And I bet if he'd known it was going to happen that way, he'd still would have climbed into the cockpit and flown away in the last and best of the gunfighers.

It takes a certain type to fly a fighter. The game is a binary solution set. You die or he dies. We celebrate the man who is successful in 5 such encounters and call him an ace. The odds of such success are 1 in 32 (which is 2^5). The odds of being dead are 31 in 32 after 5 such encounters. This proves either pilots can't count that high with their shoes on, or they just don't care, or they are brave beyond all reason. Special in any case. I've known some pretty bright pilots. I think it's the last case for most of the good ones, plus a supreme confidence in their own ability, plus a lot of training. And a lot of dead friends. My son lost a close college friend in military jet training, an equipment failure.