Ace (military)

[2][page needed] In a manner analogous to sport statistics, some military roles can be measured in terms of a quantifiable metric.

In control of his fate, handling his airplane with great courage and skill but also with an envied recklessness, the aviator appeared to be a genuine war hero, comparable to cavalrymen in Napoleon's era or chivalrous knights in the Middle Ages.

For instance, Sydney Radley-Walters' obituary published in The Globe and Mail in 2015 described him as the "best Canadian front-line tank ace" of World War II.

According to historian Michael L. Hadley,[11] Literature of World War II heightened the features that earlier cults of the hero [of the German U-boat arm] had promoted.

This was the era of the "grey wolves" and "steel sharks", when wolf packs, officially designated by such predatory names "robber baron" and "bludgeon", attacked the Allies' convoys.