Aviation 'ace' standard set in World War I
By Lt. Col. Ken White
U.S. Air Force
RANDOLPH AFB, Texas —
Eddie Rickenbacker, Richard Bong, Joseph McConnell and Charles Debellevue. These men belong to an elite group of American fighter pilots who earned the title "ace."
Where did the honorary title come from? The answer goes back to World War I.
April 1, 1915, is generally regarded as the birth-date of aerial warfare and the beginning of the fighter ace concept.
Roland Garros, a French pilot who had long believed the aircraft could be used as a weapon, took to the sky that day with a machine gun mounted behind the propeller of his biplane. A few moments later, he pointed the nose of his aircraft at an enemy plane and triggered a burst of machine gun fire. The surprised German pilot went down with his plane.
Prior to that engagement, airplanes had been used primarily as observation platforms. Pilots from opposing forces often watched each other fly over the front lines collecting intelligence. Like knights of the air, they frequently waved at each other.
Then, as the bitterness of the war increased, opposing pilots began tossing bricks and chains at each other. Shortly, they were firing at one another from their open cockpits with pistols, carbines and shotguns.
BUT GARROS had given the machine gun wings. In just two weeks he became the world's first fighter ace with five aerial victories. His exploits dominated the newspapers and Parisians toasted his successes as a sign that the war might start going better for France.
The word ace, from the French word L'as, became a popular catchwood of the day. Simply, it means the highest playing card of a suit. Soon, persons who had distinguished themselves in anything were described as aces.
In a newspaper article an American reporter covering the war defined "ace" as a flier with five or more aerial victories. Curiously, this definition set the standard by which the U.S. Army Air Service pilots would later be rated.
After Garros' aerial successes, the French quickly armed their aircraft with machine guns. As French pilots mastered the art of aerial warfare, they established a standard of 10 enemy aircraft destroyed as the figure for "acedom."
The British initially ignored the ace concept. By late 1915, however, they too began keeping aerial victory records and eventually adopted the French standard for the ace.
THE GERMANS, likewise, were also slow to adopt the fighter ace idea. They did, however, bestow high honors on their distinguished combat pilots whom they designated as kanone, or cannons or weapons. They too adopted the number 10 as the standard for kanone status.
When America entered World War I, the idea of the fighter ace was embraced. But because the U.S. was late entering the war, and perhaps because of the American reporter's definition of an "ace," America stayed with the number five.
And that standard of five, although unofficial, stuck through World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Pacific Stars And Stripes (Tokyo, Japan) - Tuesday, November 01, 1983
Linear Mode
