Interesting video. I didn't expect to see the Brewster Buffalo listed on there.

Quibble #1: Of course the video depicts von Richthofen standing with a Fokker Triplane. But of his 80 (confirmed) kills, only the last 19 occurred while he was flying the Dr.1. He scored the majority of his kills while flying the Albatross D.III or D.V biplanes.

Quibble #2: The eagle patch on Erich Hartmann's uniform looks like it came off a Wehrmacht uniform, not a Luftwaffe uniform.

Cool video. No idea the finns and buffalo were such a combo.

A few of the totals seemed suspect but data is often corrupted.

I still enjoyed it though.

Mule_lx said:

---

The F-4 Phantom II's first flight was 4 Apr 1917 (2:04 in video). WWI and WWII should have been different.

---

Was useless until they invented guided air-to-air missiles in the 50's

The Me262 had over 700 kills? Had no clue it was operational long enough to do that.

To go along with my comment above.

I looked up the Japanese ace listed at the end of the video. His victory total seems more than a little suspect. Not saying he was a fraud but an example given was that two of his kills were on a day that the US reported no losses.

An easy answer would be the date was wrong. Or he fought several American planes, did damage, and assumed the plains were spent only for them to be able to safely land.

War is chaotic.

Nah, if they had an F-4 in 1917 they could have mounted a gun pod too, at least by the second war.

Another side note.

Erich Hartmann's war career is incredibly interesting. Certainly not a natural as he was shot down several times before it all came together and he became the legend he became.

It might even be more amazing that he wasn't killed by the soviets after the war.

BQ78 said:

---

Nah, if they had an F-4 in 1917 they could have mounted a gun pod too, at least by the second war.

---

I can only imagine how hard it would be to actually use an F-4 vs a fabric wing bi plane.

Pilots, what do you think? Seems like not accidentally ramming the target would difficult along with another 1000 problems.

Madman said:

---

BQ78 said:

---

Nah, if they had an F-4 in 1917 they could have mounted a gun pod too, at least by the second war.

---

I can only imagine how hard it would be to actually use an F-4 vs a fabric wing bi plane.

Pilots, what do you think? Seems like not accidentally ramming the target would difficult along with another 1000 problems.

---

if an F-4 flew supersonic within a few hundred yards of a wood & fabric biplane, would the sonic shock wave fatally damage the biplane? (If nothing else, it would probably scare the **** out of the biplane pilot) ...

And speaking of the F4 Phantom II, I loved watching them in The Great Santini (1979).

(Although in the source novel of the same name by Pat Conroy, Col Meechum was an F8 Crusader pilot ... but of course when this movie was made there probably weren't any F8s available for movie sequences ... )



"Buenos Dias, Rustpickers!"

They simply flew through the German Biplanes.... Not an accident.

It is actually sad the the most kills by the most American jets are by Israelis and Iranians.

Saburo Sakai is generally credited with 64 kills but his squadron mate from Rabaul (?) Warrant officer Hiroyoshi Nishizawa is credited with 103 kills. He'd always boasted he'd never be defeated in air to air combat. He wasn't. He was shot down flying a transport, ferrying other pilots, later in the war.

Jets ranked by badassary of appearance