Quote:
Originally Posted by wannabetheace
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrey
in the soviet air forces the personal score never was so important, they tried to fulfil their task at first. If the task of a group of pilots was to defend an important bridge they ought to do it at first and not to shoot as more as possible enemy planes. So Soviet fighter often began to fight at any conditions but the gErmans tried to fight only in the conditions favourable to them.
Also, in many Soviet airforce squadrons, the pilots might 'give' their kill of the day, to the squadrons main tally, so that often the squadron, or the larger formation would have tens or hundreds of kills more, than were listed as the individual pilots victories combined!
This was done on occasion in the RAF too... Also the Red Airfoce and RAF had in common, was that aircraft kills were not always displayed on aircraft. This not only because they were having a different plane every time, but it wasnt considered 'proper', in many RAF circles, as they felt that the squadron had earned the kills as a group effort... This kind of mentality or something similar, was also prevalent in the Red Airforce... And the Japanese fighter squadrons, ofcourse every side had some great individualist aces, who displayed their kills, this is only natural, especially after their country's media got hold of them!
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I didn't know about Russian and Japanese, but for sure Italian air-force, at least in the beginning of the war, largely didn't count individual victories, as they attributed the kills to the squadron, in an effort to avoid any individualistic approach and exalt the teamwork. So, different ideologies (fascism is by no means a collectivist ideology) but same doctrines. This fact is traditionally used to explain the relatively low scores of Italian aces, coupled with the objective weaknesses of planes and guns.
Regards,
Insuber