MARSEILLE his last kill

[Christer Bergström]

the best German fighter pilots were not better that the best Allied pilots.

That would mean that after around 100 combat missions,* any fighter pilot stops developing his skills.

Well, that is not what I have heard from the fighter pilots themselves. Alfred Grislawski, whom I had the fortune of coming to know fairly well, said that by the time he flew over Normandy (when he had logged almost 800 combat missions), he was very much better than three years earlier, when he had flown "only" about 150 combat missions. (I specifically asked him that question.) In Grislawski's opinion, you had to fly at least 50 combat missions before you could get a grip of the whole air combat situation. But that of course was with the perspective of a man who flew over 800 combat missions. Grislawski said that when he flew over Normandy, he felt that he was immensely superior to any Allied pilot which he encountered; his experience had learned him to predict whcih his enemy's next maneuver would be. He noticed that any Allied pilot which he encountered was inferior to him in air combat.

Of course there is nothing which says that a man who has flown 800 combat missions has to be better than anyone who has flown only 100 combat missions. But you can compare one man with himself. And experience tells us that skill will increase with practise, in most fields of human activity. Since the pilots themselves tell us that too, I think that weighs more than the idea of a modern-generation guy that "all aces were equally good, regardless of experience".

Of course there are other factors, but assuming that none of these other factors supported any of the warring sides more than the other sides when we take the war as a whole, I think that we still end up with experience and practise as a very decisive factor.

This has nothing to do with nationality. I would assume that if e.g. Robert S. Johnson had flown ten times more combat missions than he actually did, he would have developed his combat skills even more. I don't think that there is anyone who has nothing more to learn in such a complex field. Another German pilot, Walter Schuck, told me that all the time he learned new things in air combat.


* George Preddy's 143rd combat mission was his last combat mission. Other top US aces stopped flying combat missions after about that number of missions. For instance, Gabreski left combat after 153 combat missions, and Robert S. Johnson flew no more than 91 combat missions. I am quite sure that Grislawski is right: If these men would have flown - and survived! - 800 combat missions, at least some of them probably would have become even better.