List of top World War II aces
This is a list of World War II flying aces. Fighter aces in World War II had tremendously varying kill scores, affected as they were by many factors: the pilot's skill level, the performance of the airplane he flew and those he flew against, how long he served, his opportunity to meet the enemy in the air (Allied to Axis disproportion), and the standards his air service brought to the awarding of victory credits.
Towards the end of the war, the Axis powers had largely exhausted their supply of skilled pilots and the replacements did not have as much opportunity to gain enough experience to be successful.
Additionally, national policies differed; German, Italian, and Japanese pilots tended to return to the cockpit over and over again until they were killed, while very successful Allied pilots were routinely rotated back to training bases to educate cadet flyers. It is not clear what impact each individual nation's rules for score crediting have on the counts listed below, although the impact is likely to be significant. Germans credited a shared victory to only one pilot, while the French credited full victory to all participants. British, Finnish and US air forces credited fractional shares of aerial victories, resulting in fractions, such as 11½, which might be for example 10 aircraft and three shares with the second pilot. Some U.S. commands also credited aircraft destroyed on the ground. The Soviets counted only solo kills, while group kills were counted separately, as did the Japanese. Probable kills are usually left out of the list. This list is obviously still incomplete, for instance, of 123 known Italian flying aces only less than 20 have been included in this list and of the 31 South African Air Force flying aces, only one has been mentioned.
Erich Hartmann, top ace of all time
Ilmari Juutilainen, the highest scoring non-German ace
Ivan Kozhedub, top Allied and Soviet ace of World War II
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