# Aircraft combat "kills"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 12, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579 "2009-02-12T19:14:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/1 "2009-02-12T19:14:00Z")
There’s a thread in IMHO about the Red Baron, which moved me to read his [Wikipedia profile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen). It states the following:
> [@](#):
>
> On being transferred to the Champagne front, he managed to shoot down a French Farman aircraft with his observer’s machine gun, but was not credited with the kill, as it fell behind Allied lines. . . . Over Verdun on 26 April 1916 he fired on a French Nieuport downing it over Fort Douaumont, although once again he gained no official credit.
This surprised me, as I had thought that shooting down any enemy aircraft was a “kill”.
So, what makes a kill? Does the opposing pilot have to die? Does the opposing aircraft have to be recovered behind your own lines? When the Royal Guardsmen sang, “Eighty men tried (to kill the Baron), and eighty men died, now they’re buried together on the countryside”, was this literally true?
Also, about those 80 men . . . A lot of these pilots have pretty high kill counts. And yet, it would seem the average kills per pilot would have to be pretty close to one. If the opposing pilot has to die, the average kill count should be exactly one. So who were these guys killing? Were there scads of novices for whom their first aerial combat was their last?
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### Author:  [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/2 "2009-02-12T19:46:38Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#):
>
> Were there scads of novices for whom their first aerial combat was their last?
Pretty much, yes. And in WWI, it wasn’t uncommon to be injured by a bullet, land the plan intact, and die of your wounds later. It was an open cockpit with wood and canvas on the sides.
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### Author:  [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/3 "2009-02-12T19:55:02Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#):
>
> There’s a thread in IMHO about the Red Baron, which moved me to read his [Wikipedia profile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen). It states the following:This surprised me, as I had thought that shooting down any enemy aircraft was a “kill”.
There have been different rules by different airforces about what counts as a kill and what evidence needs to be presented to confirm it. In the early days of WWI, things were even more fluid. At that time, the German Army required that wreckage be identified to count a kill in that circumstance.
Somewhere I once had the USAAF standards for their pilots in WWII, which were considerably looser, but I don’t think I could put my hands on them now.
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### Author:  [@Who\_me\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Who_me_1)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/4 "2009-02-12T19:55:31Z")
I am in no way an expert, but as a youngster I used to read a lot about WWII. When a pilot shoots down an enemy plane, there needed to be confirming evidence that he, indeed, shot one down. I’ve read that US aces were based on confirmed kills. If you watch WWII documentaries of air combat, you’ll probably see a lot of scenes shot from the aircrafts’ wing cameras.
Evidence that the pilot shot down an aircraft got the pilot a kill, whether or not the opposing pilot lived or died.
While the Red Baron fought in WWI, I imagine his kills needed to be confirmed also. The rules of confirmation may have said that the planes needed to go down over German lines.
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### Author:  [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/5 "2009-02-12T19:59:37Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#):
>
> So, what makes a kill? Does the opposing pilot have to die? Does the opposing aircraft have to be recovered behind your own lines? When the Royal Guardsmen sang, “Eighty men tried (to kill the Baron), and eighty men died, now they’re buried together on the countryside”, was this literally true?
The rules governing how a pilot gets credited with an aerial victory have varied, but you usually needed some way of confirming it. Either one of your comrades vouched for it, or you discover the wreak. Shooting down an enemy plane without confirmation counted as a “probable”.
It’s not mandatory to kill the enemy pilot. IIRC, in WWI forcing an enemy plane to land, even intact, counted as an aerial victory.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/6 "2009-02-12T20:15:20Z")
Go rent “The Blue Max.” They explain the whole “confirmed kill” process rather dramatically.
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/7 "2009-02-12T21:28:47Z")
The rules regarding kills strongly favoured German pilots, because their kills were usually easier to verfiy - identification of wreckage.
This is because the Alleis had a policy of taking the air war over German occupied airspace, it also made it harder to verify allied kills as the wwreckege was very often in German held territory.
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### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/8 "2009-02-12T21:34:24Z")
I remember in the Afghan War several Soviet Planes were shot down in side Pakistani airspace and the wreckage fell inside Afghanistan, and the pilot was not given the kill, except in one case that the gum camera caught the footage of the plane (a Su-25) exploding.
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### Author:  [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/9 "2009-02-12T21:35:58Z")
“Gum camera”? Heh. Bazooka Gum, right?
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### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/10 "2009-02-12T21:38:06Z")
More like Sidewinder gum.
Mods!
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### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2009, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/11 "2009-02-13T03:23:27Z")
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig]
Were there scads of novices for whom their first aerial combat was their last?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, memorably mentioned in **Blackadder Goes Fourth** as “The Twenty Minute Men”. Seasoned pilots would refrain from getting to know new pilots at all until they’d lasted a few missions, as the pain of losing someone you’d got to know was so much worse.
> [@casdave](#):
>
> The rules regarding kills strongly favoured German pilots, because their kills were usually easier to verfiy - identification of wreckage.
> This is because the Allies had a policy of taking the air war over German occupied airspace, it also made it harder to verify allied kills as the wwreckege was very often in German held territory.
Also, the prevailing wind over the Western Front was from the west, so dogfights that started over the Allied side would often drift across the trench line to end over Germen-held territory.
Ask-“all I know of WWI aerial combat I learned from Biggles books”-ance
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2009, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aircraft-combat-kills/485579/12 "2009-02-13T03:35:21Z")
> [@silenus](#):
>
> Go rent “The Blue Max.” They explain the whole “confirmed kill” process rather dramatically.
This was the very first thing I thought of when I read the OP.