Hi,
Something has always puzzled me. In WW2 the top fighter ace was Erich "Bubi" Hartmann with 352 kills. There were 106 other aces with over 100 kills, all of them German. The best non German ace is a Finn in 113th place and he was on the Axis side too. The top 145 places are all axis fighters.
The Allies highest ranked fighter is Ivan Kozhedub with 62 kills for the Soviet Union, and the top ace on the Western Front is Marmaduke Pattle with 40 kills. Pattle is something like 200th overall and even he wasn't involved in the Battle of Britain. The top Allied ace in the Battle of Britain was Josef FrantiĊĦek with a mere 17 kills, compared to his Axis equivalent Helmut Wick's 56.
So given on an individual basis the top Axis aces downed far far more planes than the allies, and given that they did so to such a great degree it would seem to suggest systemic superiority (you cannot have 150+ outliers), then how on earth did they not end up establishing air superiority?
Did the Allies simply have far more planes? Did they score kills differently? Did the Axis (as seems to be potentially the case) rack up big numbers destroying the incredibly weak airforces of various eastern European countries but then fight a much lower lethality war with the Soviets, RAF, and USAF which didn't trouble the scorers on either side so much?
The Allies/ USSR had significantly more manpower, even in areas of specialised training such as pilots. It is clear that the Luftwaffe needed to fly its best pilots in order to compete, so pilots tended to fly as many sorties as they possibly could, until they were KIA. On the other hand, Allied pilots were rotated into pilot-training schools, which helped them rest and pass on their skills.
Please just read the rubric of the article you linked to. It's well-sourced. There are over 700 Americans on that list, but only around 200 Germans.
Did the Axis (as seems to be potentially the case) rack up big numbers destroying the incredibly weak airforces of various eastern European countries but then fight a much lower lethality war with the Soviets, RAF, and USAF
The Red Air Force was badly outmatched when hostilities started, flying in antiquated planes with only a very few modern aircraft to put up against the Germans. To make it worse, at the start they had serious fuel shortages for those newer aircraft, and had only recently begun incorporating them into their squadrons which meant that pilots weren't all that skilled by that point.
On paper, the Soviets had the larger air force. That just means the Germans and Finn were able to rack up large scores.