List of World War II aces from Germany

There are a number of reasons why Germany's highest-scoring pilots shot down many more aircraft than the most successful Allied pilots. During the first years of the war, German day fighter pilots tended to enjoy favourable tactical circumstances; for instance, during the Battle of Britain British pilots generally tried to attack the German bombers rather than the fighters protecting them. German combat tactics during this period also tended to be superior to those of the Allies, with formation leaders in particular often having a higher chance of success.^[5]

Formal and informal Luftwaffe practices also contributed to the high numbers of victories achieved by some pilots. The normal practice in fighter units was for the highest-scoring pilot to lead formations, regardless of their rank, which placed them in the best position to shoot down Allied aircraft. The German pilots also typically conducted much more combat flying than their Allied equivalents: while the western Allied air forces frequently rested their fighter pilots or rotated them out of combat zones after a certain number of missions or flying hours, German pilots were required to fly until they became casualties.^[6]

During the 1990s, the German archives made available to the public, including microfilm rolls of wartime records not seen since January 1945.^[7]They show that although the Luftwaffe generally did not accept a "kill" without a witness (in which instance it was considered only a probable and didn't count in the victory scoring process), some pilots habitually submitted unwitnessed claims and these sometimes made it through the verification process, particularly if they were made by pilots with established records.^[7]Unlike all of the other air forces that fought during World War II, the Luftwaffe did not accept shared claims, but sometimes it happened. Each claim should have referred to a particular aircraft, but some victories were awarded to other pilots who had claimed the destruction of the same aircraft.^[7]From mid-year 1943 through 1944, the OKW communiques often overstated Allied bomber losses by a factor of up to two; these claims existed only in the communiques and weren't used in victory scoring. Defenders of the German fighter pilots maintain that overclaims were eliminated during the confirmation process, but the microfilms show that this wasn't always the case.^[7]Stringent reviews and comparisons of Allied archives and German archives show that 90 percent of the claims submitted were confirmed, or found to be "in order" for confirmation, up to the time the system broke down altogether in 1945.^[7]

  This along with the * (asterisk), indicates that the pilot was either killed in action (KIA), missing in action (MIA), died of wounds (DOW) or killed in a flying accident (KIFA).
  This and the / (slash) indicates information discrepancies listed by Aders, Boiten, Caldwell, Girbig, Held, Obermaier, Spick, Ring, Mathews, Foreman and Zabecki.