Aces Operational at War's End

[Pips]

Have just finished reading Norman Franks "Who Downed The Aces Of WWI. A fascinating topic.

It got me to wondering though, given the heavy losses suffered by aces in '17 and '18, who was still left alive and flying operations at war's end.

If anyone has the info could you post it here? Say just the top five aces from Britain, France, Germany and America.

Ta.

[gregoire]

France top 5 the 11 November 1918
1 Fonck allied ace of ace and top surviving ace
2 Nungesser
3 Madon 41 victories (and 64 probable and 100% match betwen its claim and german record someone will have to seriously study this guy one day) was to died exactly 6 years after the armistice
4 Bourjade 28 victories including 27 balloon
5 Pinsard 27 victories


in the french general top10 Guynemer, Boyau, Coiffard, Dorme, Guerin were killed before the armistice

[frontflieger]

German top five in November 1918:

Ernst Udet (+ 1941)
Josef Jacobs (+ 1978)
Rudolf Berthold (+ 1920)
Bruno Loerzer (+ 1960)
Paul Bäumer (+ 1927)

Thorsten

[Laspalmas]

Commonwealth surviving aces:

72 Billy Bishop (Canada) -died 1956 in Palm Beach, Florida, US
60 Raymond Collishaw (Canada) - died 1976 in Vancouver, Canada
54 Donald MacLaren (Canada) - died 1988 in Ottawa, Canada
54 Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor (South Africa) - KIFA 1921 England
50 William Barker (Canada) - KIFA 1930 in Ottawa, Canada

I see a pattern...IMO, per capita, the best aces of the war were indoubtably Canadian! No other country produced so many top aces from such a small population. Now if we could only do the same in the olympics!

[Graeme]

Laspalmas

Good call, except.............

Bishop wasn't flying operationally at the war's end (to HE in June), neither was Collishaw (to HE in October), neither was MacLaren (broke his leg 10 October), neither was Beauchamp-Proctor (wounded 8 October) and neither was Barker (wounded 27 October).

Top scorers actually in action at the war's end were:

Tom Sinclair Harrison of No 29 Squadron, 22
Charles Gordon Ross of No 29 Squadron, 20 or 21
Fred Gillet (American) of No 79 Squadron, 20
George Chisholm MacKay of No 213 Squadron, 18
Charles William Cudemore of No 64 Squadron, 15.

Graeme

[Laspalmas]

Picky picky!

The war still ended with them being in the top scorers...

[Graeme]

But not flying operationally, as was requested at the start of this thread.

Let's not confuse survival with being there.

[Graeme]

While I'm being picky....

Nungesser shouldn't be on Gregoire's list since he was forced to retire from combat flying in August (?) 1918 due to the effects of his accumulated injuries.

Udet shouldn't be on Thorsten's list since he was rendered hors de combat on 26 September; Berthold was similarly out of the running following his wounding on 10 August.

Graeme

[Stephan]

Hey, let's look into Madon!

[VtwinVince]

A fact is a fact: Canada produced aces all out of proportion to its population during WW1