Thread: ME109 vs FW190
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Old 02-10-2007, 12:38 AM   #6 (permalink)
Adrian Roberts
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I suppose it comes down to being careful of generalisations and cliches. I don't think I'd realised just how advanced the later marks of 109G with the DB605 engine were. The "aircraft performance" website is worth bookmarking even if it reminds me of long-forgotten University studies.

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Later in the war, with Allied fighters ranging all over German territory, there would have been less time to learn to fly and a great likelihood of being shot down early which no doubt would have had Mustang pilots etc thinking their aircraft was superior.
It is often said that the Luftwaffe was reduced to using barely-trained nineteen year-olds by the middle of the war; I believe that Galland said after the war that the Battle of Britain had taken a quarter of Germany's experienced combat pilots and the Luftwaffe was never the same again. Whereas many of the most experienced Soviet pilots were either murdered in Stalin's purges or killed in the initial days of Barbarossa, which may explain why the Germans were up against inexperienced replacements, and why the Finnish Buffaloes had virtually the best kill-loss ratio of the war, even shooting down Soviet Spitfires. But Hartman, Barkhorn and Rall had mastered the 109 and like all good weapons it was an extension of themselves.

And although Hartman et al believed in going in close, they also believed in diving away afterward to avoid getting into dogfights. This kind of tactic often meant that disciplined teamwork allowed an inferior aircraft to beat a better one; it was largely how the F4Fs in the Pacific were able to get the better of the Zeros - and Phantoms in Vietnam had to resort to this as the Mig-17s gave them a nasty surprise in dogfights.

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Buchon killed very experienced display pilot Mark Hanna of the Old Flying Machine Company (don't know if it was pilot error, mechanical failure or what)
Best guess about Mark Hanna's death is that he encountered a vortex at low altitude - maybe even one created by himself in his previous circuit of the aerodrome. Not much you can do about that - I wonder if it was what happened to Brian Brown the other week.
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