Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
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Excellent insight into German thinking.I`ve translated a long memorandum written by Dipl.-Ing Robert Lusser to Erhard Milch in January 1942, outlining various major problems in new aircraft development.
I hope you find it interesting
Robert Lusser Memorandum
Lusser played a key role in the design of a huge number of German 30`s/WW2 aircraft, like the Me108 and Me110 and a lot of Heinkel projects,
after the war he went to the USA with von Braun to work on the Space Programme. He returned to Germany later and predicted
serious problems with the German F104 starfighter programme, in which he was proven entirely correct.
Yea there was a typo in my reading the original, I`ve updated it and a few other small things just now. It was meant to be "military loading"
Its difficult to say what his character was, but its entirely possible that his efforts to highlight his own achievements in the letter to MilchIt does look like a linked in letter somehow. The points he make are perhaps real but he is blowing his own trumpet a bit.
Honestly I cannot fathom why nobody translated that memorandum until now. Its so interesting....well maybe I can its in the Bundesarchiv on microfiche, I had to photograph it from the reader on my phone-camera, and it takes hours finding anything on microfiche, just as awkward to work with as microfilm.Excellent read.
Some more possible typos:Yea there was a typo in my reading the original, I`ve updated it and a few other small things just now.
I`ve made a few small edits to fix most of that. The first sentence is just how it is, any extra "smoothing" would be non-original.Some more possible typos:
Under Introduction: "the Me 109, 110.- He 111.- Ju 52, 87.- Thu 17.- Fw 200.E" That sentence seems somewhat scrambled in the last half.
Under section 5.) a "Pw 191" is mentioned. Is that a typo and should read Fw 191 ?
Under section 6.) below the image: "...... (just as an examle here) ...." should be example.
Under section 8.) "..... disproportionatley .... sucess ....." should be "..... disproportionately .... success ....."
Under section 9.) "shecking" should be "checking"
Under section 10.) "...... from spring Flight performance ......" Is that a typo, or what does this mean?
The Memorandum starts with an Introduction and then the next section is number 2.) . Is section 1.) missing, or is the Introduction section 1.) ?
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Section 9.) puzzles me a bit. Lusser mentions the Fw 190 in a context that makes it sound as if in his opinion it curtailed the Me 109. Or did he mean that the Me 109 curtailed the Fw 190 and I misunderstand?
Notably Lusser does not mention the FW 187 anywhere in the memorandum. Maybe he forgot, or did not find it worth mentioning?
He does mention the He 280, on which he worked, but there is no mention of Me 163, Me 262 or his general view on the desirability of development of jet engines and jet planes or rocket engines and rocket planes.
It would be interesting to know what Milch thought about this memorandum, and what he did with it.
I dont but I regard that a bit dubiously, for a start the Secretary of State for Air was Erhard Milch, who utterly hated Messerschmitt because a close friend of his died in a crash when he was flying in a Messerschmitt aircraft. So it is hardly true to say that Messerschmitt had an easy time dealing with the German Air Ministry.I've heard that Lusser did not think highly of Messerschmitt whom he regarded as a second-rate designer and someone who would have ended up as an oddball in some small engineer's bureau of some aicraft company had he not had a skill for fishing influentual patrons who supported him.
Anybody know more about this?