René Fonck: true or false?

S! all,
I am asking myself when I read on this website this sentence: "Even French ace Claude Haegelen, one of Fonck's few friends, felt he boasted too much and too often;"
Are all the Fonck victories true or is it possible he lied?
I don't know if this subject was already aborded on this forum. My apologize if he was!
Thank you
Bernard

[Richard_Schrader]

I wouldn't call Fonck a liar. He was no doubt a very talented pilot and marksman. I don't think that we will ever know for sure if his claims were true or not. He did survive the War, which says something for him.
If he would have kept his mouth shut and let his deeds speak for themselves he would be better remembered and honored today.

He died all alone and forgotten in Paris during 1953. If any Germans had cooperated in corroborating his claims (most of his disputed victories were far behind German lines) he would have been thought of quite differently.
He was not a bootlicker or a modest man. Most of those who derided him were purely jealous of his prowess.
When you are the best flier and deadliest ace of the war, it's hard to be humble!
(Sorry, just an ironic joke. But, he was good and he didn't keep it a secret.)
In a way, he was the George Armstrong Custer of the French Flying Service.

[mike_baram]

"If you can do it, it ain't bragging." - Muhammed Ali

one fellow, and I know I read this somewhere, so it is verifiable... said that Fonck was simply amazing, but sometimes he would brag so much about saving your life earlier in the day, and recount the gorey details of it all so often later on that he almost made you wish he hadn't-- a paraphrase obviously, but no, Fonck really was that great... to my mind has was a much better pilot and marksman than Richthofen, though not an especially good flight leader, but he never made any pretense of being one. Interestingly enough there was this one British author who actually declared outright that the reason the French never produced flight leaders like McCudden, Boelcke, or Reed Chambers-- just to pick some guys at complete random, was that because the French nature was inherently selfish (Richthofen, a Legend Evaluated, some former WW2 British serviceman) I was astonished and appalled. Not having met that many French folk I just had to assume this Brit was off his rocker, or horribly ethnocentric... I figure if somebody is willing to fight and die for a country, and for people they've never met that can't make them entirely selfish, am I right? There can be no doubt that many Frenchmen died in that war... so for some former radar command controller and millitary intelligence man to suggest that the French were courageous, but basically selfish seemed pretty odd to me... try to avoid that book I just mentioned up there... it's quite awful. I made the mistake of paying money for that thing!

[Reinout]

Jarrod,

It sounds like "The legend re-evaluated" by Richard Townshend-Bickers. His book is utter crap, he begins the intorduction with his conclusion! Honestly, you can get much cheaper toiletpaper at a supermarket!

Kind regards,

Reinout