Special Sub-Topic: WWII Flying Aces Click Here To Play: WWII Flying Aces

Name America's Ace of Aces:

'Dick' Bong & Richard Bong & Bong & Richard 'Dick' Bong & Richard Ira Bong & Dick Bong. He notched up forty confirmed victories.

How did America's Ace of Aces end his career?

Killed in an accident while testing a P-80 jet one day after Hiroshima's bombing. 'Tommy' McGuire (38 victories) died in the combat with Sugimoto, and Neel Kearby (22 kills) died in combat against 15 Zeros. Both of them tried in vain to top the Ace of Aces. John C. Meyer (24 victories) ended as a four-star general in command of the SAC.

Erich 'Bubi' Hartmann (352 victories) was all time figther's Ace of Aces, but 'The Club of 300' had only another member with more than three hundred fighter kills:

Gerhard Barkhorn. Scores: Barkhorn: 301 Rall: 275 Graf: 212 Lipfert: 203 All of them including Hartmann flew for the JG52, probably the highest scoring air unit of all time.

Who has the record of kills for a single mission?

Erich Rudorffer, 13. Marseille (158 kills) flew THREE missions on September 1, 1942 with 4, 8 and 5 victories. Lang scored eighteen in one day, but not one mission. Rudorffer (222 kills) downed 13 enemies in 17 minutes on November 6, 1943. He flew many multiple-kill missions.

What was Hans-Ulrich Rudel's final score?

519 tanks, at least 1000 other vehicles, around 150 artillery pieces, at least 11 aircraft, one battleship, two cruisers and a destroyer. Amazing. He survived the war with only one leg (he flew many missions after the amputation).

These brothers (all of them aces) flew for the JG26 'Schlageter', an elite Luftwaffe unit of the Western Front. The elder was named Inspektuer General Der Jagdflieger (General Inspector of Fighters) but lost the job near the end of the war due to his quarreling with Hermann Goering.

Adolf, Paul and Wilhelm-Ferdinand Galland. When Adolf Galland was demoted as Inspekteur, he went to command JV44, an all-jet unit full of generals, colonels and aces. Wolfram Von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron, held many commanding posts during the Spanish Civil War and the Battles of Britain, Stalingrad and Kursk. Werner Moelders also was Inspekteur General until he was killed in an accident, but 'Vati' was his nickname, not his brother. Siegfried Marseille was Hans-Joachim's father. He was a Wehrmacht General killed in the Eastern Front in 1943. Hans-Joachim had died in an action accident in 1942, and his sister was killed by a jealous lover less than a year before that.

Egmont Zur Lippe-Weissenfeld (51 victories), Constantin Cantacuzino (43? kills), Heinrich Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (83 victories). What did these aces have in common?

All of them were noblemen (All of them were Nachtjaegers (night fighters), They were the top aces in the defense against the Ploesti oil raids, They were the only non-Germans to get the Eichenlaub (oak leaves) decoration). Prinz Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was born in Kopenhagen, {Denmark;} Prinz Zur Lippe-Weissenfeld was born in Austria. Both princes were night fighter aces. Cantacuzino was a Romanian Count.

Who was the top female ace of World War II?

Lidiya Litvak.

The top female ace had a large flower painted on the side of her plane. Her enemies mistook the flower and gave her a nickname:

A lily, 'the White Rose of Stalingrad'. Lidiya, 'The White Rose of Stalingrad' was killed a few months after her boyfriend, Alexei Salomatin (an ace himself with a dozen victories), was shot down and killed too. Her final score was twelve victories, but a few sources credit her with as many as twenty.

Who was the first Frenchman in WWII to top Rene Fonck (75 kills), the Allied First World War's ace of aces?

No French ace managed to top Fonck on WWII.