Undefeated Star of Afrika, North Afrika Luftwaffe Ace, Hans-Joachim Marseille (December 13, 1919 - September 30, 1942) was a Luftwaffe pilot, accepted to be one of the greatest aces of World War II. He was nicknamed the "star of Africa". Marseille scored all but seven of his 158 victories against the British Commonwealth's Desert Air Force over North Africa. Marseille created a unique self-training program for himself, both physical and tactical, which resulted not just in outstanding situational awareness, marksmanship, and confident control of the aircraft, but also in a unique attack tactic that preferred a high angle deflection shooting attack and shooting at the target's front from the side, instead of the common method of chasing an aircraft and shooting at it directly from behind. His innovative and unique attack method, which was perfected by him to a method for attacking aircraft formations, resulted in his fantastic lethality ratio, and in rapid multiple victories per attack, and it is this talent that made him one of the greatest and most innovative fighter aces in history. On June 6, 1942, Marseille attacked alone a formation of 16 P-40 fighters and shot down 6 aircraft of No. 5 Squadron South African Air Force, five of them in six minutes, including the aces Capt Pare (6 claims), Lt. Goulding (6.5 claims), and Capt. Botha (5 claims). On September 1 he was even more successful claiming 17 enemy aircraft shot down on one day, 8 of them in 10 minutes. |
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