How was air to air kills calculated during WW1?
In ROF it seems that only airplane kills count in the totals, at least during the career mode only airplane kills seems to count in the aces list in the newspaper.
But as I understand it when I read a book like Rickenbackers: fighting the flying circus it seems to me that balloon kills also counted toward becoming an ace? So what is correct?
If balloons did not count, Frank Luke would not have been an ace as 14 of his 18 kills where balloons, something his contemporary air men obviously though was even better than shooting down 18 planes (as attacking balloons was considered suicide with all the AA around them). From wikipedia (where Rickenbacker seems to want to emphasize that 10 of his kills where balloons):
Eddie Rickenbacker said of Luke: "He was the most daring aviator and greatest fighter pilot of the entire war. His life is one of the brightest glories of our Air Service. He went on a rampage and shot down fourteen enemy aircraft, including ten balloons, in eight days. No other ace, even the dreaded Richthofen, had ever come close to that."