World War I , known as the "Red Baron", scored the most officially accepted kills (80) in World War I and is arguably the most famous flying ace of all time. World War I introduced the systematic use of true single-seat fighter aircraft, with enough speed and agility to catch and maintain contact with targets in the air, coupled with armament sufficiently powerful to destroy the targets. Aerial combat became a prominent feature with the
Fokker Scourge, in the last half of 1915. This was also the beginning of a long-standing trend in warfare, showing statistically that approximately five percent of combat pilots account for the majority of air-to-air victories. and were often not in a position to confirm that an enemy aircraft had crashed, so these victories were frequently claimed as "driven down", "forced to land", or "out of control" (called "probables" in later wars). These victories were usually included in a pilot's totals and citations for decorations. , to this day the highest-scoring Allied flying ace with 75 victories The British high command considered the praise of fighter pilots to be detrimental to equally brave bombers and reconnaissance aircrew – so that the British air services did not publish official statistics on the successes of individuals. Nonetheless, some pilots did become famous through press coverage, This shows that his
No. 46 Squadron RAF counted shared kills, but separately from "solo" ones—one of a number of factors that seems to have varied from unit to unit. Also evident is that Lee considered a higher figure than five kills to be necessary for "ace" status. Aviation historians credit him as an ace with two enemy aircraft destroyed and five driven down out of control, for a total of seven victories. Other Allied countries, such as France and Italy, fell somewhere in between the very strict German approach and the relatively casual British one. They usually demanded independent witnessing of the destruction of an aircraft, making confirmation of victories scored in enemy territory very difficult. The Belgian crediting system sometimes included "out of control" to be counted as a victory. The
United States Army Air Service adopted French standards for evaluating victories, with two exceptions – during the summer 1918, while flying under the operational control of the British, the
17th Aero Squadron and the 148th Aero Squadron used British standards. While "ace" status was generally won only by fighter pilots, bombers and reconnaissance crews on both sides also destroyed some enemy aircraft, typically in defending themselves from attack. The most notable example of a non-pilot ace in World War I is
Charles George Gass with 39 accredited aerial victories.
Between the world wars Between the two world wars two conflicts produced flying aces, the
Spanish Civil War and the
Second Sino-Japanese War. The
Spanish ace
Joaquín García Morato scored 40 victories for the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Part of the outside intervention in the war was the supply of "volunteer" foreign pilots to both sides. Russian and American aces joined the Republican air force, while the Nationalists included Germans and Italians. The
Soviet Volunteer Group began operations in the Second Sino-Japanese War as early as December 2, 1937, resulting in 28 Soviet aces. The
Flying Tigers were American military pilots who were recruited
sub rosa to aid the
Chinese Nationalists. They spent the summer and autumn of 1941 in transit to China, and did not begin flying combat missions until December 20, 1941.
World War II , with 352 official kills, by far the highest scoring fighter pilot of all time In
World War II many air forces adopted the British practice of crediting fractional shares of aerial victories, resulting in fractions or decimal scores, such as or 26.83. Some U.S. commands also credited aircraft destroyed on the ground as equal to aerial victories. The Soviets distinguished between solo and group kills, as did the Japanese, though the
Imperial Japanese Navy stopped crediting individual victories (in favor of squadron tallies) in 1943. The
Soviet Air Forces has the top Allied pilots in terms of aerial victories,
Ivan Kozhedub credited with 66 victories and
Alexander Pokryshkin scored 65 victories. It also claimed the only female aces of the war:
Lydia Litvyak scored 12 victories and
Yekaterina Budanova achieved 11. The highest scoring pilots from the Western allies against the German Luftwaffe were
Johnnie Johnson (
RAF, 38 kills) and
Gabby Gabreski (
USAAF, 28 kills in the air and 3 on the ground). In the Pacific theater
Richard Bong became the top American fighter ace with 40 kills. In the Mediterranean theater
Pat Pattle achieved at least 40 kills, mainly against Italian planes, and became the top fighter ace of the
British Commonwealth in the war. Fighting on different sides, the French pilot
Pierre Le Gloan had the unusual distinction of shooting down four German, seven Italian and seven British aircraft, the latter while he was flying for
Vichy France in
Syria. , the top Finnish flying ace with 94 confirmed kills The German
Luftwaffe continued the tradition of "one pilot, one kill", and now referred to top scorers as
Experten. Some Luftwaffe pilots achieved very high scores, such as
Erich Hartmann (352 kills) or
Gerhard Barkhorn (301 kills). There were 107 German pilots with more than 100 kills. Most of these were won against the
Soviet Air Force. The highest scoring fighter ace against Western allied forces were
Hans-Joachim Marseille (158 kills) and
Heinz Bär (208 kills, of which 124 in the west). Notable are also
Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, with 121 kills the highest-scoring
night-fighter ace, and
Werner Mölders, the first pilot to claim more than 100 kills in the history of
aerial warfare. Pilots of other Axis powers also achieved high scores, such as
Ilmari Juutilainen (
Finnish Air Force, 94 kills),
Constantin Cantacuzino (
Romanian Air Force, 69 kills) or
Mato Dukovac (
Croatian Air Force, 44 kills). The highest scoring Japanese fighter pilot was
Tetsuzō Iwamoto, who achieved 216 kills. , the top Soviet and Allied flying ace in the war, with 60 solo victories to his credit A number of factors probably contributed to the very high totals of the top German aces. For a limited period (especially during
Operation Barbarossa), many Axis victories were over obsolescent aircraft and either poorly trained or inexperienced Allied pilots. In addition, Luftwaffe pilots generally flew many more individual
sorties (sometimes well over 1000) than their Allied counterparts. Moreover, they often kept flying combat missions until they were captured, incapacitated, or killed, while successful Allied pilots were usually either promoted to positions involving less combat flying or routinely rotated back to training bases to pass their valuable combat knowledge to younger pilots. An imbalance in the number of targets available also contributed to the apparently lower numbers on the Allied side, since the
number of operational Luftwaffe fighters was normally well below 1,500, with the total aircraft number never exceeding 5,000, and
the total aircraft production of the Allies being nearly triple that of the other side. A difference in tactics might have been a factor as well;
Erich Hartmann, for example, stated "See if there is a straggler or an uncertain pilot among the enemy... Shoot him down", which would have been an efficient and relatively low-risk way of increasing the number of kills. At the same time, the Soviet 1943 "Instruction For Air Combat" stated that the first priority must be the enemy commander, which was a much riskier task, but one giving the highest return in case of a success.
Post-World War II aces Korean War The
Korean War of 1950–53 marked the transition from
piston-engined propeller driven aircraft to more modern jet aircraft. As such, it saw the world's first jet-vs-jet aces. The highest scoring ace of the war is considered to be the Soviet pilot
Nikolai Sutyagin who claimed 22 kills.
Vietnam War , 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, pictured beside the aircraft in which he became the first Air Force ace of the Vietnam War The
Vietnam People's Air Force had begun development of its modern air-forces, primarily trained by Czechoslovak and Soviet trainers since 1956. The outbreak of the largest sustained bombardment campaign in history prompted rapid deployment of the nascent air-force, and the first engagement of the war was in April 1965 at
Thanh Hóa Bridge which saw relatively outdated subsonic
MiG-17 units thrown against technically superior
F-105 Thunderchief and
F-8 Crusader, damaging 1 F-8 and killing two F-105 jets. The MiG-17 generally did not have sophisticated radars and missiles and relied on dog-fighting and maneuverability to score kills on US aircraft. The VPAF had carried out the first air-raid on US ships since WW2, with two aces including
Nguyễn Văn Bảy attacking US ships during the
Battle of Đồng Hới in 1972. Quite often air-to-air losses of US fighter jets were re-attributed to
surface-to-air missiles, as it was considered "less embarrassing". By the war's end, the US had nevertheless confirmed 249 air-to-air US aircraft losses while the figures for North Vietnam are disputed, ranging from 195 North Vietnamese aircraft from US claims to 131 from Soviet, North Vietnamese and allied records. American air-to-air combat during the Vietnam War generally matched intruding United States
fighter-bombers against radar-directed integrated North Vietnamese air defense systems. American
F-4 Phantom II, F-8 Crusader and F-105 fighter crews usually had to contend with
surface-to-air missiles and
anti-aircraft artillery before opposing fighters attacked them. The long-running conflict produced 22 aces: 17 North Vietnamese pilots, two American pilots, three American weapon systems officers or WSOs (WSO is the USAF designation, one of the three was actually a US Naval aviator, with an equivalent job, but using the USN designation of Radar Intercept Officer or RIO).
Arab–Israeli war , the highest scoring flying ace in the
Israeli Air Force with 17 aerial victories The series of wars and conflicts between Israel and its neighbors began with Israeli independence in 1948 and continued for over three decades.
Iran–Iraq war , an ace fighter pilot in the
Iranian Air Force. The most successful
F-14 Tomcat pilot ever with eight confirmed kills during the Iran-Iraq war. Brig. General
Jalil Zandi (1951–2001) was an ace
fighter pilot in the
Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, serving for the full duration of the
Iran–Iraq War. His record of eight confirmed and three probable victories against Iraqi combat aircraft qualifies him as an ace and the most successful pilot of that conflict and the most successful
Grumman F-14 Tomcat pilot worldwide. Brig. General
Shahram Rostami was another Iranian ace. He was also an F-14 pilot. He had six confirmed kills. His victories include one
MiG-21, two
MiG-25s, and three
Mirage F1s. Colonel
Mohammed Rayyan was an Iraqi ace fighter pilot who shot down 10 Iranian aircraft, mostly
F-4 Phantoms during the war.
Indo-Pakistan War Air Commodore
Muhammad Mahmood Alam was an ace fighter pilot in the
Pakistan Air Force. During the
Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Alam claimed to have downed five aircraft in a single sortie on 7 September 1965 with four downed in less than a minute, establishing a world record. These claims, however, have been widely contested but never substantiated by Indian Air Force officials.
Iran–Israel war United States Air Force F-15E pilot Capt. Claire “Atomic” Eddins and Weapons System Officer (WSO) Capt. Carla Nava shot down five Iranian drones during an attack on Israel on 13 April 2024. They became aces in a day and the first all-female crew to become flying aces in history. They were both awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions. In the same engagement, Maj. Benjamin Coffey and WSO Capt. Lacie Hester shot down six Iranian drones; they both received the
Silver Star for their efforts. In the Red Sea, Lt. Col. William “Skate” Parks was credited with 6 aerial victories while operating against Houthi forces who were targeting the carrier . ==Accuracy==