32 FlightJournal.com
deceased, Marseille scored an astonishing 81
of the squadron’s 92 aerial victories (88%)
and close to 31% of 1./JG 27’s total for this
same period. You read that right: 81 aerial
victories by Marseille in just six weeks of
operations!Final Th oughts
If you want to repeat history, do it
the way it’s always been done. If you
want to change history, do it the way
it’s never been done before. History makers are
rule breakers.—Mark BattersonUpon Marseille’s April 1941
arrival in North Africa, he
alone was confi dent that
the impenetrable Lufbery
Circle could be defeated.
He walked out his tactics,
practiced on squadron
mates, and while breaking
many of the “established
rules” of aerial dogfi ghting,
proved to be the only
Luftwaffe pilot with the
skills to continually defeat
the Lufbery. “You cannot
enter the circle—you’ll get
killed!” Marseille did, yet
survived. “You can’t drop
your fl aps and gear during
a dogfi ght.” Marseille did
and, affi rming the Batterson
quote, changed history.
Marseille’s oft-overlooked
humanity likewise helps
cement the notion of
his overall uniqueness.
Whether continually vio-
lating orders not to drop
notes on the airfi elds of
pilots he shot down, the
moral courage to befriend
black South African POW
Cpl. Mathew “Mathias”
Letulu despite German
vitriolic racial propaganda
and societal norms, refusing
to obey Göring’s orders to
shoot Allied pilots in their
parachutes or choosing
to spare the life of an
enemy pilot in a damaged
airplane instead of addinganother victory bar to his rudder, Marseille
fought hard to keep his own short-lived
humanity alive.
In all, Marseille fl ew 482 sorties and is
generally credited with 158 aerial victories,
including 7 from the Battle of Britain. At
fi rst glance, it appears his 151 desert victories
were achieved in almost 18 months. If one
considers time out of theater, Marseille
achieved his successes in only nine months,
at just under 17 kills per month. No other
pilot remotely comes close.
In North Africa, Marseille downed 2.5 times
the number of airplanes as his closest rival,
Werner Schröer, with 61 kills, and 7 times
that of his closest enemy competitor, Clive
Caldwell, who claimed 20.5 victories. If one
examines any major confl ict, any single theater
of operations from World War I to present, one
will not fi nd such dominance displayed by a
single pilot. If one runs Marseille’s percentages
against any other high-scoring ace and then
extrapolates similar friendly and enemy kills,
Marseille’s mastery becomes undeniable.
For example, if we take Baron Manfred von
Richthofen’s 80 WW I kills, the Baron would
have had to score 155 victories in order to
score 2.5 times Ernst Udet’s 62 kills and would
have needed 525 kills in order to down
7 times René Fonck’s 75 victories. When
viewed within this light, Marseille’s numbers
speak for themselves.
On missions where he claimed at least one
victory, 91% of the time, he scored at least 2.
He accomplished this feat on 45 occasions!
On single sorties, 7 times Marseille downed
3 aircraft, 10 times he downed 4, twice he
downed 5, and once each, he downed 6, 7,
and 8 aircraft. In all but Marseille’s fi rst
operational period while in theater, he
consistently outscored every squadron in
the Wing, and 8 times he outscored entire
Gruppen. Regardless, couple Marseille’s
military achievements with his unique
personality and, at a minimum, we have both
the greatest ace in North Africa and arguably
the most interesting military fi gure of WW II.Yeah, everybody knew nobody could
cope with him. Nobody could do the
same. Some of the pilots tried it, like
[Hans] Stahlschmidt, myself, [Gustav] Rödel. He
was an artist. Marseille was an artist. [Using
his hands to illustrate.] He was up here, and the
rest of us were down here somewhere.—Friedrich
Körner, RK (36 kills) THE BEST WW II FIGHTER PILOT?
Effects-Based Approach
to Operations and Likely
Marseille Overclaiming
Effects-Based Approach to Operations
(EBAO) is an approach to planning,
executing, and assessing military
operations with a focus on achieving
desired effects as opposed to focusing
solely on the observable destruction
of enemy forces, personnel (i.e., body
count), industries, or infrastructure.
If Marseille’s total desert victories
“only” reached 120 to 135 confirmed, as
some researchers indicate, and if some
of his claims actually limped back to
base, the tactical-level effect achieved
was the same. Whether an enemy plane
crashed or escaped, that formation
was still reduced by Marseille’s actions.
Marseille unwittingly achieved, what
we call today in operational planning,
the desired “measure of effectiveness.”
This cannot be denied. Allowing
for his documented proclivity for
using ridiculously small amounts of
ammunition, it is highly likely some of
his “kills” fall into this category.
His likely overclaims, however
few, were not figments of his or his
squadron’s imagination. He was clearly
hitting his opponents, but perhaps
while trusting too much in his superior
marksmanship, he was not completely
finishing them all off. This is likely to
have occurred more during the last
two months of his combat career.
This, in no way, diminishes his desert
accomplishments, and regardless of
his final tally, Marseille was clearly
the superior pilot operating in the
North African skies from April 1941 to
September 1942.