Ace (military)

According to Nicole-Melanie Goll, the popular perception of one-on-one duels was divorced from reality, however, as planes rarely broke formation.

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.