USAF pilot comments on Me 109 and FW 190

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gaussianum
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#31

Post by gaussianum » 13 Mar 2006, 22:38

JonS wrote:So, um, let me see if I've got this straight:

1) The 109 was great at slow, turning, twisting dog fighting, which naturally made it a great fighter to send against the 8th AF bombers defended by P-51 pilots using tactics based on speed?
I think the Me 109 provided top cover for the Focke-Wulfs that attacked the bombers. Don't know if the Messerschmitts were also encouraged to try and down some bombers, if they had the opportunity. Their dogfighting abilities could have been a great advantage, since they were in reality flying fighter escort missions.

I have seen the light: the British and American planes were pants, while the Germans had the best of everything. Even when they didn't.
I don't understand why anyone would react emotionally to an airplane not being as bad as its reputation implies. I don't think anyone has said that the Me 109 was superior to its rivals. What's being said is that it simply wasn't inferior, as many, like Carson, have written.

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#32

Post by JonS » 13 Mar 2006, 22:49

Purple fang wrote:Carson would have us believe the blunt nose P-47 & the twin boom P-38 with huge chin inlets were better wind foils than the 109? Absurd. How bout Typhoon & P-40 with their huge chin inlets?
How about you make us believers by supplying some unbiased, useful, and relevant information?

Also, which part of 'of it's time' are you still having trouble with?

Hurricane ~ 1934
Bf 109 ~ 1935
Spitfire ~ 1936
P-38 ~ 1939
P-40 ~ 1939
P-51 ~ 1940
P-47 ~ 1941
Typhoon ~1941

Quick quiz:
1) The years 1930-1938 are primarily described as a time of peace/war (delete one)
2) The years 1939-1945 are primarily described as a time of peace/war (delete one)
3) What effect would this have on planes designed during these two periods? Explain your answer.
Last edited by JonS on 13 Mar 2006, 22:53, edited 1 time in total.


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#33

Post by JonS » 13 Mar 2006, 22:51

gaussianum wrote: I don't understand why anyone would react emotionally ...
I agree. I suggest you take it up with the twins, who react like two of Pavlovs dogs whenever someone has the temerity to suggest that maybe German kit wasn't all that uber.

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#34

Post by Huck » 13 Mar 2006, 23:31

T. A. Gardner wrote:Not to be a spoiler here, but the "virtual pilots" accounts seem to jibe fairly well with Carson's in a general sense:

* At high speeds the ailerons are stiff and control forces are high
* The slats operate at low speed often without warning and are generally an annoyance.
* The cockpit is cramped
* Range is short comparatively.
* At lower speeds the aircraft is very aerobatic

These, in both accounts are pilot impressions of the aircraft not empirical data. On the whole, the 109 by 1943 was getting long in the tooth and probably ripe for replacement. Given the situation in Germany it was retained in production for more or less obvious reasons.
Actually not at all.
At high speeds the ailerons are stiff and control forces are high
At high speeds all non-boosted controls become heavier, the problem is how heavy they become. Early fighters like P-40, P-39, Hurricane, Spitfire (ailerons), Yaks, Me 109E had heavy controls at high speed. Late war fighters like P-51, Me 109G/K, Fw-190A/D still had heavy controls at high speed, but light enough for a normal pilot to easily pull more G than allowed. However, all these late fighters (expect Fw-190) have heavier controls at low speeds than early war fighters, a fact often commented by pilots, for instance Jeff Ethell complains about how heavy are P-51 controls compared to P-40 that he was used to. Yes, late war fighters had heavier controls at low speed because they had smaller surface than early war fighters, and required a larger deflection, hence more effort. At high speed early war fighters had stiff controls, whereas late war fighters could still deflect them (so much that they could easily damage the controls or the plane all together).
The slats operate at low speed often without warning and are generally an annoyance.
This is a "defect" found only in Western wartime evaluations of 109E. Read about recents flights with newly restored 109E, pilots tried hard to obtain such behaviour but did not have anything worrisome to report. Anyways, 109F had a changed slat, with better dampening, nobody complained about those, in fact there were pilots that noticed them working only they were told about them :)
The cockpit is cramped
I talked about this in this thread. Bottom line is: the cockpit was perfect fit for the German pilots back then, not for pilots that serve now.
Range is short comparatively.
Comparatively to what? To an escort plane? Of course. The overall performance of an escort plane is much worse than of lightweight fighter. Carson himself admits that there is no plane that can satisfy all requirements for a fighter. In general fighters should be divided in at least 2 weight classes: the lightweight fighters, those with weights up to 3600kg (I would include here Spit XIV and Ki-84, even if they are slightly outside it, they were still designed with lightfighter roles in mind), usually used for frontline fighters, interceptors, in general optimized for flight performance, and the heavyweight fighters, those with weights above 3600kg, usually used for escort, ground attack, bomber destroyer, in general those fighters optimized for carrying larger payloads (eighter fuel or ammo). Me 109 was a lightweight fighter, and so were Hurricane, Spitfire, Yaks and Las, P-39, P40 and many others. Fw-190 was a heavyweight fighters, and so were P-38, P-47, P-51 and so on. Comparing fighters across classes is meaningless. This is what Carson does. He says that Me 109G endurance is 55min and range is 350 miles. He forgets to mention that this numbers are at high speed cruise, the endurance triples at economic cruise, and range doubles (3 hours and 1000km, 5 hours and 1600km with drop tank IIRC). These numbers are among the best in lightfighter category. If emergency power was used during the mission, 109G was certainly the one that had the largest endurance (again we are talking about lightweight fighters), because DB-605 had a specific consumption of almost half of competing fighter engines in this power regime.

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#35

Post by Huck » 13 Mar 2006, 23:44

Harri wrote:
T. A. Gardner wrote:At lower speeds the aircraft is very aerobatic
As far as I know nearly all "acrobatic manoeuvres" were forbidden with Messerchmitt Bf 109G fighters by the Messerchmitt AG. It was a clear "hit and run" aircraft only. Finns used after some experimenting much slower landing speeds than Germans (I think the difference was 20 to 30 km/h) which was one of tha main reasons for their high accident rate. All Finnish airfields were very small and didn't enable landings "at full speed".
Me 109E was a very aerobatic plane, but did not behave so well at high speed (like all prewar fighters), Me 109G/K was redesigned for high speed, and the aerobatic capabilities deteriorated to some degree (again this is true for all late war fighters). However, the way the plane was used depended very much on the style and skill of the pilot. For instance Lipfert used aerobatics in combat a lot, and he was a top 10 scorer, but Hartmann didn't. The top Romanian scorer, Cantacuzino, also enjoyed to fly aerobatic in combat (he has more than 40 confirmed kills), but the one immediatelly below him (in terms of confirmed kills) used a technique very similar to that of Hartmann. Me 109 supported both styles very well.
The possible inferiority of German fighters since 1943 was partly due to weaker pilot training. Also the use of "auxiliary materials" in aircraft production gradually made them worse and in some cases also more fragile (wooden parts). The need for cheaper and faster production and bigger production quantities effected negatively on the production quality. That was partly intentional. The same was clearly seen during the war in Soviet products (with some exceptions) too but not in British and US products.
The use of wood for the tail did not make the airframe more fragile, but it did make it slightly heavier.

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#36

Post by Huck » 14 Mar 2006, 00:07

JonS wrote: * It might also be worth noting that it was a 109 that killed Hanna.
** Incidentally, the RAE evaluation that Carson seems to have quoted a fair bit can be found on this same page.
It was a Buchon, not a 109 that killed Hanna. It used a Merlin engine.
And yes Carson, takes a lot from that controversial RAE report, without giving any credit. Carson himself never flew Me 109.

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#37

Post by Huck » 14 Mar 2006, 00:16

Purple fang wrote:I see, Frans Stigler, Tommy Hayes, ( P-51 pilot), & Mark Hanna uninformed? How did you arrive at this unusual conclusion?
JonS wrote:Purple; your random, uninformed musings are much more credible than Col Carsons writings as an engineer and based on flying against them.

I'm convinced. Really. I am :roll:
Carson's article is just a garbage pile, whatever he found bad written about Me 109, mostly in propagandized Allied wartime reports, he threw it in.
He never flew Me 109. His word means nothing when pitted against German aces that scored in tens or hundreds in this plane. Besides, if he ever got an engineering degree he obviously never practiced engineering, he makes deplorable errors.

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#38

Post by Huck » 14 Mar 2006, 00:38

JonS wrote:So, um, let me see if I've got this straight:

1) The 109 was great at slow, turning, twisting dog fighting, which naturally made it a great fighter to send against the 8th AF bombers defended by P-51 pilots using tactics based on speed?
No, Me 109 was a fighter plane that excelled in both dogfighting and bomber interception. In fact, there wasn't much difference in bomber claims between Fw-190 and Me 109, though obviously Fw 190 had the upper hand in bomber destroying missions and Me 109 in dogfighting (Fw 190 was more adequate because it a heavyweight fighter that could carry heavier armament). This is why Me 109 was used more on Eastern Front and Fw 190 on Western Front, Luftwaffe used the better tool for the job.
JonS wrote:2) All the pilots who survived the war and flew the 109 thought that it was a great little fighter? Of course, we don't hear from all the pilots killed because they couldn't maneauvre their aircraft quickly enough, but I'm sure they were just biased fools, or perhaps NACA stooges.
This is nonsense. This kind of argument can be formulated against any plane.
In fact Me 109 pilots had probably the best survival rates - there are countless of them that survived more than 1000 sorties.
JonS wrote:3) A small plane is always better than a big plane? Never mind that aerodynamic efficiency - which is, after all, what Carson spoke about - is independant of size. It is much more accurate to say that a small brick has better efficiency that a large teardrop. The 109 was a small plane, therefore it was better. QED.
It is very easy to take the road of Allied designers, one can easily make a better shape around an engine in larger airframe; but a larger airframe, brings additional weight, which is one of the reasons why all American warplanes were underpowered. What counts is how much drag the airframe generates, this is the force that has to be countered by thrust (generated by engine power), not the aerodynamic shape. And this is why race cars don't have the body of 4 doors sedans, despite that later have better aerodynamic shape (Cd0) - race cars bodies generates less drag (are more aerodynamic) than 4 door sedans, which is critical at high speed, because drag increases with the square of speed.
JonS wrote:Really, guys, you can stop. I'm convinced.The twins, with their cherry picking, blurred graphs, mangled figures, and selective quoting, have the inside track. I have seen the light: the British and American planes were pants, while the Germans had the best of everything. Even when they didn't.
Mangled figures, and selective quoting is all I see in Carson's article. And I brought real numbers to prove it.

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#39

Post by Huck » 14 Mar 2006, 00:49

JonS wrote:
Purple fang wrote:Carson would have us believe the blunt nose P-47 & the twin boom P-38 with huge chin inlets were better wind foils than the 109? Absurd. How bout Typhoon & P-40 with their huge chin inlets?
How about you make us believers by supplying some unbiased, useful, and relevant information?

Also, which part of 'of it's time' are you still having trouble with?

Hurricane ~ 1934
Bf 109 ~ 1935
Spitfire ~ 1936
P-38 ~ 1939
P-40 ~ 1939
P-51 ~ 1940
P-47 ~ 1941
Typhoon ~1941

Quick quiz:
1) The years 1930-1938 are primarily described as a time of peace/war (delete one)
2) The years 1939-1945 are primarily described as a time of peace/war (delete one)
3) What effect would this have on planes designed during these two periods? Explain your answer.
Meaningless comparison. Both Spitfire and Me 109 were very good early designs that were copied a lot. When the war came both had extensive redesigns. Both remained until the end of war among the most performant fighters, a class above the American fighters.
Besides, USA entered war at the end of '41. What's your point again?

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#40

Post by Huck » 14 Mar 2006, 00:52

JonS wrote:
gaussianum wrote: I don't understand why anyone would react emotionally ...
I agree. I suggest you take it up with the twins, who react like two of Pavlovs dogs whenever someone has the temerity to suggest that maybe German kit wasn't all that uber.
I wonder why JonS is always allowed to use personal attacks :roll: he never received even the slightest warning.
Moderators that think this is the first time JonS uses personal attacks can contact me. I have an entire archive of such occurances.

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#41

Post by Purple fang » 14 Mar 2006, 00:56

Really, guys, you can stop. I'm convinced.The twins, with their cherry picking, blurred graphs, mangled figures, and selective quoting, have the inside track. I have seen the light: the British and American planes were pants, while the Germans had the best of everything. Even when they didn't.


Germans had best of everything?? exactly "where" did I say that? American planes were pants? where did I say that? Stick to the subject matter & drop the silly exaggerration.

& blurred graphs & mangled figures? Where? If you're gonna make false accusations, it might be good to back them up.

Late model 109's also had flettner tabs for better roll. Some had one on the tail too. These were handling improvement devices which were employed along side the speed & armament additions to G-10 & K-4 variants.

Not all got the flettners, which is one of the mystery areas of late war 109's.

P.S. No one said it the German kit "was" Uber.

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#42

Post by Purple fang » 14 Mar 2006, 01:03

Also, which part of 'of it's time' are you still having trouble with?

Hurricane ~ 1934
Bf 109 ~ 1935
Spitfire ~ 1936
P-38 ~ 1939
P-40 ~ 1939
P-51 ~ 1940
P-47 ~ 1941
Typhoon ~1941

Not having "any" trouble with 'of it's time' Carson mentioned E & G models in his report. No G models flew in 35. & you might be interested to know the Spit flew well beyond 1936. & 109 flew well beyond 1935. In fact 109 flew til 45 & even longer in Spain after the war. Both 109 & P-47 flew in 43-44. So did P-38, which is 'of their time'. What part of this are you having trouble with??

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#43

Post by Juha Tompuri » 14 Mar 2006, 01:23

Huck wrote:I wonder why JonS is always allowed to use personal attacks :roll: he never received even the slightest warning.
Moderators that think this is the first time JonS uses personal attacks can contact me. I have an entire archive of such occurances.
I'm not aware of the previous cases, but at least here JonS has forgot the good manners (however good is that some self-deletion has been done) , and I wish that everyone stays on topic


JonS, a reminder:
These are the basic guidelines of this forum:
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emphasis on mine
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6&start=0

Regards, Juha

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#44

Post by JonS » 14 Mar 2006, 02:17

Huck wrote:I wonder why JonS is always allowed to use personal attacks :roll: he never received even the slightest warning.Moderators that think this is the first time JonS uses personal attacks can contact me. I have an entire archive of such occurances.
lol. You have the best hobbies. :)

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#45

Post by Huck » 14 Mar 2006, 02:21

Thanks a lot Juha.
Here are some older posts of JonS where he insulted me, check the first one, I haven't even posted on the thread:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#754924

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#750044

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#739302

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#864697

Those are some of the instances in which he attacked me, but he did the same with many others, including M.Rausch, one of the best contributors of this forum, or Purple Fang in this thread.
There is hope though, with moderators like you, Michael E. and Jon G. , that personal attacks will become a thing of the past.

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