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The BMW801 powered version (Bf109X) would have taken up much needed 801 engines destined for the Fw190, so I can't see the RLM letting Willy get very far with that.
With the three aircraft mentioned, is it possible that one telegraphs the approach of stall better than the others?
Likewise, they DID have a version with inward-retracting gear (to test the Mf 309 gear) and again elected not to go that way for the domestic version ... for some reason.
So "fixes" were produced experimentally, but never incorporated into production. And that makes me think about German attrition versus new-aircraft production. They were falling behind, and mybe a production interruption was unacceptable to the RLM since production wasn't keeping up to start with. Logically, the production interruption excuse would be a very good fit if it weren't for the myriad experimental versions of almost all the planes that WERE produced.
With that in mind, I still wonder why the Bf 109's major faults were not addressed IN production rather than only in experimental one-offs.
Thanks Graugeist. One of the sources I have says the radial powered Bf 109 varint used a captured US engine,
Since the aeroplane in question was built in 1938 the engine cannot have been 'captured' in any normal sense of the word.
I believe there were two different radial engined 109 airframes. The First used a P &W Twin Wasp (R-1830) and the 2nd used the BMW 801.
There's some Fw 190 gun camera footage somewhere (I can't find it) in which the Focke-Wulf, trying to get a lead on, from memory, a P-51 suddenly stalls, and enters an inverted spin which must have been fun!
Steve
I suspect many a pilot were not comfortable operating near stall and tried their best to avoid it, while other "experts" developed an intimacy with their aircraft and could feel or sense the stall and how far they could push it (even embrace it) and used that to their advantage.
I do wonder whether they were that much more situationally aware...or were they just luckier?
The biggest problem for the Air Ministry/RAF in WWII was that the average pilot could not cope with deflection shooting; the likes of Tuck and Johnson, who were invited on grouse shooting parties, were used to the idea of leading their targets, and transferred that skill, naturally, to air fighting.
This was the reason for the refusal to introduce the .5" Browning, since it was little better than the .303" at penetrating German armour, and it was felt that four of the (faster-firing) latter had a better chance of hitting the pilot and disabling him than two of the other, slower-firing, type. When the gyro gunsight arrived in 1944, and gave the pilot a better-than-even chance of hitting what he aimed at, so the armament was changed.
It also pays to remember that pilots had no way of combatting G forces (one Norwegian pilot talks of reefing his Spitfire into a turn, and being able to see nothing except the cockpit floor; add in unheated and unpressurised cockpits, with the cold only being staved off by thick clothing and (maybe, if they worked) heated gloves, and it's little surprise that they were quickly worn out, and it was up to the CO to see the signs, and pull them off for a rest.
Pilots also didn't have the fitness regimes that they have today (the same Norwegian said how he was looked at as if he was barmy, when he and a friend would run round the camp every day.) PT was for the "other ranks," not officers, whose most strenuous exercise might be a game of cricket.
actually pbehn they did have shotguns and clay pigeons...on us bases at least. my father told me for recreation they would sign one out and shoot skeet on and then...when they werent drinking in the officers club.
could be...there were some "city boys" who became aces...or at least shot EAs down.
Even if all the planes are the same there are always some people better than others and can get that little bit more. Watch any F1 or Moto GP race and you can see it, even when the guys have identical machines there is almost invariably one faster than the other. You can watch those guys, study, train and practice as much as you like but you cant beat them, they just have something extra. I see top pilots in the same way.
They have The Right Stuff
Sorry, couldn't resist