Chas
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,715
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
Like quite a few fighter pilots, BVR was a mediocre pilot. Billy Bishop, for example, was by his own admission a terrible pilot but a crack shot.
BVR's greatest strengths were as a leader and mentor to newer pilots; most of his kills were oppurtunistic kills in a/c that were far superior to the ones flown against him- I would rate him as an average pilot who was very lucky to have gotten as far as he did and probably doesn't deserve the legend tag. He was helped by the RFC's insistence upon sending men out to do a difficult job with crap aircraft (the RE 8 and the BE 2c). Only once in his career did he go mano y mano with a good pilot (Lanoe Hawker) and he never faced anybody like Ball, Mannock or Collishaw. From what I have read a lot of BVR's kills were "set up" for him. At the end of the day, he was killed making two rookie pilot's mistakes: target fixation, for one and secondly taking unneccesary risks to shoot down a plane that was running for home meaning, flying too low and exposing himself to ground fire.
To be fair to the blonde one, though, it's possible that his head wound affected his judgement in the last few months of his life and that contributed to his downfall.
There were quite a few pilots that were probably better shots and pilots than BVR-Rene Fonck, for example, was known for shooting down enemy a/c with as few as 10 bullets. He isn't remembered because, frankly, he was a bit of a jerk. It is impossible to verify, but it's very possible that he shot down as many as 100 a/c.
Werner Voss was almost certainly a better pilot than Richtofen; when 56 Squadron shot him down one of the British pilots said that his flying, shooting and fighting was so good that "he seemed to be shooting at all six of us at once".
BVR's greatest strengths were as a leader and mentor to newer pilots; most of his kills were oppurtunistic kills in a/c that were far superior to the ones flown against him- I would rate him as an average pilot who was very lucky to have gotten as far as he did and probably doesn't deserve the legend tag. He was helped by the RFC's insistence upon sending men out to do a difficult job with crap aircraft (the RE 8 and the BE 2c). Only once in his career did he go mano y mano with a good pilot (Lanoe Hawker) and he never faced anybody like Ball, Mannock or Collishaw. From what I have read a lot of BVR's kills were "set up" for him. At the end of the day, he was killed making two rookie pilot's mistakes: target fixation, for one and secondly taking unneccesary risks to shoot down a plane that was running for home meaning, flying too low and exposing himself to ground fire.
To be fair to the blonde one, though, it's possible that his head wound affected his judgement in the last few months of his life and that contributed to his downfall.
There were quite a few pilots that were probably better shots and pilots than BVR-Rene Fonck, for example, was known for shooting down enemy a/c with as few as 10 bullets. He isn't remembered because, frankly, he was a bit of a jerk. It is impossible to verify, but it's very possible that he shot down as many as 100 a/c.
Werner Voss was almost certainly a better pilot than Richtofen; when 56 Squadron shot him down one of the British pilots said that his flying, shooting and fighting was so good that "he seemed to be shooting at all six of us at once".
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