Early Spit (1 Viewer)

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Since there's pictures of a captured Spitfire, why not a captured 109...
 

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Pictures are great, but to get the story that goes with them is really cool. Someone handed me a printout of a painting that they found on the web that was pretty cool. I looked closer and knew the story! It was the engagement between Robert Johnson in his P-47 and Egon Mayer in his FW-190. I had a crowd gathered as I told the story of the engagement. Pretty cool!
 
I have the book, Concorde. There are some great pictures there. One caveat is that some of the facts are not correct. One of the stories of a B-17 downing in there is very different than the story told by the bomb group association. Some of the stories are correct, you just have to double check them. The story of Beetle, the P-47 is interesting though.

I have a whole presentation writeup that I did, I will find it and post it, if anyone is interested.
 
Yes please!!

I would have loved to have seen the museum the Germans had with all the captured aircraft, guns engines - shame they blew it up!

Have you seen the volume II Escape to Neutrality with all the aircraft in Switzerland? you would have had enough for your own bomber group there!!
 
Okay, here you go. It is in Word format. I could have gone into greater detail, but I like to keep the talk time down to allow for Q and A. This presentation had alot of Q and A after.
 

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Very Nice Report Evangilder - just the right amount of detail.

I seem to remember the B17 that blew up on take off was the one called "Down Go" and there was some secrecy as to who some of the people on board were.

I often wonder what the russians did with the machines a Rechlin when they'd finished with them. i saw a picture of the place taken late in the war and still in german hands which showed the Short stirling they had without any of its engines.
Remembering that book as discussed previously, I recall seeing a "wall" of reconditioned Packard build merlin engines taken from crashed mustangs. Spares seemed to be plentiful for their fleet !! To think how valuable they would be today!!

The americans both during after the war were also interested in any airworthy examples of the German Aircraft salvage units were quickly despatched to captured Airfields to see if there were any rich pickings - especially the jets.

Its strange to think that aircraft that were once B17s and the like were melted down turned into 109's 190's !! :|
 
I would have to look and see, but I think you are right about Down and Go. They suspected it was sabotage. They trusted almost no one, but especially Soviet agents.

It would be interesting to follow up with the planes that the Soviets captured at Rechlin. Perhaps someday we will know with things opening up a bit more.

There was no shortage of some parts in the crashed aircraft rebuild program for the Luftwaffe. But other parts were either very rare, or non-existent. The Marauder props were a good example of a rare item.

The American and other allied groups were looking to get all of the technology out of the Germans they could get their hands on, including their scientists (Operation Paperclip). I find it interesting that there was alot of propaganda how the Germans had outdated aircraft with unskilled pilots at the end. If that were true, then why were they so interested in getting their hands on all these wonder toys?! It seems there was more interest in German than Japanese technology. Then again, the Japanese had alot of German technology transferred to them.

It really is amazing how much scrap metal came out of the salvage units. They were turned into all kinds of things, including the fighters you mentioned.

I thought it was an interesting piece of history when I first read about it and wanted to do a presentation about it. I had the luxury of creating the schedule for the year, so I threw it in. I want to get more stories that are lesser known. I will be talking about the Doolittle raid next month, which is fine, but who hasn't heard about that?

Thanks for the feedback!
 
the soviets actually managed to get a lanc flying that had crashed landed over there, they had most of the parts, they simply took spares from a couple of other crashed lancs...............
 

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