The Luftwaffe pilots were never the equals of the USN. That’s a fact. In basically 3 years, they became the most deadly pilots on planet earth, bar none.
They mastered deflection shooting that the USAAF didn’t even try, and the Luftwaffe never did. As far as the Luftwaffe high numbers, they were fighting from the mid 30s till the end of the war. All the extremely high scores were the eastern front guys. They ran up those scores against barely trained pilots in very low quality planes until later in the war.
Even Hartmann called it “infanticide”.
A USN Corsair and Hellcat was the most deadly airman of the war, even exceeding Luftwaffe skills. Read up on the deflection shooting story, nobody else even tried.
Yes, our Navy was the only air force in the world during WWII that taught the art and science of deflection shooting. Our Navy also used tracers in the PTO whereas the Army Air Corps in the ETO did not. The tracers not only aided in shooting but caused many more fires on the Jap planes aiding in their destruction.
2000hp is a hard nut to crack.