'Richthofen was lucky' - New Scientist report

Just seen this in New Scientist magazine,

Do they realise that aces were usually selective in their combats? It was the skill of judgement that helped them build up scores
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New Scientist 29 July 2006, page 19

THE legend of Manfred von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron, has taken a knock. The victories notched up by him and other great flying aces of the first world war could have been down to luck rather than skill.

Von Richthofen (below) chalked up 80 consecutive victories in aerial combat. His success seems to suggest exceptional skill, as such a tally is unlikely to be down to pure luck.

However, Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury of the University of California at Los Angeles think otherwise. They studied the records of all German fighter pilots of the first world war and found a total of 6745 victories, but only about 1000 "defeats", which included fights in which pilots were killed or wounded.

The imbalance reflects, in part, that pilots often scored easy victories against poorly armed or less manoeuvrable aircraft, making the average German fighter pilot's rate of success as high as 80 per cent. Statistically speaking, at least one pilot could then have won 80 aerial fights in a row by pure chance.

The analysis also suggests that while von Richthofen and other aces were in the upper 30 per cent of pilots by skill, they were probably no more special than that. "It seems that the top aces achieved their victory scores mostly by luck," says Roychowdhury.

[Biber]

Ah... DUH, ya think?!!!!

Not to take anything away from MvR's skill, which certainly influenced his success, you have to admit that he WAS lucky that someone didn't get him while he was focused on trying to get someone else.

When you get down to it, isn't the success of anything really a matter of luck? i.e there is ALWAYS the possibility of a mitigating factor that can skew the equation whenever a human is involved.

Isn't there an award for research that sets out to prove the obvious?

I'll duck now.

B

[Executioner128]

Every achievement always goes part with a certain amount of luck...

[SCMc]

Von Richthofen (below) chalked up 80 consecutive victories in aerial combat.

Statistically speaking, at least one pilot could then have won 80 aerial fights in a row by pure chance.

I didn't know that MvR "won 80 aerial fights in a row." He was a lot "luckier" than I realized.

making the average German fighter pilot's rate of success as high as 80 per cent.

I was under the foolish impression that the average fighter pilot, German or otherwise, had very little, if any, success. I'm glad they cleared this up.

Steve

[Gregvan]

Hi,

Yeah, I already saw this on the web. Here we go again, with statisticians reaching conclusions with incomplete data and knowledge of the air war. How could these two study the "records of all German fighter pilots of the First World War" when such records don't exist? Where did they get these records? Most of the few available war diaries, pilot's diaries etc show that even the very successful aces engaged in many fruitless flights and inconclusive combats - it was the nature of the beast. As SCMc says, the "average" fighter pilot scored no victories at all. How can they say the "average" German fighter pilots' rate of success as 80 percent? 80 percent of what? There are no records available which show every flight, nor every combat, engaged in by every German fighter pilot.

I would bet that these two studied the data avilable in Above the Lines and maybe The Jasta Pilots from Grub Street. As great as those books are, the first represents only the most successful German pilots, and neither can tell the entire story.

Yes, there was always luck involved in a fighter pilot's success - but to suggest that MvR and other high-scoring aces were merely luckier than everybody else is pretty absurd.

Gee, I hope these two researchers study the records of British fighter pilots next, with all of their OOCs and 'moral victories'. Heaven help us with those results.

Greg VanWyngarden

[redalb2253]

You don't think those two are a little slow do you maybe they have been hittin Cali's biggest cash crop too much.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by Britace

They studied the records of all German fighter pilots of the first world war and found a total of 6745 victories, but only about 1000 "defeats", which included fights in which pilots were killed or wounded.

"The records of all German fighter pilots of the first world war" do not exist. Nor do I believe for a moment that only 1 out of 6 resulted in the death or injury of the downed adversary.

[Barrett]

Methinks that "defeats" refers to German losses whereas the larger figure refers to some nebulous source of total German victories. We're not told how many of the 1000 defeats resulted in death/injury. Ergo, apples vs. bananas.

Break-break.

Got no idear--zero, zip, nada--what "conseuctive" victories means. It's certainly not true of MvR whose string was interrupted at around 52 or so. (That's aside The Issue of whether his wingman beaned him a glancing blow with a 7.9mm round!)

As for luck: as has duly been noted: Well Duh! But the Esteemed Authors seem to presume that anybody coulda/woulda hosed 80 opponents "irregardless" of ability, opportunity & motivation.

Nobody else did.

So there.

[Taz]

Barrett, Greg- Off topic, but I suppose Hartmann got lucky 352 times or so in WW-II. With a background in math and statistics myself, I can only say anybody who would hire those two to do analysis is seriously lacking in judgement.

Taz
Terry Phillips

[drbubba43]

Next they'll be studying how lucky Columbus was to run into the "New World."

Especially considering the possibility he might have just sailed right past it and kept going...

Funny how stuff like that works.

Ray