Rene Fonck. France
Rene Fonck was the leading Allied ace of the war, and the second leading of all fliers, with 75 confirmed kills. Fonck claimed a total of 142 enemy aircraft destroyed by his guns. He was conscripted by the French Army during the general mobilization in August 1914, and assigned to the combat engineers. Not until February 1915 would Fonck be accepted for and sent to flight training. In May he entered combat, flying an observation plane. Late that month his observer was killed by anti-aircraft fire. After claiming a kill and being told it was unconfirmed that summer, he attacked a German aircraft by circling it, avoiding return fire, gradually forcing it to land behind the French lines.
Fonck did not score again until the following March. The next month (which became known as Bloody April due to the high number of Allied aviation casualties) he joined a fighter wing flying the new SPAD VII. His kills total began to rise quickly. Fonck developed the reputation of being a cold-blooded, clinical tactician, obsessed with receiving credit for his victories, even when there was some question of the kill belonging to another flier. Three of Fonck’s victories were for shared kills.
In May 1918 Fonck lost a bet with an American flier over who would shoot down an enemy plane soonest. After the American won, Fonck changed the terms of the bet to be whomever shot down the most planes that day would win. The prize was a bottle of champagne. In two separate flights Fonck shot down six German reconnaissance airplanes, claiming the prize.
On July 19 Fonck shot down three German airplanes, passing the recently killed Georges Guynemer as the leading French ace. Fonck repeated the six aircraft in one day feat at the end of September 1918, three of them Fokker D VII fighters, the best German fighter of the war. Fonck refused to attack observation balloons or dirigibles, concentrating on enemy observation planes and fighters. By the end of the war his own aircraft had been struck by enemy fire only once.
Fonck survived the war and left the service, only to return to rise to the command of French Fighter Aircraft in 1937. He was accused of collaboration during and after the Second World War through the Vichy government, but a post-war investigation exonerated him. Towards the end of the German occupation Fonck was imprisoned at Drancy. He died in Paris 1953.