Ace in a day

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Here are three French "aces in one day"

8 June 1940
Cne Robert Willame of GC I/2 shot down 3 Me109 and 3 Ju87 over France (a Ju87 shared with another pilot and a Me109 shared with two other pilots)

15 June 1940
Pierre Le Gloan of GC III/6 claimed 4 CR42 (two shared with another pilot) and a BR20 over Southern France.

8 November 1942
George Blanck of GC III/3 shot down 2 Albacores and 3 shared C-47 during the Torch landings (the C-47s were shared with 3 other pilots).

I believe there were no others. I was guessing I will find one in Normandie-Niemen on the Eastern Front but if several pilots claimed 4 victories in one day, none reached the 5-kills mark as far as I have found.

And for a partial list for American pilots, see the following link (only for P-51 pilot):
http://www.mustangsmustangs.net/p-51...ceinaday.shtml
A "complete" list is available here:
http://math.fce.vutbr.cz/safarik/ACE...1/usa-top.html
But I doubt that all USN/USMC ace-in-a-day are in the list.
And you will find the story of the last American ace in a day here:
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/perdomo/perdomo.htm

Antoni Glowacki that you have in your list is according to my sources the only Polish ace in a day.

A list of Soviet "ace-in-a-day" is available here:
http://math.fce.vutbr.cz/safarik/ACE.../sssr-top.html

[alex crawford]

Hi Laurent,

Thanks for the French and American details. This gives me a starting off point for further detailed research.

Nick

What I would like to do is establish the official score and then try and tie this in with actual losses. From experience I know that this is not as easy as it sounds.

If anyone can help with further details of these claims then that would be appreciated. I only came up with this idea today and I think it wil make a very interesting project.

What I have found out is that of the 25 claims by RAF pilots, 3 of which claimed this feat twice, 16 of them flew Hurricanes and 17 occured in 1940, 4 in 1941, 1 in 1942 and 3 in 1943. I guess there was a lack of targets in 1944 and '45.

Alex

[Dénes Bernád]

If you're also interested in Axis pilots, there were many so-called 'ace-in-a-day', obviously mainly Luftwaffe pilots, but including at least one Rumanian, too.