Have you ever wondered sometimes about the number of kills some aces would have had if they'd survived the WWI and WWII? Like Manfred von Richthofen, Erich Löwenhardt, Edward Corringham "Mick" Mannock, Albert Ball from WWI and Robert Murray Hanson, Edward "Butch" O'Hare, Walter Nowotny, Hans-Joachim Marseille and so on, just name a few. And how about some of the tank aces???

The thing of it is that part of what made them aces in the first place made it so very rare for them to survive. The killer instint, and the drive to get into the fight pretty much doomed them from the start.

I agree with Halfyank. The enemy knew an Ace when they saw one just by the maneuvers and aggressiveness displayed. That was no greenhorn! As such, the enemy often "ganged up" to ensure the Ace was terminated. Special missions were even set up to wipe out top Aces.

Thinking about as Hans-Joachim Marseille death was an accident....as well as Butch O'Hare's.

And so was Oswald Boelcke's if I remember correctly, a midair collision...
28 October 1916. Imagine him going on for another two years!

Part of fighting a war is the risk of getting killed. All knew that, and apparently all accepted that as well.

And part of the mistique of them is the fact that they did not survive...

The Red Barron (probably shot down by a man of whom not a single image is known), Marseille... many of them more famous then those who did survive... and many of those who did survive survived very long odds indeed.

Of the 10 top aces WW II, most people might be able to name only two or three (Erich Hartmann (1st), Nowotny (5th) and Bär (8th)). Why? Mainly because they survived....(IMHO)

But to stay on topic, what if Hartmann had been in combat from the 1st of September 1939 rather then October 1942? He might have been killed on the first day of combat or in May 1940. He might as well have racked up over 700 kills, with the "turkeyshoots" in the summer of 1941 and even in much of 1939 and 1940.

What about the Allied aces of WW II, if they had not been on a rotation schedule but had continued to fly (like their German and Japanese counterparts)...


Part of the mystique of many historical figures lies in the way they died, or ultimately failed. Part of their mystique is also due to luck, or the fact that they were not overshadowed by others... a good number of them would have been thrown on the trashheap of history if not for a little bit of luck, or circumstances completely outside their control.

To name a few:

If Grant had not gotten incredibly lucky at Shiloh and had some good pr, Meade might have been the big general for the North, while Grant would have been added to a list of failures that includes McClellan, Burnside, Pope and Hooker.

Hannibal's mystique lies as much in his awesome tactical genious (arguably the best ever) as the fact that he came so close, but still failed in achieving his goal.

Alexander survived as much because of the incompetence of his opponents and the fact that Darius lost his nerve twice as because of his own (tactical) genious...

Nelson's appeal is as much if not more because of the fact that he died at the moment of his greatest succes then his military genious (I personally do not consider him the greatest ever).