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00:00Throughout World War II, the best of the best, the top guns of their day, were the aces of
00:14every nation. The aces, men who could claim five or more planes to their credit, rose to fame
00:21through their amazing exploits in aerial combat. By war's end, only three percent of all fighter
00:27pilots could claim ace status. Those three percent accounted for almost 50% of all the
00:33air-to-air victories scored between 1939 and 1945. How did they achieve such success? Clearly,
00:44an ace was a breed apart, a man who combined extraordinary flying skill with courage, keen
00:50eyesight, and savvy tactics. Those who lived through their combat experiences were usually
00:56the most calculating of all. The men who balanced risk-taking with a cool, professional understanding
01:03of their aircraft and the capabilities of the enemies. The best aces chose their tactics based
01:08on those two factors, combined with the position they found themselves in at the start of a fight.
01:18Fighter tactics in World War II underwent a radical transformation by the time VE Day brought the
01:24fighting to a close. As much as air-fighting changed, however, the basic elements remained a constant.
01:30In fact, all the basic tactical foundations had long since been laid in World War I.
01:36But it took time for those lessons to be relearned once Hitler's rampage in Europe began 20 years later.
01:45During World War I, air combat tactics evolved into two basic elements in the fighting over the Western
01:52front. The first was the traditional swirling, turning dogfight that you see in all the World War I-type
01:58air combat movies. But the Germans developed a real specialized tactic by 1918 to preserve their
02:05small fighter force on the Western Front. This was the hit-and-run tactic. They were able to dive into
02:11opposing formations, hit them, and then run away as fast as they could by high-speed dives.
02:16Well, during the 1930s, both of these elements of air-to-air combat were really lost as tacticians and
02:25theorists concluded that dogfighting was a thing of the past because of the high speeds that new fighter
02:31aircraft were capable of achieving. The RAF was probably the most heavily influenced by that argument.
02:39Instead of focusing on air-to-air combat between fighters, it developed a wide array of rigid tactics
02:45designed to mass the firepower of a fighter formation onto bombers. Fighters in the RAF were considered
02:53interceptors, not air superiority weapons. The mass attack tactics developed by the RAF during the
03:01interwar period proved to be an utter catastrophe during the initial stages of the Second World War.
03:08The main reason for this was the fact that when flying in these tight formations,
03:13only the squadron leader or the flight leader would actually be looking around for enemy aircraft.
03:17Everybody else was so busy flying wing on the other aircraft in the formation that they didn't have
03:23the opportunity to be looking for enemy aircraft. Consequently, they were constantly surprised and
03:30aircraft were lost that probably wouldn't have been lost had they been flying in looser formations.
03:34The other issue was the fact that taking these unwieldy large cumbersome formations and trying to
03:42maneuver them in a very, very fast dogfighting environment proved to be incompatible with the
03:49realities of modern air warfare. If the RAF entered the war with deliberate and rigid tactics, the Luftwaffe took
03:57the opposite approach. The war in Spain taught the Luftwaffe to heed the lessons of World War I.
04:03They developed loose formations of four planes each called a swarm with two plane elements called rotes.
04:11They were flexible and allowed the pilots enough room so they could be looking around for enemy aircraft.
04:18As the British came up their learning curve, they gradually abandoned their pre-war tactics in
04:24favor of modified German formations. Originally, RAF squadrons flew three-plane Vicks or Vs where the
04:31leader flew with two wingmen tucked in tight behind him. By early 1941, the British had developed a six-plane
04:39formation that was much looser and effective. It was a variation on this formation that the RAF taught to
04:46newly formed American squadrons that joined the fight against the Luftwaffe in 1942.
04:52Basically, the British formation that we used was a box formation. A leader, a wingman behind him and
05:04slightly off to the side, element leader, and his wingman off a little bit to the side. Almost a box.
05:12From the RAF tactics that the U.S. Army Air Force inherited in North Africa and also in the early
05:19days in England, the pilots, the fighter pilots, the American fighter pilots developed a new formation
05:25that they called the Finger Four. And it's very similar to the German Schwarm. But imagine
05:31four planes on the end of each finger and each finger tip or fingernail representing the aircraft.
05:38The leader would be right here, the flight leader. His wingman is this guy right here. The element
05:44leader is here and the element leader's wingman is in trail behind the rest of the formation back here.
05:50And the point of this formation was to fly as loose as possible while still being able to provide
05:57mutual support. And this way they could all be looking around for enemy aircraft and protect each
06:02other at the same time. As formation styles evolved, so did the fighter pilot's knowledge of how best to
06:09employ his aircraft against the enemy. In training before the war, dogfighting had always been considered
06:15something of a one-on-one affair. Little effort was made in such encounters for a fighter formation to work
06:22as a team. Again, it was the Germans who rediscovered their roots. In Spain, they learned the distinctions
06:32between dogfighting styles, hit and run versus a turning fight. A light, agile fighter was found to be best
06:40for a turning battle, while faster aircraft with better climbing and diving characteristics proved to be the
06:46best hit and run style weapons. The Germans developed the best early war hit and run fighter in the
06:56Mission Smith 109. The 109 was capable of amazing vertical maneuvers and performance. And as a result,
07:04they could dive down on British formations, hit them, make a pass, and climb away with their energy that
07:11they had accumulated in the dive, and engage and disengage the British at will, and the early
07:16American pilots as well. And this sort of attack caused a lot of losses amongst allied aircraft and
07:23aircrew during the early days and early months of the war. The only thing that the British and the
07:28American pilots in 1940, 41, 42 could do was try to break away from these diving attacks and turn.
07:36And while that was a fine defensive maneuver, it made them entirely reactive. They could not
07:42really retain the initiative or capture the initiative away from this amazing energy fighter.
07:47Any time you got into a jam, attacked by 109, and they were usually above us, so they'd have the
07:55initiative initially. Any time you were attacked by 109, about the only thing you could do to keep from
08:03getting hit was to get into a tight turn, which he couldn't keep with you. And if he, if you could
08:09persuade him to stick with you, you could eventually get around work into position on his tail.
08:14The Germans could never turn with you. A 109 had a much heavier wing loading, 34 pounds, 32 pounds,
08:21versus the Spitbars Hurricane's 25. So a German wouldn't be fool enough to try and get on a tight turn with
08:27you. You'd nail them. You'd just turn inside them and shoot them. They knew that.
08:33Occasionally, overzealous German pilots would commit a fatal error and attempt to turn fight
08:39Allied fighters. Those pilots did not live long. I spotted a bunch of 109s came, came down from above us
08:48and, uh, heading down toward the, toward the targets. Well, I turned my flight up into them
08:57and tried to, to divert them, drive them off, which was kind of silly because they were about six,
09:04six or eight 109s and we were four B-40s at that point. At any rate, we got into a big, big hassle
09:12going round and round. And, um, I wound up with three of them on my tail, taking turns and making passes at me.
09:19Uh, and as, as I had mentioned earlier, uh, when they'd get within what I estimated was firing range,
09:26why I'd get into a, go into a turn and managed to, uh, divert them that way to the point where
09:32they couldn't pull enough lead to, uh, hit me. And one of them made the mistake of trying to turn with
09:39me. And in two turns, I got around behind him and killed him. As the war progressed and newer American
09:49designs entered the fighting over Europe, the Germans saw the advantages they enjoyed with the
09:54ME 109 and FW 190 erode. From about mid-1943 on, German pilot quality really began to decline.
10:03And as it declined, allied pilot quality increased as there was the more breathing room to train the
10:11pilots more effectively and more thoroughly before they went into combat. And it was that fact combined
10:17with the new aircraft that the allies were just beginning to deploy that could outclass the 190
10:23and the, and the Mission Smith 109 that gave the allies the edge they needed in the skies over Europe.
10:29The P-47 Thunderbolt was the first of the new breed. At altitude, nothing could beat a Thunderbolt if
10:37flown by a skilled pilot. Though normally considered a hit and run or energy fighter due to its terrific
10:43diving abilities, in the hands of a skilled pilot, the P-47 D and M models could tackle any Luftwaffe
10:50fighter in any type of dogfight. With a fighter capable of both styles of air combat, the tactical
11:00situation usually dictated how the fight would develop. Whoever had altitude advantage generally
11:07initiated the fight and would attempt to keep the engagement vertical using hit and run strategies.
11:13At low altitudes, energy fighters were at a distinct disadvantage. If caught low and slow,
11:22they could be chewed up by turn fights where they would have no escape.
11:26Fortunately, the P-47 in skilled hands proved to be a more than capable all-around fighter,
11:41even in a low altitude turning fight. We were on the deck, working on the deck, and I think we could
11:48outfly him on the deck. He couldn't, he couldn't get away from me. I could turn in and keep right with
11:53him and so I just had him going and going and he finally decided it was better to get out than to get
11:57shot down. While the P-47 proved to be an excellent fighter aircraft, early P-38 pilots who flew against
12:05the Luftwaffe in late 1942 and 43 found themselves at a real disadvantage. Initially, many P-38 squadrons
12:14attempted to engage in turn fights with the German 109s and 190s, a disastrous mistake. Since the 109s
12:23and 190s were as fast or faster as early P-38s, the American pilots usually could not outrun their
12:30Luftwaffe counterparts unless they started a fight with an altitude advantage. Even the mid-war variants
12:39of the P-38, including the F and G models, had a particularly hard time in Europe in the escort role. Tied to the
12:45bombers, the lightning pilots seemed to always find themselves in a disadvantageous tactical situation.
12:53A German plane could cut off their attack any time. All they had to do was dive. A P-38, this was a bad
13:08maneuver because if we went into a dive and followed them while we got into compressibility, at first,
13:15we couldn't pull it out of there. Compressibility is a high-speed buffet and it's dangerous.
13:28They were up there hiding in the sun and they'd roll over and come down at us. For a while there,
13:37we thought the Germans were after us instead of the bombers. We couldn't outturn them and we couldn't
13:47dive with them. It was their show there for quite a bit. We didn't get as many of them, I guess,
13:55as they got out of us. We had quite a few losses. After some painful lessons, the P-38 units learned
14:03to at least hold their own against the Luftwaffe through 1943. When you see them coming, you turn.
14:12They didn't like the front end of a P-38. They had respect for us. You see, they didn't know what we
14:21could do. They had to learn just like we did, how well we were going to perform against them.
14:31By the end of 1944, however, the P-38L reached units in the European theater and gave the Americans
14:38a revolutionary model of the Lightning. With its hydraulic boost controls, dive brakes to inhibit
14:46compressibility and powerful Allison engines, the L model allowed the pilots to employ tactics that
14:52weren't available to them before. The original P-38 was kind of stiff. You had to really put effort.
15:01One pound here was one pound out there. But after they put those hydraulic boosters on it,
15:06one pound here was 16 out there. And boy, we could out roll Spitfires or P-51s or any of the rest of them
15:14with eight iron boosters. And so the quicker you can establish your turn and pull back on the stick,
15:19it means the tighter turn you can make. See, and we could out turn anybody. And then it would turn
15:26right, being so stable, whenever a single engine plane gets down to about 91, 92 miles an hour,
15:33if you're turning to the right and it stalls, it'll flip back over this way, out of control. P-38,
15:39you could turn it right down forever, 72 miles an hour, full power and never stall out. And getting
15:45that turn established was the main thing. Up until we got the dive flaps, every time we'd get in a
15:50fight with the Germans of an altitude, we could out turn them. We could really out turn them. But
15:55the minute we got inside of them, they'd just turn over and go straight for the ground, 26,000 feet or
16:01wherever you were, say. And if we chased them, we got out of control. And the P-38 wanted to tuck back
16:07under like that, and the more you pulled on it, the more it would tuck under. It was out of control.
16:11So we had to have something that would keep it from accelerating past that speed. So they
16:20invented this dive flap that was run by an electric motor, and it opened like that. It took about one
16:26second to open and close, you know. And the minute that guy in front of you pulled that split S like
16:32that, you just popped those dive flaps and you just get right behind him. And boy, were they surprised
16:36after we got those, because they'd pull out at the bottom 26,000 feet, not very fast to run,
16:42very far to run at 450 miles an hour, say. And when they pulled out at the bottom, there was a P-38
16:47right under the tail, you know. And that was their big surprise. That really, dive flaps, we called them
16:55dive breaks, but they were dive flaps, is what they were. They were really great. We could out turn them,
17:00we could out climb them, we could out dive them, we could outlast them, and we could outgun them.
17:06This late war version of the P-38 gave the American pilots the confidence needed to engage
17:12the Luftwaffe in nearly every conceivable tactical situation, knowing that in a pinch they could fight
17:18their way out. Jim Byers recalls one fight that started in a most unusual way, with the Americans
17:25engaging from below. They were above us to start with, and we was in a hole in the overcast, you
17:32know. We looked up and there they were about 2,500 feet above us, and they were getting all queued up
17:37in an echelon. So I just took my flight through, right through the middle of them, and they scattered.
17:43And then we started picking them off, but none of them would fly out of that hole, see. They had to be
17:48inexperienced. We shot all 14 of them down, 11 of us. But our 11 guys accounted for 700, over 700
17:58missions, see. They were pretty well experienced by then, you know, see. God, there ain't no sense
18:03in letting them get the first shot, you know. And if you sit and do nothing, you get hurt. But if you
18:10make a mistake, you can change that, see. If you do something and make a mistake, you can change it. But if
18:16you just sit there and do nothing, you can't change anything. In other situations, the P-38 could be
18:22one of the deadliest hit-and-run fighters of the war, especially if the lightnings began a fight with
18:27altitude advantage. When we looked off to the east, a whole bunch of enemy 109s, about 20 of them,
18:36were attacking four P-47s. Coming down, boy, just like rain down out of the sky. So we flew over there
18:43and got in the fight, and we shot down eight of them. All that happens fast. You know,
18:53I, you know, you're scared, but you're not panicked. You know, see, that's, that's the difference right
18:58there. Yeah. And anybody that says they aren't scared, they're useless. Because anybody that is any
19:06good at all gets scared. In 1944, when the 354th Fighter Group introduced the P-51B into Northern
19:16Europe, the tide of the air war turned decisively against the Luftwaffe. At last, the Allies possessed a
19:24long-range air superiority fighter whose capabilities matched or exceeded every enemy fighter. While the
19:30P-47's major weakness was its slow rate of climb, the Mustang climbed like a homesick angel and dived
19:38with the best the Luftwaffe had to offer. With no major weaknesses, the P-51 became the best all-around
19:45air superiority fighter of the war at any altitude. That caught the Germans flat-footed there for a
19:52while. They really gave them a bad time. Because the P-51s catch the German air force in the air,
20:00and they dropped those tanks, and then they cut into pieces because the P-51 could out-turn the
20:06Messerschmitts. So they made out real well there. By war's end, the nature of the air war had evolved
20:15into a brutal struggle for positional advantage. From the early days when the Germans were able to
20:22dominate the RAF with their sleek 109s and their deadly hit-and-run tactics, newer Allied aircraft
20:29arrived in time to change the fundamental nature of the air war. While retaining their edge in turn
20:38fights, Allied pilots enjoyed unparalleled flexibility with the late generation of fighters and could fight
20:44the Germans in vertical hit-and-run style and win. Such flexibility spelled doom for the Luftwaffe's
20:51fighter force by 1944. While different tactics could help offset the advantages an enemy may have
21:01in aircraft quality or quantity, there were some basic elements to air combat that always remained
21:07a constant. Mastering them took time, something that fighter pilots in World War II didn't always have.
21:14During World War II, American pilots used to say, fly five and stay alive. And what that meant was,
21:23if you made five missions, if you flew five missions and you were still alive, your chances of survival
21:30through your entire tour just went up exponentially. The reason for this was something that later was
21:34called situational awareness. SA was basically the ability to process all the information going on around a
21:41pilot in the midst of an air-to-air engagement. And developing the sense of situational awareness
21:48needed for survival in air combat took time. If a pilot could fly five missions, he'd have the experience
21:55needed to really understand and process the things that he saw. But before that point, he had no concept
22:00of what was going on around him. Frequently pilots never even saw aircraft around them in an air-to-air
22:06engagement. And even more seriously, they rarely saw the aircraft that shot them down. As a result,
22:13it was the inexperienced pilots that made up the brunt of losses through the entire Second World War.
22:18Doug fights are funny things. They're huge. They might go all over the sky. You lose track of
22:27your own people. Hopefully your wingman stays with you. If he doesn't, then you're in trouble,
22:34because you not only have to watch what you're doing, you have to watch behind you. People who
22:41don't check six are in deep trouble. If they won't be victor, they'll be victim.
22:50Sighting the enemy has remained the single most important element to winning any air-to-air engagement.
22:57Once the enemy had been sighted, keeping them in sight was always critical to winning the battle.
23:02Another fighter pilot proverb of the day ran, lose sight, lose the fight. Without knowing what the
23:09enemy was attempting next, a fighter pilot could not select the maneuver needed to counter it.
23:15Again, that was why so many inexperienced pilots went down. They simply could not see or process
23:21all the information unfolding around them.
23:24Sometimes, if a pilot lost sight of the friendly aircraft in his flight or squadron,
23:32they could be almost as hazardous as the enemies in close-range turn fights.
23:36One of my very first sightings of an enemy aircraft was a 109 who crossed in front of me.
23:47I turned and got headed towards him in a steep bank left and all of a sudden
23:56he started coming apart and I hadn't fired my guns yet. Glenn Eagleston coming in from the other side had hit him.
24:06Glenn used to tell me all the time, I owe you one.
24:15We almost were air scoop to air scoop when he finally hit him.
24:23If a fighter pilot could stay alive long enough to learn some of the key lessons in air combat survival,
24:31he could become a very valuable asset to his squadron.
24:35During the war, to be a successful fighter pilot in air-to-air combat, you needed a couple of basic ingredients.
24:43The first was eyesight. A successful fighter pilot had good eyesight and could spot enemy aircraft at long ranges.
24:51The second was the ability to fly his aircraft to the edge of its performance envelope.
24:57Basically, he needed to be a good pilot. And, kind of as a corollary to that, he needed to understand
25:04his aircraft as thoroughly as possible so he could get the most out of it. And that really came down to
25:09number of hours that that particular pilot had flown in the fighter type he was taking into combat.
25:15Lastly, he needed to have a thorough understanding of the tactics that would maximize his aircraft's
25:21potential and capabilities in air-to-air combat, while at the same time negating some of the advantages
25:27the enemy aircraft possessed over his own aircraft.
25:30Air-to-air gunnery was and still is a true art form that only a select few ever really master.
25:40Dick Bong, America's ace of aces, spent his first months in combat unable to hit anything except from
25:46practically dead astern. Later, after undergoing extensive gunnery training in the states, he returned to
25:54combat and became an incredible aerial marksman, hitting targets from virtually any deflection.
26:00Dick Bong, America's ace of aces, was the ability to take out a target from different angles relative
26:09to that particular target's direction. So, firing from directly astern on an enemy plane was called a
26:16zero-degree deflection shot, while shooting from a 45-degree angle from behind was called a 45-degree deflection shot.
26:24The most difficult shot was the 90-degree deflection shot, where the shooting plane was perpendicular
26:31to the target aircraft. That required the most amount of lead and the most amount of calculations in the
26:37pilot's head to actually hit the target. Deflection shooting was actually an art form. It was very difficult
26:45to do, and there were very few pilots who were really good enough to hit a target from anywhere
26:51except dead astern. So, those that were able to do it really had very high scores. René Fonck was probably
26:59one of the most famous deflection shooters in aviation history. He was a World War I French ace,
27:04with over 70 kills to his credit. During World War II, some of the great deflection shooters were Hans-Joachum
27:12Marseille, who was a German pilot, who was renowned for his ability to bring down very
27:17rugged aircraft like P-40s with seven or eight shots. He was that good of a marksman.
27:23For the Americans, probably one of the best deflection shooters was Tommy McGuire, who had 38 kills and was
27:29the second-ranking American ace in World War II. Through much of the war, Americans relied on fixed
27:36reflector gun sights. At first, the standard K-9 gun sight was used. Later in the war, however, the United States
27:44developed a computer gun sight known as the K-14. With the help of a gyro, it would compute the lead
27:51required to hit an aerial target. We had a K-14 sight that was a gyro sight, and you put the pip on the plane,
28:00and if you were in too tight of a turn, though, you better have your stationary sight on too. And it
28:06happened to me, and I was pulling in a real tight turn, and the thing was gone. Just dumped. It would
28:13dump. You pull a gyro too fast, it'll dump. Then you got to shut it off and get it going again. And
28:18I had, if I had my needle or ring and dot, I probably got him, but I, nothing I could do. So you had to be
28:26careful when you're in a real tight turn with that gyro. But it was a good, it was a big improvement.
28:32It was the rare individual indeed who could master all these complicated and demanding elements of
28:37air combat and survive long enough to get good at them. Of those who did, only a select few became true
28:45hunters, the aces. Their workplace was the vast reaches of the sky over Europe. Their job, a grim
28:53repetition of killing and survival. Losses among the top aces were always high.
29:01Throughout aviation history, aces have always been among the most aggressive pilots in the air,
29:07but some have been more aggressive than others. And these, these types of aces led brilliant,
29:13if short, careers in air-to-air combat. They were the reckless of the reckless. They were the ones who
29:19would wade into any fight, no matter what the situation, no matter how heavily outnumbered,
29:24and they would fight it out. And these guys scored incredible victories in a very short span of time,
29:32but generally they fell victim to their own recklessness in the end and died at the hands of
29:38their own mistakes in air-to-air battle. To survive in air combat took courage, skill, and lots of luck.
29:49To become a hunter instead of just a target took a healthy combination of experience, eyesight,
29:55and the proper tactics. It took all sides involved in the air war time to relearn the basic air combat
30:02lessons that emerged from World War I. But when they did, a whole host of tactical innovations
30:09transformed the air war in Europe. Bad tactics could get even the best of the best killed. Good tactics
30:20could offset nearly any advantage the enemy brought to the table, ensuring both survival and success.