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I know that few 109Es survived after 1943. Many were sent to the secondary TOs including the med where they remained the domionant type until early 1942.
It is possible that quite a few 109s were "recycled", if you want to put it that way. The LW always suffered from a shortage of newly constructed spares (for example, in 1941, operational readiness rates for the LW in the East dropped to less than 40% after the end of July, because of difficulties in obtaining spare parts for the entire fleet). Its likely that older models might have been scrapped as spare parts. Another source of spare parts might be those aircraft classified as damaged, but in fact never able to fly again.
The LW had a method of classifying damage. anything above 70% was imediately scrapped.
But in reality anything above 30% was unliklley to fly again.
Because of gorings (and Hitlers) obsession with numbers, I believe that these aircraft in the 30-70% damage bracket were kept listed as "frontline -operational" when in fact all they were doing was sitting on the side of airfields and in hangars,
being cannabalized for spares, which were always in short supply with the LW.
Flyboy,
sorry, that would be in reference to the Bf109. In order to control fuse sway, the pilots used the left/right brakes to keep the a/c in a straight line more or less.
It was nessesary do to the castering tailwheel. once enough ground speed was aquired for the smallish rudder to become effective, brakes were released, or when
it was obviouse the a/c was tracking straight. later, they used a 'locking tailwheel', which helped some, and a taller fin/rudder.
two things with a 109. keep the tail down control the sway, until the rudder became effective. hope this made sense(?).
Claes Sundin, Jochen Prien, Peter Rodeike. as far as I'm concerened, the upmost authority on the subjectWhere are those day fighter figures from?
Don Caldwell gives 17,023 Luftwaffe day fighter losses between September 1943 and December 1944 alone.
Are those 1000+hp a/c and how do you keep the a/c pointing in the right direction during the initial take of roll until the rudder becomes effective?