Storks

Do any of you know which squadrons made up this great unit & how many victorys did they score?

Keith,

[PeterL]

The original complement of Groupe de Chasse 12 was: N3, N26, N73, & N103. Don't know about total kills, but seeing as the top 4 or 5 French aces served with these Esc they must have accounted for a significant proportion of the French figures

Peter L

Keith: Groupement de combat 12 (The Storks) comprised four squadrons: N3,N26,N73, N103. More details in The Storks, Norman Franks & Frank Bailey, Grub Street Press...EOM/wph/ 8July/99

Got the hiccups, Bill?

Sorry, just couldn't resist!!!
Steve

[Barrett]

Bill & Crew:

I just rcvd the review copy of " September Rampage" (the Luke bio) and note some references to the Storks. As Bill well knows, FL said something to the effect "Those guys are great fliers but lousy poker players."
The quote from Latourette Driggs in the 1918 Nat'l Geographic about average aces' scores for each country undoubtedly reflects imperfect knowledge at the time. Driggs (who was hardly objective) said the AVERAGE German ace's score was 20.8 because the experten hogged all the glory. He pegged avg French scores at 10.2, Italians at 13, Brits 10.2 and US 7.50.
In truth, the median aces' scores for these countries were 7 for France and Italy and 9 for Germany. In my experience, in these categories median is very close to average. US was just about 7 in both wars, and 10 might be close to the Brits with all those OOCs (I'm far too lazy to count.)
The Finns (1939-44) averaged 10 *kills* per ace, and their top shooter had 94 so you can extrapolate what it'd take for the average to run 20!

Kieth
Took a quick look at my refs. and came up with this list of kills per.
Spa3....171 kills + 4 ballons
Spa26...51 " "
Spa73...30 " " + 1 ballon
Spa103..108 " " + 3 ballons

Hope this helps.....Cheers, Ken