“"Seventeen kills in one day. No Western Allied pilot ever scored that many in twenty-four hours."”
Hans-Joachim "Jochen" Marseille was a rebel in uniform: a jazz-loving, discipline-flouting Berliner who barely survived the Battle of Britain. Transferred to I./JG 27 in North Africa, he found his stage. Flying his famous yellow-nosed Bf 109F-2 "Yellow 14," Marseille perfected deflection shooting to a lethal art, throttling back and dropping flaps to turn inside his opponents. On 1 September 1942, he downed seventeen Allied aircraft in a single day—an achievement without parallel in the Western Desert. His total of 158 confirmed victories, all but seven against the British Commonwealth, made him the most successful Western Front ace of the war. On 30 September 1942, his engine caught fire; he bailed out but struck the vertical stabilizer and fell to earth at age 22.
Why did Marseille's unorthodox tactics—throttling down and using flaps in combat—work for him when they would have killed most pilots?