Johnson continued his career in the RAF after the war and served in the Korean War before retiring in 1966 with the rank of air vice-marshal. He flew 700 operational sorties and engaged enemy aircraft on 57 occasions, which included the destruction of 14 Messerschmitt Bf 109s and 20 Focke-Wulf Fw 190s. Johnson was credited with 34 individual victories over enemy aircraft, as well as seven shared victories during the Dieppe Raid, Combined Bomber Offensive, Battle of Normandy, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge and the Western Allied invasion of Germany. He took part in the offensive sweeps over German-occupied Europe from 1941 to 1944, almost without rest. He had been interested in aviation since his youth and applied to join the RAF, and although he was initially rejected on social and medical grounds, he was eventually accepted in August 1939. Johnson grew up and was educated in the East Midlands, where he qualified as an engineer. These are Arthur Robert Moore, Wilfrith Peter Green and Norman Arthur Kynaston).Īir Vice-Marshal James Edgar Johnson (9 March 1915 – 30 January 2001), nicknamed “Johnnie”, was a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot and the Top British Ace of War. ( Note: Three names have been temporarily excluded due to lack of sources, we hope to add them soon. During the battle, 188 RAF pilots achieved the distinction of aces – about eight percent of the total involved.īelow is the list of the top ten aces from the United Kingdom that fought during World War II. The individual actions of aces were then widely reported and celebrated, usually to provide the home front with a cult of the hero in what was otherwise a war of attrition. During the Second World War, German aces were colored by grandiose Nazi propaganda, although Luftwaffe pilots generally flew many more individual sorties than their Allied counterparts.ĭuring the Battle of Britain, RAF pilots claimed to have shot down about 2,600 German aircraft. Of 2,332 Allied pilots who flew fighters in the Battle, 38.90 percent could claim some success in terms of enemy aircraft shot down. The concept emerged in 1915 during World War I ( Adolphe Pégoud was the first person described by French newspapers as l’As after becoming the first pilot to down five German aircraft). A flying ace or air ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down at least five enemy aircraft during aerial combat.
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