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Well, I suspect that there was a bit of both! As a prolific designer, a leader of a large industrial company who survived many serious situations and thrived in a hugely demanding and dangerous political period, he was no doubt a formidable character in his prime. If you look at how the German Third Reich Political gangsters devoured the Junkers company, while Messerschmitt himself maintained a high control of his company, despite the failures, I think you can appreciate how he must have been strong. But, just like Germany could not win the War by ideology, mass murder and strutting around, Messerschmitt could not produce all the aircraft and obtain the suitable engines for many of his wartime designs after 1940.Thanks for the kind words.
I do think it would be difficult to argue against the notion that Willy Messerschmitt deliberately set out to get a promising airframe cancelled for reasons of his own. Had he been fully behind it, and had the Me 262 not been rescued from obscurity when it was by Galland, Milch and even Goering (contrary to what he would say later, Willy Messerschmitt was actually against building it in quantity until the Me 209 II had finally been killed off for good), there could easily have been 309s flying in large numbers by the end of the war.
But if someone was determined enough, they might just be able to push the idea that ultimately the Me 309 died because the RLM didn't turn over enough resources to Messerschmitt and he was forced to concoct an alternative 603/213 vehicle using whatever he had to hand.
In interpretation 1, Messerschmitt is a contriver and a manipulator; in interpretation 2 he is merely a put-upon pragmatist. I can see plenty of people preferring to view him as the latter.
Well, I suspect that there was a bit of both! As a prolific designer, a leader of a large industrial company who survived many serious situations and thrived in a hugely demanding and dangerous political period, he was no doubt a formidable character in his prime. If you look at how the German Third Reich Political gangsters devoured the Junkers company, while Messerschmitt himself maintained a high control of his company, despite the failures, I think you can appreciate how he must have been strong. But, just like Germany could not win the War by ideology, mass murder and strutting around, Messerschmitt could not produce all the aircraft and obtain the suitable engines for many of his wartime designs after 1940.
Cheers
Eng
I've read that Robert Lusser, the chief designer of many Messerschmitt designs like the Bf 108, Bf 109, Bf 110, Me 209 etc. actually loathed Willy and considered his boss a second-tier designer who, without his knack to form economic relations, would have ended some plain Jane designer in some lower-rung bureau.
Messerschmitt's obsession for lightweight construction in order to maximize performance led to some mid-air disintegrations and fatalities.
Erhard Milch lost friends in those and would try to battle Willy throughout his tenures.
Do you see the need to or will you tackle the Ta 154 someday?He initiated the Ta 154 programme based on an idea from industrialist William Werner to use up surplus Jumo 211 engines - but that plan was really a failure from start to finish.
Do you see the need to or will you tackle the Ta 154 someday?
There were others who have complained about Dietmar Hermann's book the way you described it.p44-45 of Secret Projects of the Luftwaffe includes a stenographic transcript of the meeting where the Ta 154 came into being. I thought it was interesting to see the way it played out - Werner seems to have been quite a charismatic individual.
Dietmar Hermann's 2021 Ta 154 book doesn't have that in it (I don't think it mentions Werner in fact - correct me if I'm wrong!), but it does have practically every known photo of a Ta 154 in it.
If I were to write a history of the Ta 154, the text would be significantly longer and more detailed - who knows what I would discover once I got stuck into it - but then I would run into the issue which seems to so infuriate BOBO with the Me 309 book: text/image balance.
With Hermann's book, I actually struggled to find the text in order to read the story - such was the profusion of images and the subordination of poor Hermann's text to them. In some instances, you'd get a sliver of his text, then two full spreads of pics without any text, then the text would continue briefly, wedged up in a corner around a whole load more images, then you'd get a couple more full spreads of images with no text etc. And there are lots of very lengthy captions to those images. So you're hunting around, trying to find where the rest of the story is. You see a long caption - is that where the story continues? Nope, keep looking. BUT if images are the only reason you bought the book, you could not be better served - it's an absolute treasure trove of photographs.
I would never be able to top that book for images and I dread to consider how much must have been spent to acquire them all (the expense presumably mandating the inclusion of every last one!). The text I wrote, if I were to write it, would be all based on fully referenced primary sources (Hermann gives a short list of source documents at the back, perhaps half a page, but doesn't give any archival references, so you've no way of checking whether what he's written is correct) - but a very significant proportion of people who buy aircraft books do so purely for the images and don't care to know where the information has come from (though curiously BOBO seems to care, even if he failed to notice the hundreds of fully referenced sources listed in Me 309 Development & Politics).
Where would that leave my theoretical Ta 154 book? People who appreciate 'the words' might get something interesting out of it - but I'm sure there would be an equal number who would complain most vociferously that it was lacking in photos and artist's redrawings of the real contemporary drawings, that the font used wasn't to their taste, that the text was too long etc.
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There were others who have complained about Dietmar Hermann's book the way you described it.
I for myself was just happy to have a good monograph (others seem only to repeat the known stuff about and flaws of the Ta 154 and Hermann seems to stand up for the design) about this plane though I would have wished more "text". There you might come into play.
Hermann maybe assumed the reader of his book to be familiar enough with the plane so that he could jump around the way he wrote.
The lack of thorough referencing primary sources is a pity.
And I don't remember as well to have read Werner's name anywhere in it.
'Bacon' is kida 'double like'.Incidentally, I'm new to this forum. Can anyone tell me what a 'bacon' reaction means?
'Bacon' is kida 'double like'.
Or, halfway from the 'like' and the 'winner' medal if you wish.
Bacon trumps all. More praise can not be given.'Bacon' is kida 'double like'.
Or, halfway from the 'like' and the 'winner' medal if you wish.
I asked a similar question a while back. I was led to believe that a "bacon" was the top award.'Bacon' is kida 'double like'.
Or, halfway from the 'like' and the 'winner' medal if you wish.
And one of the most important food groups.Sizzling Hot Bacon! Very tasty, Mmmm!
Eng
'Bacon' is kida 'double like'.
Or, halfway from the 'like' and the 'winner' medal if you wish.