov, the I-16 top ace might be Gritsevets with 9+24sh kills in that type
- based on the scores given in the Polikarpov book of Maslov the most successful I-16 pilot might be Muravitzkiy with 12+35sh kills in the I-16
Thanks for your input,
Michael