The foundations of a really high kill:death ratio

I know some guys who are really good at head-on-head (frontal) clashes; they can kill a plane this way, seconds later another, yet another, yet another and then after killing the fifth they burn out.

That's an impressive streak, but it's still "only" a kill/death ratio of 5:1.

Can you imagine players to average more than this in head-on-head fights?

6:1?

8:1?

10:1?

I cannot. In fact, those impressive players I just wrote about have an average of 2:1 or 3:1 in head-on engagements.

Such a tactic doesn't seem to be very helpful if you strive for a really high kill ratio of maybe 10:1 or 15:1. Even an impressive five-kill streak at the expense of a single plane would be a setback in the quest for such high kill ratios.

This is no bashing of head-on engagements; it was an example for a fundamental, even mathematical, insight: 

(I) Avoid engagements and tactics that yield a worse kill ratio than the one you're aspiring to reach.

It's even more troublesome than this sounded whenever you're trying to reach a very high kill ratio.

Imagine a player with a kill ratio of 50:1. This player wants to improve his kill ratio to 100:1*.

Now imagine how much a lost aircraft means to him, and how much one more kill means to him.

One more kill is near-meaningless to him compared to the loss of a single plane!

Even worse, every match with a single lost plane is a bad match for him, since he's not going to score 100 or even only 50 kills in that match as a compensation.

(II) The quest for really high kill ratios is not about being great at killing planes. It's about being great at survival.

This is what makes very high kill ratios so difficult to achieve and difficult to maintain: It requires A LOT of ambition, focus on the goal, self-discipline and patience.

One golden rule exists that embodies all this: The Golden rule of the least risky target.

Imagine yourself flying at superior altitude, looking at red planes below yourself. Do you attack? Which one do you attack?

You should most likely kill one that pursues the objective if you want to win, but if your ambition is to maximize kill/death ratio, you better obey a simple rule:

(III) ALWAYS attack the least risky target only. Wait instead of attacking if you estimate the odds to be worse than the kill ratio you're trying to achieve.

*: I actually only reached these heights for a single aircraft type, ever - I had a score of 165:1 with the Ki-45ko once.