Warbird Information Exchange

Hi all.

On the outside of the hangar the US Air Force were using at Oshkosh this year, they had a large banner proclaiming that the P-51 was the most victorious fighter over Europe during WW2, shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other. This surprised me a bit, as I had assumed the Bf-109 shot down the most enemy aircraft in Europe.

When I flicked over my Flying Legends calendar to October, I see the same statement repeated, giving a figure of 4950 aircraft shot down.

Does anybody have a figure for the number of aircraft shot down by the Bf-109?

Cheers,

Brett

Brett

I would think they meant by an Allied Fighter, I would say the 109 had shot down that many by the time the Mustang went on its first sortie over Europe
I will check and see if I can find the figures.

Dave

I think the words 'Western Front' and 'Allied' got left out of the translation somewhere.

There's also some variation over types of kills that count. The Luftwaffe and RAF (and most others) only counted air-to-air kills, the USAAF counted strafing kills. I'm not personally interested in splitting hairs (they were all brave men (and Russian women) but the claim seems very unlikely to me.

Anyone got the facts?

_________________
James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

I have emailed bf109.com and home they can help out. But counting straffing at full kills is a bit cheap. That is not taking away from the pilots who got into the seat each day. The bf 109 should have had more kills but you need to look at all of Europe. Also after they had dominance over the continant the numbers fell off some.

_________________
“No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of the free men and woman.” –Ronald Reagan 40th President USA.