Three reasons I read of, firstly by the time they received them they were not the best available, secondly they had problems initially with the climate and thirdly they were frequently mistaken for enemy by friends in the air and on the ground.
Picture of the day.
- Thread starter syscom3
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Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
Oh, glorious colo(u)r!!
Good photo to inform modelers with weathering.
Smokey Stover
Banned
I was just going to say that. Hardly shabby guys, pretty brave if you ask me flying an unarmed obsolete aircraft over occupied europe in the middle of the night.....
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
They certainly got up to some hairy antics - Hugh Verity's book "We landed by moonlight" covers the operations in some detail, and is well worth a read.
Anyone to blame or just an accident?
It was an accident in 1938. The accident reports (Commander Lott, Watch Officer Zahn, and Chief Engineer Vollmer):
U-35 was at a depth of 17 meters, and Spee drafted 6.8 meters.
The starboard side of the conning tower shows two clear slices by the screw, and the port side clearly shows a collision with a solid object. The Graf Spee port screw was severely damaged, and the port rudder showed evidence of an impact.
Both vessels were headed in the same direction, but Spee was steaming faster than U 35. Suddenly Lott noticed that U 35 was stern-heavy, then strong crashing noises at the conning tower. Apparently the suction of Spee's propellers had lifted the bow of U 35, and the conning tower headed straight for the screw, jerking the U-Boat starboard. The port side of the conning tower then struck Spee's port rudder, and then Spee's screw tore repeatedly into U-35's bow superstructure.
Lott commanded the U-Boat to dive, but it did not respond. Later he saw that the screws had torn off significant parts of the bow superstructure, so the boat was lighter than normal.
Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
I seem to recall that some pilots learned that they could increase takeoff speed by not correcting for torque, thereby drifting to starboard on takeoff.
michaelmaltby
Colonel
michaelmaltby
Colonel
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Post #9771
"Comrade, it hurts when I do this, and when I do this, and this, too."
"Of course Vassilly, that's because you've broken your finger !"
"Comrade, it hurts when I do this, and when I do this, and this, too."
"Of course Vassilly, that's because you've broken your finger !"
michaelmaltby
Colonel
michaelmaltby
Colonel
Glider
Captain
It didn't stop the Russians always asking for more Spitfires on a regular basis, in particular the Mk IX on.
It's more likely that they didn't like the first Mk V's they were given which I believe were second hand, ut they were very keen on getting the later versions
at6
1st Sergeant
"Next, we will do some man scapeing."
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