Bf 109 Landing Gear Geometry Issue

[stona]

I have read, and although Finland used the plane until 1954, I have not read than one fatal accident, some broken machines, though. If anyone has information about the Bf 109 accidents in Finland, put the information here. Of course they are some, but I have not seen statistics
I think a bad reputation came from Germany where late in the war, after very short pilot training, young pilots entered the plane.

I don't know much about Finnish use of the type, nor how the Finnish pilots were trained. It must be probable that the Finns were able to provide better training for their very few front line pilots compared to the Germans who were trying to turn out several hundred pilots every month.
The Bf 109 always caused problems for novice pilots. I agree that a lack of training later in the war can't have helped, though many new pilots were being assigned to units operating the Fw 190 by then. This wasn't the case prior to the Focke-Wulf's entry into service across the Luftwaffe, which leaves almost half the war with no option for a combat fighter pilot but the Bf 109.
Cheers
Steve

 

[cimmex]

I will repeat that I don't believe that the Bf 109, as it entered service with the Luftwaffe, would have been accepted by the RAF.

Cheers

Steve

Well, FAA, CAA, LBA accepted them nowadays

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Well, FAA, CAA, LBA accepted them nowadays

Not quite - the FAA (and I would guess other aviation authorities) allow operation of wairbirds (like the -109) but they are not issued standard airworthiness certificates so the scope of their operation may be very narrowed (ex; day VFR, no passengers, if that was possible, and no operations over populated areas). There are features of WW2 warbirds that would never be allowed in production aircraft. In the US all non-type certificated warbirds are operated under either "experimental" or "restricted" catagory under FAR part 23.

 

[GregP]

Most of ours (Planes of Fame) are experimental.

 

[stona]

Well, FAA, CAA, LBA accepted them nowadays

Entirely different situation. There are not two or three hundred pilots a month coming out of flying school/OTUs and moving on to powerful, tail draggers, as front line fighters every month. The RAF went to great lengths to accurately assess the handling characteristic of all it's aircraft. Both the RAF's principle fighters had benign characteristics when compared with a contemporary Bf 109 and there is a reason for that.

Almost every veteran, including Luftwaffe pilots who had a chance to fly them, describes both the Spitfire and Hurricane as easy (childishly easy said one) to fly. You won't find many comments like that about the Bf 109.

Nobody in their right mind is going to entrust one of the VERY few airworthy Bf 109s today to a novice pilot. Nobody has ever suggested that in the hands of an experienced pilot the type could not be mastered to become, at least in my opinion, one of the greatest of all piston engine fighters.

There was an old Luftwaffe joke that said when a Bf 109 and a Fw 190 crashed, Tank looked at the part that failed and made it stronger. Messerschmitt looked at the parts that had survived and made them lighter.

Cheers

Steve

 

[The Basket]

I willprobablythat I don't believe that the Bf 109, as it entered service with the Luftwaffe, would have been accepted by the RAF.

Cheers

Steve

RAF did run some ropey airplanes and the 109 was ok flying wise. If they had no spitfire they would have accepted 109 by the barrel full in 1940.
I read the MiG-15 wouldn't have been accepted. Ha. Prefer the death trap which is the Meteor. That had plenty of issues. Been inferior to the MiG was just one of them.
Seafire was hardly a steller. Anyway 109 had better stall than the Spitfire. British test pilots who flew the 109 had no probs with undercarriage but on takeoff rudder and tail hidden by wing so no control until tail lifts.
Have to feed power in slow. probably test pilot bravado. Remember 109 was a bantam fighter in its original guise so the undercarriage would have to get bigger and stronger as it grew. Probably not originally designed for the weights it carry

 

[Balljoint]

I doubt that Willy had it in mind, but the Me-109 had two "counter" though probably not offsetting suspension geometry idiosyncrasies. The toe out would tend to steer the aircraft in the direction of the more heavily loaded wheel. This in itself is unstable in that such a direction change would then transfer weight to the other wheel and so forth. The technical term for this is "twitchy". Cars have a bit of toe in for stability.
However, the 109 also has rather severe negative camber in that the top of the tire is tilted inboard of the bottom. This generates in offsetting camber thrust tending to turn the tire in the direction it tilts. Both wheels would offset each other when equally loaded. But a more heavily loaded tire turn in the opposite direction due to camber thrust than due to toe in.

 

[Juha]

I have read, and although Finland used the plane until 1954, I have not read than one fatal accident, some broken machines, though. If anyone has information about the Bf 109 accidents in Finland, put the information here. Of course they are some, but I have not seen statistics
I think a bad reputation came from Germany where late in the war, after very short pilot training, young pilots entered the plane.

Terve Lefa
Try to get Vesen's and Siiropää's Utin Koneet Siipi Maassa Utissa toimineiden lentojoukkojen onnettomuuksia ja vaurioita 1918-1963 (2008 ), t/o accidents to 109s were fairly common. So of the accidents and losses happened to the 109s operating from Utti, 21% happened during the t/os and 32% during landing and 15% during taxing. The %s for all a/c included into the book are 13%, 35% and 9%.

Juha

 

[GregP]

Hi Juha,

Hadn't heard the real numbers before, at least in Finnish service.

Thanks!

 

[Milosh]

Some guy posted many years ago the accident rate for the Bf109 and Fw190A with JG26.

The results stuck with me over the years because the Fw190A had a worse accident rate (landing-take off) than the Bf109. Cant' remember the date he got his data from but iirc 1942-43 range.

 

[GregP]

We have data out the yeng-yeng for US types and some British types. Any data, be it accident, operations, victories, losses, etc. for Axis aircraft or Russian aircraft in WWII is appreciated ... of course with some source quoted so we at least know where it came from.

 

[gumbyk]

Not quite - the FAA (and I would guess other aviation authorities) allow operation of wairbirds (like the -109) but they are not issued standard airworthiness certificates so the scope of their operation may be very narrowed (ex; day VFR, no passengers, if that was possible, and no operations over populated areas). There are features of WW2 warbirds that would never be allowed in production aircraft. In the US all non-type certificated warbirds are operated under either "experimental" or "restricted" catagory under FAR part 23.

Here are the limitations that we have on our CJ-6. (WW2 aircraft will have much the same, or tighter, limitations.

 

[stona]

RAF did run some ropey airplanes and the 109 was ok flying wise. If they had no spitfire they would have accepted 109 by the barrel full in 1940.

But they didn't have to because they had the Spitfire and Hurricane and a back up plan.
Of course the Germans tested and assessed their aircraft to. My point is that there was a different ethos between the two air forces and this led to different perceptions of what could and could not be acceptable handling in their aircraft.

If Britain had gone to war with France in 1939 and had no fighter of her own I'm sure she would have bought as many Bf 109s as the Germans could produce. It was arguably the best fighter in the world at that time.

Both the Spitfire and Hurricane entered service before the war. Various developments produced variants that had marginal handling characteristics. These were accepted as war time expedients but would never have been accepted during peace time. Examples might include the Seafire Mk III and certainly some PR Spitfires, overloaded with fuel.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Lefa]

A little of topic.
This list covers the crew fatalities or significant damage to plane, or lead to the destruction of air accidents in Me-109 plane, but not in combat action destroyed planes, in Finnish Air Force.
Direct to the Google translator.

7/29/1943 MT -215 engine cut pesticide on a flight to catch , apparently without air combat injuries, the pistons, connecting rods came out of the engine and the engine coolant lit the entire aircraft . Staff Sergeant Instructor U.Lehto escaped by parachute

16 November 1943 MT -223

14 April 1944 MT -243

12 May 1944 MT- 236 and MT -242 collided at the start Suulajärvi . Run over the MP -236 's director , Lieutenant M.Salovaara died. http://sa-kuva.fi/static/17/05/131705_r500.jpg

18 May 1944 MT -418 was destroyed in Utti control error due to the rise. Lieutenant O.Lahti died.

20 August 1944 Me- 109 was destroyed in the search engine on the way the Third Reich nightfighters training at a time when the instructor drove the machine into the woods in the dark. Ensign M.Tervo died.

27 September 1951 MT -460 damaged by falling in Kajaani , the propeller blade angle adjustment did not work due to low battery , which brought down the control error , combined with the machine on its back . The pilot , Lieutenant Kallio died.

The information here: Luettelo Suomen ilmavoimien lento-onnettomuuksista ? Wikipedia

I do not know if in that all, but only one what I found on the web.

 

[Juha]

Hello Greg
the source material is rather heterogeneous, even the 109 material, the main part of our first Bf 109 unit, LeLv 34, operated at first from Utti, the material of the study are the accidents to the planes which operated from Utti 1918 – 63, little over 4 months in 1943 and then moved nearer to the coast to the Kymi a/f early in Aug. 1943. After that 109s that operated from Utti were almost all used to give a short 109 familiarization course to the pilots, either from training schools or from units which were converting to 109. And then there was the post-war use of 109s up to 1954, Utti was only one of the bases from where the 109s operated after the war. The absolute numbers for Utti based 109Gs accidents were: t/o 16, landing 24 and taxing 11 out of the total of 75.

Juha

 

[GregP]

You know, we've had a few WWII fighters in civilian hands have taxi and takeoff acidents when they simply didn't see the plane in front of them. We had one P-51D do an overhead recovery (circular approach) and land right behind another P-51 and run right into him. It was fatal for both pilots.

Several taxied into carts, cars, or trucks. Not fatal, but certainly hard on the equipment.

At the Planes of Fame, we had one many-thousand hour airline pilot land our North American O-47 wheels up and it burned to the ground. We had another fly our pristine Grumman Hellcat into scud (low overcast) in Tennessee and hit power lines some 25 odd years back. Since them the mandate is that our old fighters only fly in severe clear. They stay on the ground if the weather is in any way threatening.

So the Bf 109's in Finnish service weren't the only WWII fighters who had taxi and landing accidents, but they may well have the highest percentage of these types of incidents.

Again, thanks for the info!

 

[swampyankee]

As an aside, Stinton, in his book Anatomy of an Airplane said that taildraggers should have toe-out, not toe-in for good ground handling. I have no personal knowledge of this, as my engineering experience was involved in keeping aircraft in the air, as opposed to landing.

 

[GregP]

When building RC planes for 15+ years, once I switched to conventional gear I never went back to tricycle gear unless flying someone else's airplane.

In that time, I never one built in toe-out and mine took off and landed quite well. If I had an occasional hard landing and splayed the gear a bit causing toe-out, I bent it back or installed new gear. Never had ONE with bad manners except for almost all WWI models that have the gear way too far forward. The Spad XIII was the worst!

Once into retracts, the geometry was fairly well set except for toe-in / toe-out. Straight or toe-in was stable. Toe-out was squirrely.

I'm not talking about major toe here, only 0.5 - 1.5°. Mostly I tried to keep the gear straight. I only added toe if it displayed skittishness while taxiing at medium speed. It worked perfectly for 15+ years of good fun. I might start flying RC again since it seems unlikely I'll get to build the RV4 I want.

Let's say you land right wing low in calm air. If it has a bit of toe-in, the main gear tends to move very slightly to the left. Since the right wing is low, the natural tendency is to apply right rudder, moving the tail to the left and keeping the fuselage straight. It works VERY well.

But if anyone wants toe-out on his plane, try it by all means. If it works out, great. If I build a full-scale plane, I'll follow the plans, whatever they call for. If that happens to be toe-out, OK. If all the RV's flying around have toe-out, so will mine. They fly absolutely great!

 

[cimmex]

It is really amazing how some people blame aircraft engineers who probably belonged to the best of the time that they were too dump to understand the basics of wheel dynamics when the decided that no toe out or toe in was the best for the 109 there surely were some reasons for this. Especially this kind of modification would not cost a lot so even Prof. Messerschmitt who is known as a very money saving man could not deny if necessary.
just my 2c
cimmex

 

[The Basket]

A novice can crash anything.
ive seen a Mustang ground loop and Mustang had good wheels
Statistics prove absolute nothing. So 109 crashed. Because of its wheelscrashes ther? Bad luck? Novice pilot? Mechanical failure? Bad training? To compare 109 crashes and P-51 crashes is apples v concrete.
RAF would have accepted Bf 109. Sure of it. Whether the British industry would have designed a 109...dunno.