Posted: 7/21/2011 1:03:39 AM EDT
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These were brave men fighting for there respective nations.
Germany - Erich Hartmann, official air-to-air victory total - 352 
Empire of Japan - Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, official air-to-air victory total - 87 Impressive U.S.S.R. - Ivan Kozhedub, official air-to-air victory total - 62 Top allied ace U.S. - Richard Bong, official air-to-air victory total - 40 Legend. All in the Pacific Theatre I beleive. U.K. - James Edgar Johnson, official air-to-air victory total - 38 
Italy - Adriano Visconti, official air-to-air victory total - 26 Don't know if it was in German or Italian aircraft. Either way, pretty impressive. |
| The Dick Bong museum in Superior WI is freakin' awesome. For over 20 years my friends and I would go to the south shore of Lake Superior multiple times every summer and every time we would swing by the tiny plaque by the roadside in Poplar, WI, Bong's birthplace, and leave money in the donations box. After all that time they finally built one of the coolest museums on WW 2 history for a single person. It has a full sized P38 in it and tons of other great stuff about Dick Bong and WW 2. |
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Quoted:
The Dick Bong museum in Superior WI is freakin' awesome. For over 20 years my friends and I would go to the south shore of Lake Superior multiple times every summer and every time we would swing by the tiny plaque by the roadside in Poplar, WI, Bong's birthplace, and leave money in the donations box. After all that time they finally built one of the coolest museums on WW 2 history for a single person. It has a full sized P38 in it and tons of other great stuff about Dick Bong and WW 2. Well, thanks for helping the memory of these exceptional human beings live on. They were all brave and skilled and I have the utmost admiration for them all. |
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Quoted:
Visconti flew the Macchi C.200 series (including the C.205  ) and briefly flew a Bf 109G.
And got smoked by a P-47  Thankyou for the clarification. Makes it that much more impressive! I guess the earlier Itallian monoplane fighters lacked speed but were quite maneuverable? I wonder if some of his kills were Gladiators? My favorite bi-plane. |
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Bong did his tour, came home and got killed testing a new a/c. Just fucking figures.
Hartmann was captured by the Russians, was released in 55(?). Most German aces flew until they were killed or so scuffed up their careers were over. There is a good book about the Luftwaffe titled "Horrido", worth the read. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Visconti flew the Macchi C.200 series (including the C.205 ) and briefly flew a Bf 109G.
And got smoked by a P-47 Thankyou for the clarification. Makes it that much more impressive! I guess the earlier Itallian monoplane fighters lacked speed but were quite maneuverable? I wonder if some of his kills were Gladiators? My favorite bi-plane. Amazingly, Itlay was really one of the pioneering nations when it came to aircraft design back in the 1920s and early 1930s. They never had the industrial base to take full advantage of it, but if you look back at the various Seaplane and land-based aircraft competitions back in the day, Italy routinely did quite well. I think they completely dominated seaplane competitions until UK's Supermarine got their act together and smoked everyone. Italian WW2 aircraft were said to be very very maneuverable, but weak engines gave them lower speeds and shorter range. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Visconti flew the Macchi C.200 series (including the C.205 ) and briefly flew a Bf 109G.
And got smoked by a P-47 Thankyou for the clarification. Makes it that much more impressive! I guess the earlier Itallian monoplane fighters lacked speed but were quite maneuverable? I wonder if some of his kills were Gladiators? My favorite bi-plane. Yeah, the early C.200 series (C.200, C.202) and the equivalent Fiats and Regianne aircraft (G.50 and Re.2000, respectively) were nimble little aircraft, but had trouble keeping up with their adversaries in terms of speed. Once the C.205, G.55, and Re.2005 came online, the story changed –– the C.205 ranked among the best piston engine aircraft of the war. |
