Talk:List of World War I flying aces from the United States

You may want to check this
Hello,

Please pardon my nitpicking.

In my research for information about scoring aerial victories, I discovered that two victory scores were kept. The individual victory scores could credit a single downed plane to as many as a dozen individual attackers. However, that same victory would be scored as one added to the unit's victory list. Therefore, while some individual scores were inflated, the unit score was (purportedly) more accurate.

I hate to offer even such slight discouragement as this to someone who is pitching a staggering amount of energy into developing this list. Keep up the fabulous work.

Georgejdorner (talk) 20:44, 24 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Comments are always welcome :)  I commented about this very subject in the introduction:
 * The Americans generally used the French rules of scoring aerial victories with the exception of the 17th and 148th Aero Squadrons, which were under British control until October, 1918. The pilots flying in those squadrons were scored under British rules. "Shared" victories were noted when two or more pilots attacked an enemy plane, and it could not be determined precisely which pilot shot down the aircraft. This could (and did) lead to situations where 2 or 3 pilots were given credit for a single victory that inflated the number of enemy planes shot down.
 * I've used the lists available in Over the Front by Franks and Bailey.  If it's best to use another, I suppose I could look up the one that is in the National Archives ( Gorrell's History - AEF Air Service › ... M: Miscellaneous › 38: Compilation of Confirmed Victories and Losses of the AEF Air Service as of May 26, 1919 )  http://www.fold3.com/image/22392699/    What do you think ? Bwmoll3 (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No, no, I am not pointing out a problem with the list you use; Over the Front is excellent. It is just that the last sentence you wrote, about how sharing scores led to inflation of the statistics is not true. While three individual aviators might be credited with one victory each, causing inflation in aces' scores, their unit's victory count would increase by only one. Counting victories at the unit level was done that way in an attempt to keep the most accurate possible count.


 * Not to say the aerial victory scores weren't inflated; I doubt there was an air war where they weren't. It's just that you have accidentally imputed a false cause for the inflation.


 * And I am available to render aid if you wish. All you have to do is ask.Georgejdorner (talk) 03:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No problem, just deleted the last sentence.  Bwmoll3 (talk) 23:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

A head's up
Hello, again,

It occurred to me after noting the above, that there are a couple of other items you may not know and may foul you up.

1. Some "Canadian" pilots were born in such places as Mississippi and Detroit. They avoided swearing allegiance to King George V, as was required of the native-born Canadians. They were just good old American boys sneaking into the war before their country decided to fight.
 * Noticed that reading their biographies.  The RFC/RAF operated training fields in the Toronto Area and also saw some of them went into the Candadian Army then transferred later to the RAF.   Bwmoll3 (talk)

2. Beware when dealing with the Lafayette Escadrille. The French numbering system(?) for their WWI squadrons is devious; they usually changed the aircraft designator within the name after re-equipping their squadrons&mdash;except for the occasion when they changed the number also. The Lafayette Escadrille's designation upon dissolution was Escadrille N.124, signifying they used Nieuports. The French promptly formed a replacement squadron armed with Spads, and numbered it Escadrille SPA.124. This unit still survives in the French Air Force. So does another Escadrille N.124; darned if I know where that originated. List of French Air Force aircraft squadrons may be of interest to you.
 * Once you pointed it out, I picked up the aircraft designator, then the squadron number.  I presume the designator changed when the squadron was re-equipped with a different type (Nieuport -> SPAD), but the number remained constant.  Now it makes a little more sense.   Bwmoll3 (talk) 23:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Hope I didn't bore you with this. Again, keep up the great work.Georgejdorner (talk) 03:50, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Not at all, thank you for your comments Bwmoll3 (talk) 23:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Handy website
Helo, once more,

http://www.theaerodrome.com/index.php is a very handy tool, though there is no consensus on using it as anything other than a second reference in some cases. It is written by a cadre of aviation historians that includes authors of both Grub Street and Osprey Publishing aviation history texts. Many pages in the website have their parent texts noted at the bottom.

Georgejdorner (talk) 20:35, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Been there noted their information.  Thank you for sharing it Bwmoll3 (talk) 23:46, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

This article
I know it's a list, but I wanted to add a little more than just a list of aces. It's shaping up now to more of a quick overview for each individual, and after a little more tweaking, should be finished. Leaving all the details and narrative to the individual pages that it links to. Not planning on doing a lot more with those other than some minor formatting changes, and adding a photo of the individual to their article, although some of the individuals either didn't have a page or had at most a line or two of information about them. For those I've created or added more information as they are notable and worthy of an article that could later be expanded. Bwmoll3 (talk) 23:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Replacing references to theaerodrome.com
This article contains extensive citations to theaerodrome.com, which was determined as being ""generally unreliable"" by RfC on the WP:RSN (see archived discussion). Rather than spam 150+ inline maintenance tags (or just nuke the refs), I've marked the whole article with. I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can work through this, either finding reliable sources for the data, or alternatively removing unsourceable entries. -Ljleppan (talk) 09:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)