Aerial victory standards of World War I

René Fonck, the highest scoring ace to survive the war, standing beside his Spad XIII

During World War I, the national air services involved developed their own methods of assessing and assigning credit for aerial victories.

The victory scores of the pilots represented at List of World War I flying aces (pilots with at least five victories to their credit) often cannot be definitive, but are based on itemized lists that are the best available sources of information. Loss of records (especially records of casualties and lost aircraft, which are at their best a very good guide to the degree of over-claiming), by mischance and the passage of time – and the detail to which such records were kept in the first place – often complicates the reconstruction of the actual count for a given ace.[1] Additionally, the German victory confirmation system began to buckle in February 1918; after August 1918, such records as survived were unit records.[2]

World War I began the historical experience that has shown that approximately five percent of combat pilots account for the majority of air-to-air victories in warfare, thus showing the importance of flying aces.[3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Britp7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Above the Lines: The Aces and Fighter Units of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service and Flanders Marine Corps, 1914–1918. p. 6.
  3. ^ How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare in the Twenty-first Century, p. 149.