Posted on 07/21/2003 8:17:05 PM PDT by Recourse
Care must be taken to not make too general of a statement regarding the overall quality of German World War One aircraft in comparison to French and British aircraft as the aircraft design changed from month to month and the advantange swung back and forth from side to side.
Quintin Roosevelt died on July 14, 1918 flying a Nieuport 28 and was claimed by Uffz Carl Emil Graper of Jasta 50 who was flying an Albatros D.Va.
By July 1918, the Albatros D.Va was already obsolete. It's sesquiplane construction (lower wing smaller than the top wing) and it's "V" shaped struts had been copied by the Germans from the earlier French Nieuport 11 that had been the "hot" aircraft back in the Spring of 1916. Unfortunately, the Albatros D.V had a nasty habit of shedding it's lower wing as the bottom of the V strut was not as wide as the Nieuport struts and this resulted in vibration during dives. This was fixed with strut redesign in the D.Va.
By 1918, German Jasta pilot were bitterly complaining about the obsolete Albatros D.Va. However, the Albatros D.Va continued to see service until the end of the war in less elite Jastas as there were not enough Fokker D. VII's to go around.
The Nieuport 28 was the Nieuport company's answer to the currently "hot" SPAD XIII. The new design abandoned the sesquiplane construction and V struts of the older Nieuport fighters and came up with, arguably, the most beautiful aircraft design of World War One........that unfortunately had the nasty habit of shedding it's upper wing fabric during dives.
Nieuport 28's of Quentin Roosevelt's 95th Aero Squadron
The Nieuport 28 was not technically an "obsolete" aircraft it was merely....ummmm.....well,.....bad.
The French rejected the design in favor of the SPAD XIII. However, as there were not enough SPAD XIII's to go around, the new American Aero Squadrons ended up with the French reject design.
The very rapid rate of World War One fighter aircraft design meant that new designs were tried at the factory and discarded on a weekly basis. You have heard of the famous Fokker Triplane but have you heard of the .........Fokker Quintuplane?
That was one of Anthony Fokker's Plane Designs of the Week that he must have come up with after one too many beers at Octoberfest. :-)
Without the intense head to head competition that every European aircraft design was subjected to at the Front or at the factory or at aircraft competitions to chose what design to speed into production, it is very doubtful that any American design from across the Atlantic would have cut the mustard in World War One aerial combat.
Neither do I. The German's, did in fact, loose.
On this subject I ask that we agree to disagree.
Agreed.
For an Italian, immediately post World War One monstrosity, check out the Caproni CA-60:....Nine wings from three sets of World War One Caproni Triplanes, most likely Caproni CA-48's. It had twice the wing area of a B-52. Like the Spruce Goose, it flew in a straight line......once.
Caproni CA-60
You just made me think about the 10 American tank crews which (from this description) sacrificed themselves before the 11th could exploit a German vehicle's achilles heel, and how they must have felt going out to meet their fate in the jaws of a tiger.
It's hard to know how to compare kills in different theaters, but don't underrate the Germans. One of their aces shot down about 150 Brits, mainly in N. Africa, before being killed. That's a lot more than the top Allied ace (a Russian) shot down.
Six 1970hp BMW 801E radial engines Wing span 50.32m, length 33.6m Empty weight 36900kg, max. take-off weight 53112kg Max. speed 515km/h at 6200m, cruising speed 357km/h. Max. range 9700km.
Armament: Two dorsal gun turrets, each with a MG151, and one MG 151 in the tail. Aft and front MG131s in the gondola, and two MG131 beam guns.
I think that is a B52, images for which would be very easy to digitize and pass off as "the original prototype's simulation." Afterall, these are images that appear to have been provided to a flight simulator package, many of which include B52 skins and properties.
Here are some (possibly) more realistic images of the JU EF 132:
And the 131:
Yes it is difficult to make any kind of "fair" comparison. Should the destruction on the ground of an enemy aircraft be "sportingly" counted as a "kill"? Is 5 years on continuos flying duty, as the German pilots on the Eastern Front had to do out of necessity, in any way comparable to a tour of one year, as the Yanks and Brits (though I personally know some Eagle Squadron pilots that flew the whole 5 years). Especially considering that the Yank and Brit pilots had the duty of bomber escort and not the easy picken's the Germans had of the Soviet Air Force. Comparison? Perhaps. Perhaps not, but I don't "overate" the Germans as some are want to do.
During the mid-1930's, German agents poured over the patent offices of as many countries as its agents could access. It comes as no surprise to me that they seem, to many of you, as prolific inventors. The realities prove the Germans at being quite adept at reverse engineering, as were the Japanese (the "Zero" engine was an evolved copy of a British Bristol "Jupiter" engine). It is no surprise that the Germans chose to develop the axial flow jet engine, considering the remarkable showing of Charles Parsons, "Turbinia", in 1894. The Turbinia was a steam turbine of axial flow design that propelled the 100 ft. craft to 40 mph on the water. It is not much of a theoretical jump to replace expanding steam with expanding gas from the combustion of kerosene. Drawings of Parsons steam turbine were found at the Jumo Motor Werke by the allies after the war.
As for pilots, the Germans, as far as I am concerned, have a long way to go to compare to the skill and courage of the British pilot Jeffrey Quill and the American, Carroll MacColpin.
Quill was the Spitfires chief development pilot, as well as scoring two kills during the Battle of Britain. Quill was the test pilot that developed the "Spit" from 5,500 lbs. gross, 1050 hp, 8x.303 Browning machine guns in 1940 to the MK14 Spitfires weight of 12,500 lbs. gross, 2,500 hp, and 4x20mm Hisp-Suisa cannon (5 times the "throw weight of 1940). Quill also developed the carrier version of the Spit, the "Seafire". BTW, the first combat encounter between a Spitfire and an Me/Bf109 was on the 15th. of May, 1940, over France. Pilot Officer Alan Deere shot down 3, Me-109's on that day without a loss to his squadron. So much for the "Invincible" Messerschmitt. As for the Focke Wulfe 190, after the Spitfire Mk-9, there was no superior German fighter in the skies over Europe until the too late Me-262 (Yes, I know, it was all Hitler's fault).
Carroll McColpin was from California and was the American Commander of No. 133 Eagle Squadron. On Oct. 2nd. '42, McColpin went spinner to tail with Werner Molders. The British combat report claims the aerial combat lasted over half an hour. The result was a draw. McColpin, when bounced by Molders was already out of ammunition. He had no choice but to "out fly" the German "Ace".
So, keep it up, you "Kraut Lovers". I can go spinner to rudder with your claims of "German superiority", and if not shoot them down, argue them to a draw.
The Germans had two innovative designs in production during WW2 that had no allied counterpart: The V-2 ICBM and the V-3 stationary supergun. But even for those two technologies, the Germans stole the V-2 hook, line, and sinker...right down to copying American professor Robert Goddard's gyroscopic control and engine venturi...and the V-3 was simply an electricly-triggered version of a pyro-staged American Civil war cannon.
But for everything else, the allies had the same or a superior version. For the German V-1, the U.S. had the JB-10. For the ME262, the U.S. had the P-80.
Where the Germans fell remarkably short, however, was in the areas of mass production, encryption, computers, and atomic warfare, all of which were dominated by the U.S. and UK.
Moreover, the illusion of German technology is primarily due to the fact that the Germans lost the war and had **all** of their top secrets exposed. In contrast, the U.S. was able to maintain its secrets (well, except that the atomic warfare was a bit hard to hide, and the field of computers was so eagerly being pursued in U.S. research centers).
It doesn't take a German Rocket Scientist to suspect that these claimed number of kills, from a hundred Nazi pilots is equivalent to one aircraft's entire production, is a little exaggerated. The only explanation, that makes any sense of these claims, is that Hitler did not like to hear bad news.
Yes.
... is a little exaggerated.
Yes.
...Hitler did not like to hear bad news.
Yes, and?
The US Army Air Corps fought all around the world, not just Europe. To imply that proof of the Luftwaffe's prowess is contained in the 40,000 combat fatalities statistic, is a specious argument at best. It still begs the question that if the Luftwaffe was so good, why did they loose the war. The more likely answer is that, as the Germans lost the air superiority they had at the beginning of the war and could not regain it, the only thing left to do was to lie. Just as we saw in "Baghdad Bob's" reports last April, that; "Iraqi armored units were turning back the American tanks", while the Abrams's tanks were rolling into Baghdad behind him.
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