A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft.Use of the term ace in military aviation circles began in World War I (1914-18), when French newspapers described Adolphe Pegoud, nicknamed "The Foolhardy One", as l’as (French for "ace") after he became the first pilot to down five German aircraft. The term had been popularized in prewar French newspapers when referring to sports stars such as soccer players and bicyclists. ---------------------------------------------- It has been stated that during World War I, the Central Powers and British Empire defined an ace as a pilot with 10 or more confirmed "catastrophic kills", but no authoritative sources support this claim. The German Empire had no ace system as such, but instead publicised aviators who had destroyed the greatest number of Allied aircraft. Britain had no ace system at all and published no victory lists comparable to the French or Germans. ---------------------------------------------------- In 1914-18, different air services also had different methods of assigning credit for kills. The German Luftstreitkräfte credited only one pilot for each victory, and only for enemy planes assessed as destroyed or captured. Most other nations adopted the French Armee de l’Air system of granting full credit to every pilot or aerial gunner participating in a victory, which could sometimes be six or seven individuals. The British furthermore credited "moral victories", when enemy planes were seen to be "driven down", "forced to land", and "out of control". To a lesser extent so did the United States Army Air Service. For example, Eddie Rickenbacker's 26 victories included ten planes "out of control", several "dived east", and two observation balloons. None of those would have been credited in later wars. By contrast, a two-member British DH-9 bomber crew, who performed remarkable feats of flying and aerial gunnery, on 23 August 1918, are not regarded as aces. The Bermudian pilot, Lt Arthur Spurling, and gunner Sgt Frank Bell attacked 30 German Fokker D.VIIs. Spurling destroyed three D.VIIs with the fixed forward-firing machine guns and Bell downed two with his gun. Spurling was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) as a result of his actions. --------------------------------------------------- In World War II, many air forces credited fractional shares of aerial victories, resulting in fractions or decimal scores such as 11½ or 26.83. Some U.S. commands also credited aircraft destroyed on the ground as equal to aerial victories. The Soviets distinguished between solo and group kills, as did the Japanese, though the Japanese Navy stopped crediting individual victories in 1943. The German Luftwaffe continued the tradition of "one pilot, one kill."