Were there any “ground aces” durduring WWII?

by Fezman92

Did the any of the navies or army AA guns have “aces”? Or did no one keep track of how many planes someone shot down, just making it an Air Force/Army Air Force thing?

Thanks

wotan_weevil

The German armed forces counted such kills, and had quite a few Flak aces. Tank kills by anti-tank and Flak guns were also counted. These were often indicated by "kill rings" painted on the barrel:

Note that this last gun is a twin-barrel gun, and both barrels have the same number of rings. For heavy Flak guns, which typically fired as batteries, it wasn't possible to determine which gun shot down any particular plane, and every gun in the battery was entitled to a kill ring for each plane the battery brought down (). If two batteries shared credit for a plane, every gun in both batteries received a kill ring. The point wasn't to have an accurate count of kills, but as a morale-boosting exercise. These guns were crew-served weapons, and the personnel serving a particular gun would change, so these rings don't specify that any individual was a Flak ace, but at least some batteries were Flak aces.

In same cases, it might be just an individual gun that gets the credit. One possible example is this train defence 8.8cm Flak gun:

mounted on a rail car to protect the train from air attack.

Some guns have a very large number of kill rings:

while some replace 10 rings with a different symbol for 10 kills:

In some case, aircraft and tank kills are separately counted:

Note that in the last example above, the tank types are identified on the individual kill rings (28t is probably the 28 ton T-34, and 52t might be one of the KV series heavy tanks). Aircraft types and nationalities were sometimes indicated:

In some cases, credit could be given to an individual. One naval ace was Karl Jörß, who received the Knight's Cross for 12 confirmed kills as a naval Flak gunner in the Mediterranean:

Der Führer verlieh auf Vorschlag des Oberbefehlhabers der Kriegsmarine, Großadmiral Dönitz, das Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes am Bootsmannsmaat Karl Jörss. Bootsmannsmaat Jörss war zunächst Geschützführer und später Flakführer auf verschiedenen Transportern im Mittelmeer. Bei der Abwehr zahlreicher Luftangriffe zeichnete er sich besonderes aus. Es gelang ihm durch geschickte Feuerleitung, sämtliche Angriffe abzuwehren, die Schiffe und ihre Ladungen vor ihrer Vernichtung zu retten, wobei er noch 12 beobachtete Abschüsse erzielte- Diese Leistung ist überragend, gemessen an den ganz besonders schwierigen Verhältnissen im Mittelmeer. 23/2-43.

For his feats in English translation from a contemporary article in the press, see: https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/51200/J%C3%B6rss-Karl.htm

The Soviet Union doesn't appear to have kept track of kills in this way, but there were unofficial Soviet AAA aces. Some examples have been found by counting kills in the records that exist:

I don't know about the practice of other armed forces during the war regarding counting such kills. Can anybody add more?

Reference:

Martin W. Bowman, The Heavy Bomber Offensive of WWII, Pen and Sword, 2015.