Did German bombers make a different sound and why?

Capt. Vick said:

I have this, but I don't know how to post it here.

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pattle said:

I often hear that German bombers made a different sound to British aircraft during the blitz, my mum and others tell me the German planes made a woo woo woo sound while the British aircraft made more of a roar. Going by the amount of accounts and witnesses there seems little doubt that German aircraft actually did make this sound and I have heard a number of explanations of why this happened which include the following.

1) That the sound was caused by a large number of aircraft in formation that had engines running at different rpm's.
2) That twin engine German aircraft had each engine set at a different rpm to either frighten civilians, confuse radar or because the engines were tired and could not be synchronised correctly.
3) That the pilots themselves de-synchronised the engines while in flight to confuse the anti aircraft defences.

I would have thought that de-synchronised engines would have been a bad thing for both crew and aircraft.

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XBe02Drvr said:

At a chief flight instructor seminar in the early 80s I was told of an old ex-LW pilot who was working as an instuctor/charter pilot at a large FBO in New England. He reportedly said they used to make the many small corrections to hold formation using the prop governor, as the throttle friction lock was a clunky PITA and very tiring to use, and had to be cinched down after every tiny thrust adjustment. Apparently throttle response was non-linear and the throttles subject to vibration creep if the friction lock wasn't TIGHT. Can you imagine what a formation all jockeying their prop speeds would sound like? Like wow-wow, man!
Cheers,
Wes

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rinkol said:

This could be correct. I do recall seeing something in one of Green's books that mentioned the He111s having a distinctive sound because of the difficulty in synchronizing the engines. The other possibility would be that the German engine control systems (fuel injection and, in the case of planes with DB engines, the supercharger speed control, included feedback loops whose operation might not have been completely stable.

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