flaming onions?

[Vin]

Chris

…yet he started flying almost two years before, in 1916, 2-seaters, before being assigned to single seaters in 1917. Any explanation for the 2 year famine before the 6 month feast ?


Vin

[BillyH]

Mark: That 'light spitting' 37mm was crank operated like the 'coffee mill' Gatling of the Civil War. Elliot Springs said that they wouldi put up a stream of 20 or so 'onions' but since they had more than one of these things at balloon sites, all shooting at one plane, things could get interesting. EOM: 01/20/2000.

[Reinout]

Vin,

The question you ask is one that has puzzled many many before you - and will continue to puzzle others after you!

Sometimes, a man doesn't score for ages and then suddenly gets dozens in a short space of time. Take Jasta 11. Before MvR took over, the unit had not a single confirmed victory. The same pilots who had flown there for months weren't able to score. Then this MvR fellow popped in and those pilots without any confidence or ability (or so it seemed) became the deadliest unit of the time.

Best example is a WWII one. Willy Batz had flown fighters for one or two years on the Eastern Front and all he had to show for it was one victory at the most (don't remember when he scored his first victory). He was so depressed about it, he wanted a transfer, but his CO gave him two weeks of leave in the homeland instead. when Batz returned, he instantly became one of the most lethal airfighters of the war. This was somewhere in 1944 or perhaps at the end of 1943. He finished the war with 237 confirmed victories. What a story, eh?

Then there's Gerhard Barkhorn who scored his first victory on his 100th mission, hardly auspicious, yet he was to end the war with 301 and had to concede the topscoring honours to Hartmann only because of his injuries.

Kind regards,

Reinout

[Barrett]

Reinout makes a good point. Another instance: at a Champlin Museum symposium c. 1990, WW II ace Walter Krupinski said that there was surprisingly little air-air gunnery practice in the prewar Luftwaffe. First time he shot air-air was at an Avro Anson over the channel in 1940; he and his leader "fired out" (went dry) and the Anson motored off. I forget the exact figures, but WK had something like 100 missions before his first kill, and perhaps 100-150 more before he got No. 10. Then came Barbarosa and things quickly got hot.
A friend of mine, 5th AF P-38 type, had two ambitions: Shoot down a Japanese airplane and make captain. (Well, OK, he wanted to go home and marry Lizzie, too.) He got one victory in his first 5 months of combat, them BAM: in December '44 he led V Fighter Command with 6 kills in 3 fights, outscoring Bong, McGuire, and everybody for that period.
Sometimes it just takes awhile for circumstances, experience, and the Moon in Jupiter to line up.

[Vin]

There is a logic to it. Naturally the pilot improves with experience. More than that, though, it must have taken considerable skill to be able to shoot down another aircraft. The pilot would have a very unstable gun platform. He would have to concentrate fiercely just to keep the aircraft in the sky and under control let alone focus on the finer points of gunnery. It would only be when the difficulties of flying became second nature and automatic that the pilot could concentrate sufficiently on marksmanship to be consistently successful. The surprise is not the fact of, but the length of, the quite long apprenticeship some very successful pilots, like Coppens, appear to have served.


Vin

[Reinout]

Vin,

It's not just what you described. In my opinion it has a lot to do with form. Kurt Wolff was in bloodform in April, and never reached those heights again. After April, he had 27 or 28 victories. When he died 4 and a half months later, he had added only 5 or 6 more. And in a letter to his beloved just before his end, he wrote that he had a spell of bad luck as he had tangled with at least 20 Englishmen without bringing one down (source: Jan Hayzlett's translation of "Jagd in Flanders Himmel").

There were the steady performers like Pippart and the star shooters who were more dependent upon form like Karl Thom.

Barrett:

Is Graf Punsky still alive? He was quite the character. Barbarossa was indeed a splendid time for him and he already had 60+ victories by the time Hartmann was assigned to fly with him. And he is one of the aces who managed to score and lead succesfully on both fronts, both in elite units (JG52 and JG26). Many others didn't survive the transition of fronts.

Of course you already knew that, but is he still alive and can he be spoken too?

Kind regards,

Reinout