Spitfire

[knusel]

Hello,

has it ever been endeavoured to determine the grand total aerial victory score of the Supermarine Spitfire ?

Michael

[knusel]

...or is it known how many aerial victories the RAF scored in WW2 ?

Michael

[Alfred.MONZAT]

John Foreman give a grand total for the ETO in his Fighter Command War Diaries, but there is no total by aircraft type (but you can browse it or his RAF Fighter Command Victory Claims of World War 2 and sum all the victories if you want...). It's a little bellow 11k, I can give you the exact value later.

[knusel]

Good morning Alfred,

thanks for the hint.
Can you tell me that ETO grand total you mentioned ?
Does "11k" mean 11.000 ETO kills for the RAF ?

Have a nice weekend,

Michael

[Alfred.MONZAT]

Here are John Foreman's numbers (ETO - day and night fighters) :

10,736.5 : 4,779 : 3,785 (air) & 437 : 24 : 642 (ground)

[knusel]

Cool, thank you !
Did the Commonwealth record their MTO/CBI/PTO victories separately ?

Michael

[Stig1207]

The P-51 scored the bulk of it's victories in the ETO, in a time period where the accuracy of allied claims was higher than it had been earlier. That might make it the highest scoring
allied fighter.

[knusel]

Hello there Gentlemen,

it think I read it in a collection called "FASZINATION FLIEGEN" that the Mustang scored the most kills of all the Allied fighters.
Allow me a naive fallacy: according to Tomas Polak

• the Soviet air force had ~91.000 fighter aircraft
• 16.000 (17,5%) of these being Yak-9's
• the Soviet air force scored 40.000 kills
• 17,5% of 40.000 is 7.000

Thus, 7000 kills for the Yak-9 seem possible, but hardly any of the high-scoring Soviet aces scored heavily in that plane. That might indicate that the Yak-9 grand total is considerably lower. Also the La-5 grand total might be much higher than the calculated ~4400, because there were so many high-scoring La-5 pilots.

If you break down John Foreman's RAF figure (ETO - day and night fighters) of 10,736.5 to the two main British fighters Spitfire (20.000 planes) and Hurricane (14.000 planes) you arrive at ~6300 possible Spitfire kills

• plus Spitfire kills in the MTO/CBI/PTO
• plus Spitfire kills by the Americans and Russians
• minus the RAF ETO kills scored by the Nightfighters
• minus the RAF ETO kills scored by other types.

Michael

[PMoz99]

The Yak-9 continued to be built after the end of the war. According to Wiki, 'only' some 14500 were built during the war.
Peter

[knusel]

Good afternoon Peter,

according to Polak, the Soviet Airforce had 11.000 fighters at the beginning of the war
and received 63.000 more during the war.
Thus, 14.500 Yak-9's are 19,5% all fighters availabe during the war.
19,5% of 40.000 kills is ~7800 kills.

Michael