A flying ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft. (The more correct term is "fighter ace," since "flying ace" can refer to any adept pilot.) The aviation term ace originated in World War I when French newspapers described Adolphe Pegoud, nicknamed "The Foolhardy One", as l'as (french for ace) after he became the first pilot to down five German aircraft. Reportedly the term had been popularized in prewar French newspapers when referring to sports stars such as soccer players and bicyclists.

It has been stated that during WWI the Central Powers as well as the United Kingdom specified an ace as a pilot with 10 or more confirmed "kills" but no authoritative sources have emerged to support the claim. Germany had no ace system such as the French but instead popularized its "Jagdflieger" who had destroyed an escalating number of Allied aircraft. Britain had no ace system at all and in fact published no victory lists comparable to the French or Germans.

Different air services had different victory credit systems. The "purest" was Germany's which credited only one victory to one pilot, and only for enemy planes assessed as destroyed or captured. Most other nations adopted the French system of granting full credit to every pilot or aerial gunner participating in a victory, sometimes as many as six or seven individuals. The British furthermore credited "moral victories" in such categories as "driven down", "forced to land", and "out of control". To a lesser extent so did the U.S. Air Service. Top American ace Edward V. Rickenbacker's 26 victories included ten planes "out of control", several "dived east", and two grounded observation balloons. None of those would have been credited in later wars. On 23 August, 1918, Bermudian (British) DH 9 bomber pilot, Lieut. Arthur Rowe Spurling, and gunner Sgt Frank William Bell, single-handedly attacked 30 German fighters, all Fokker D.VIIs, gaining the five kills needed to make them aces in a single action, sending two of the German aeroplanes "down in flames", "destroying" two, and sending the fith down "out of control". Other reports of this action recorded three "shot down in flames", and two "crashing to earth". Either way, this raised their tally to six. Although both crewmembers were credited with the victories, Spurling actually downed three with the forward firing armament, and Bell downed two with the defensive armament. Spurling was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for the action.

In World War II the Western air forces generally credited fractional shares of aerial victories, resulting in decimal scores such as 11.50 or 26.83. Some U.S. commands also credited aircraft destroyed on the ground as equal to aerial victories. The Soviets distinguished between solo and group kills, as did the Japanese, though the Japanese Navy stopped crediting individual victories in 1943. The Germans continued their inevitable rule of "one pilot, one kill."

The Soviet Union had the world's only female aces. During World War II, flying as part of the all-female 586 IAP, Katya Budanova achieved 11 and Lydia Litvyak scored 12 victories.

Despite official figures, very few recognized aces actually shot down as many aircraft as credited to them. The primary reason for inaccurate victory claims is the inherent confusion of three-dimensional, highspeed combat, but competitiveness and the desire for recognition also figure in the mix. Consequently, errors of 50 to 100% and more are common in air combat. In the Korean War, both the U.S. and Russian air arms claimed 10 to 1 victory-loss ratios.

The most accurate figures usually belong to the air arm fighting over its own territory, where wrecks can be counted. For instance, in World War I, Manfred von Richthofen is known to have shot down at least 73 of the 80 planes credited. See Under the Guns of the Red Baron by Franks, Giblin, and MacReady.

Ace is also used to refer to non-aviators who have distinguished themselves by sinking ships, destroying tanks, etc. (e.g. Aces of the Deep).

World War I

Of the thirty-two aces, seventeen died during the conflict.

Spanish Civil War

World War II

Korean War

Vietnam War

¹existence disputed - reportedly shot down by Randy "Duke" Cunningham and William Driscoll 10 May 1972

²Advisor to NVPAF

³Cunningham and Ritchie were the only USA pilot aces of the Vietnam conflict.

Arab-Israeli Wars

Indo-Pakistani Wars

¹ PAF claims 5 confirmed kills, while the IAF insists that it was only 4 confirmed kills.

Sources

Alam’s Speed-shooting Classic by Air Commodore M Kaiser

30 Seconds over Sargodha - The making of a myth by Rakesh Koshy

Laying the Sargodha Ghost to Rest, Vayu Aerospace Review, 1985

See also

• List of top World War II aces
• List of World War II aces by country
• Kari Stenman & Kalevi Keskinen: Finnish Aces of World War 2, Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 23, Osprey Publishing 1998, ISBN 952-5186-24-5
• Fighter ace list (10,000+ names)
• ^*
• Toliver & Constable. Horrido!: Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe (Aero 1968)

Notes

2. Disputed. Boyington probably had two air-to-air victories in the AVG (Olynyk).
3. First U.S. ace of WWII

Aces | Flying aces

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