Hi everyone. This is my first post on this board and I'll try to keep it legible and comprehensible!
Reading earlier posts on the early career of the Me 262 got me wondering about the German attitude to prototype and development aircraft. I may be wrong, but it's my impression that the Luftwaffe was far more likely to put these into combat, and also much earlier, than were the British. (It's probably unfair to include U.S. a/c in the comparison, since with the USA's relative geographical remoteness you'd want to be fairly sure of what you had before sending it 3000 mile plus).
Apart from the Me262 I'm thinking of the He112s used for airfield defence, for instance, and odd transports flying supply missions. Maybe I'm just showing my ignorance but it seems to me that, apart from specialist recce a/c and the Westland Welkin, the RAF were rather more deliberate in their testing before combat evaluation and odd prototypes were more likely to be used for testing. Off-hand, I can't think of any equivalent British examples except the dozen ( 2 dozen?) early B17s and maybe the first Mosquito bombers. (Imagine a fully-armed Martin-Baker MB.5 soaring into the skies to chase a raider - could it have happened?)
Any thoughts, anyone?
Regards,
Paul S