In previous videos, we've looked into the deeds of some of World War II's most heroic
soldiers and medics. Now, were climbing into the cockpit to fly beside some of the most
heroic pilots to grace the fiery skies of the Second World War. Don't worry; this is
a two-parter, and if an aerial ace from your country doesn't appear in this part, they
might in the next. Another thing to be aware of is that I've not included every heroic
aerial deed in this video, just what I think are most epic ones.
Prince
Constantin "Bâzu" Cantacuzino was a fighter ace from a noble Romanian family. He grew
up in motorsports and was able to afford all the practice he wanted due to his family's
wealth. He was a master of aerobatics before the war and was more than eager to put his
skills into practice when it started. Bâzu both flew in German planes and blasted them
out of the sky, though when Romania was a part of Axis, he flew a Messerschmitt Bf 10.
9In his Bf 109, on the 29th of June 1943, he attacked six Soviet aircraft and four British
Spitfires while defending three Romanian bombers. Bâzu's wingman, the only ally at his side,
was damaged and had to return to base, and Bâzu's craft was damaged too, but he saved
his own life by employing his mastery of aerobatics and making an emergency belly landing. On
the 5th of August, Bâzu attacked a forty to fifty-strong Soviet plane formation alone,
taking out three and scattering the rest like birds. In August 1944, when Romania's allegiance
was with the Allies, the Luftwaffe unleashed on Romania's capital, Bucharest, so Bâzu
took to the sky and shredded the German pilots who were now his enemy. Throughout World War
II, Constantin "Bâzu" Cantacuzino scored a total kill count of — wait for it — sixty-nine.
No other pilot in aerobatics or the Romanian Air Force could hope to match the man, and
his daring, wild flying must have worked out well for him because he managed to survive
the war and go on, supposedly, flying throughout Europe to visit each of his many wives.
Eino Ilmari "Illu" Juutilainen was almost untouchable in the skies of World War II.
The only damage this Finnish ace ever sustained was inflicted by a friendly anti-aircraft
gun , and no wingman of his ever went down. In the Winter War, Juutilainen flew a Fokker
D.XXI against the Soviets, and later, in the Continuation War, he flew an American Brewster
B-239 "Buffalo." On the 6th of February 1942, Juutilainen and two other pilots attacked
seven Soviet bombers and twelve Soviet fighters. In this engagement, he took out two of the
bombers and later recalled: "Just as I started after the lead bomber, I observed a MiG fighter
closing in on me. In spite of the threat posed by the latter, I managed to hit the bomber
in the starboard engine, which poured out smoke and oil. Moments later the aeroplane
rolled over to the right and plunged into the forest [...]." When he was put in the
cockpit of a Messerschmitt Bf 109G-2s, Juutilainen downed six Soviet planes in one day, becoming
an ace in that craft in just one day. For his unscathed victories and keen eye, Juutilainen
received not one but two Mannerheim Crosses, the highest of all Finnish military decorations.
It's said that, besides German pilots, Juutilainen is the highest scoring ace that the world
has ever seen, boasting ninety-four confirmed kills. He survived the war without a scratch
to show for it. The poor bloke died at home on his birthday in 1999. Right now, it's sounding
pretty good to be a pilot, isn't it?
Speaking of German pilots, Eric Cartman—— I mean Erich Hartmann is the highest scoring
ace the world has ever seen. While his mates might have called him "Bubi," which pretty
much means "Young Boy" in German, he was only a child in the face. In the cockpit, Hartmann
embodied the Nazi eagle, stalking his helpless victims until he was right behind them and
then tearing them open with his guns from talon's-reach. He started flying in glider
programs with the Luftwaffe way before it blitzkrieged its way into the war; at fifteen,
he was a gliding instructor in the Hitler Youth. In October 1940, Hartmann's military
training begun, and when he finally entered the war, he could already fly seventeen different
aircraft. Throughout his career, Hartmann crash-landed sixteen times, due only to mechanical
failure or getting hit by fragments of the enemy craft he'd just torn apart. In the war,
Hartmann sent 352 aircraft in charred pieces to the earth, flying in 1,404 combat missions
overall; towards its end, he received Germany's highest military decoration at the time — the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. When his country
surrendered, he was turned over to the Soviets by U.S. forces and imprisoned until 1955.
When Hartmann was released, he was an officer in the West German Airforce and even trained
in America. Retiring from the military, he taught civilians to fly. The Soviets must
have seen his boyish face and deemed him harmless. How else would this one-man-airforce have
been loosed back into the sky? When asked in an interview about his favourite method
of attack, retired veteran Hartmann said: "Coming out of the sun and getting close;
dog-fighting was a waste of time. The hit and run with the element of surprise served
me well [...]."
Before we move on, I think one of the reasons why Hartmann and other German pilots racked
up so many kills is because Germany was non-stop active for five years on multiple fronts,
meaning they had more opportunities to rack up kills.
Dezső Szentgyörgyi was eighteen when he volunteered for the Royal Hungarian Air Force.
His first kill wasn't an enemy but a German Heinkel He 111 Bomber; it was totally an accident.
In June 1943, he took down an actual enemy plane — a Soviet fighter. In May 1944, Dezső
Szentgyörgyi was transferred into the Hungarian 101st "Puma" Fighter Group, in which he was
promoted to a "flight leader" and shot down six American planes and seventeen Soviet planes.
The Hungarian was never taken down and never crashed, and by the end of World War II, he'd
racked up twenty-nine confirmed kills. Look, it's not a whole lot compared to some of these
previous aces, but Dezső Szentgyörgyi was Hungary's most successful fighter pilot. He
died doing what he loved when he crashed an Ilyushin Il-18 airliner near Copenhagen in
1971.
Italian fighter ace Franco Lucchini started his career in aviation as a glider pilot and
earned his military flight license in 1936. In 1937, he flew in the Spanish Civil War
in a Fiat CR.32 and shot down five enemy aircraft; he was himself shot down twice. In World War
II, he flew over the skies of North Africa, carving up Gloster Gladiators, Short Sunderland
flying boats, Bristol Blenheims, and other Allied aircraft. In 1941, Lucchini battle
in the skies over Malta out of Sicily in Macchi C.200 Saetta monoplanes. Here, he was wounded
and put out of action for a while. At the end of the year, however, he climbed back
into the sky in a newer model, taking out his first Supermarine Spitfire in May 1942.
Later in May, he was back in North Africa, where he worked on his K/D ratio. In June
1943, he returned to Sicily to defend his homeland. When Lucchini took off in a Macchi
C.202 to slay Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses near Catania, Sicily, he didn't know that
take-off would be his last. The air group Lucchini was leading unloaded on the bombers
without paying too much attention to the Spitfires escorting them — an act of desperation,
it seems. After hitting at least three of the bombers and taking down a Spitfire, Lucchini's
craft took a mortal wound. He plummeted into the earth near Catania, perishing, very likely,
on impact. Franco Lucchini was credited with between twenty and twenty-six confirmed kills,
though many of his kills were likely credited to his squadrons and groups, as was the way
in Italian Air Force. While Lucchini was known to be a serious, solitary man on the ground,
he was a confident, sharp-eyed menace in the air, and one of Italy's best — if not, its
very best — pilots in the Second World War.
Hiroyoshi "The Devil" Nishizawa was born in a mountain village in Japan and volunteered
to join the Yokaren, which was basically a training program for reserve pilots. He later
became qualified for the Japanese Navy Air Force, graduating early 1939. When the war
kicked off, Nishizawa flew in a squadron of the Chitose Air Group, though he didn't get
into a Mitsubishi Zero until February 1942. In April 1942, he was posted to New Guinea
with some of Japan's best pilots, aces. One of them described Nishizawa: "Never have I
seen a man with a fighter plane do what Nishizawa would do with his Zero. His aerobatics were
all at once breathtaking, brilliant, totally unpredictable, impossible, and heart-stirring
to witness." Over the skies of New Guinea, Nishizawa battled American and Australian
pilots, earning six kills in just three days and becoming an ace himself. On the 17th of
May, Nishizawa and his mates performed a death-defying airshow over the Allied airbase at Port Moresby,
just for the thrill of it. No shots were fired against them, and the Allies actually wrote
to Nishizawa's commander, saying how impressed they were with the show. Nishizawa and his
mates copped a bit of a spanking, but it was worth it for the LOLs. Later recalled to Japan,
Nishizawa was awarded a katana "For Conspicuous Military Valor," and then, after a little
break from the action, he was transferred to Luzon, the Philippines, where he escorted
kamikaze missions in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. After requesting that he
himself fly kamikaze, and being denied, another pilot kamikazed Nishizawa's Zero. Nishizawa
then boarded a transport aircraft to go and get more Zeroes. He went up in flames with
the transport craft as it was lashed by American Hellcats. Over his career, this "gaunt, pale"
Japanese daredevil was credited with between eighty-seven and 150 victories. Now, I did
say that Finnish ace Ilmari Juutilainen had the most confirmed kills out of non-German
pilots at ninety-four, and that still stands because Nishizawa's lower estimate was eighty-seven.
Geoffrey Bryson Fisken was a sheep farmer in New Zealand before the war, and when he
first volunteered to park his tractor in the shed and join the Royal New Zealand Air Force,
he was denied. Farming was just too vital a contribution to the war effort, and Fisken's
favourite sheep would miss him dearly. Don't worry, I'm not going to make another joke
about Kiwis and sheep... because it isn't a joke. In 1940, Fisken convinced his boss
to fire him; he was then able to get into the air force. Early in 1941, he was sent
to Singapore and learnt to fly the American Brewster F2A Buffalo. When the Japanese attacked
the British HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, Fisken arrived at the catastrophe only in
time to watch the battleship and battlecruiser sink beneath the waves. Then the Japanese
mustered their Zeroes over Singapore, and on the 16th of December 1941, Fisken shot
his first Zero out of the air. Just before the Fall of Singapore and the capture of around
80,000 Allied troops, Fisken took out several more bombers and fighters. Retreating on the
1st of February 1942 from overwhelming Japanese forces, he was injured and evacuated, just
in time to avoid being one of those 80,000. In June 1943, Fisken returned to the air over
Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands, where he scored the last few kills of his killstreak.
In September, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, though soon after, he was discharged
due to the recurring pangs of the injuries he suffered in Singapore. Fisken returned
to the farmlands of Middle Earth, only to find that his favourite sheep had found greener
pastures. All in all, he managed to knock eleven enemy planes out of the sky, becoming
the most successful British Commonwealth Ace in the Pacific War.
Yeah, as I said after the section on Finnish ace Ilmari Juutilainen, these World War II
aerial superstars make being a pilot seem like a pretty sweet deal — especially when
you compare it to being in the infantry and starving in the ruins of Stalingrad or watching
your flesh slough from your bones in the jungles of Burma. In reality, many pilots were blown
up in the sky, many crashed into the earth or sea, and many cooked alive in their cockpits.
Think about all the pilots who met these and similar fates because of the aces mentioned
in this video alone.
I hope you enjoyed part one, guys. Keep your eyes on the sky, and look out for part two.