Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: msmiller@gonzoville.East.Sun.COM (Mark Miller - Sun BOS Contractor) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Luftwaffe, comments, etc. Message-ID: <10722@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 28 Oct 89 04:22:50 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: Sun Microsystems, Billerica MA Lines: 72 Approved: military@att.att.com From: msmiller@gonzoville.East.Sun.COM (Mark Miller - Sun BOS Contractor) In article <10574@cbnews.ATT.COM> you write: : : :From: Amos Shapira : : One of the advantages of the German fighters was the fuel injection. The :Brits lacked it, and if a negative-G was applied to the plane (start of :dive), the engine would stutter or stop. This caused the British to develop :the invert/roll and dive technique. The split-S move was not really a reaction to the lack of fuel injection. Bunting over the way the Me109 would have to to gain an edge would involve pulling negative-G's - jamming more blood into the head. The human body can take less of this than it can of positive, so a split-S into a dive is more physically posible. Also, the plane is much happier pulling into a manouever than pushing into it. The escape move the Germans used to take advantage of their fuel injection was very unnatural to plane and pilot. : A problem that confronted all of the Luftwaffe was continuous political :interference. Erhard Milch was one of the main backers of the Me-110. :In fact another fighter of a similar type (FW-187 Falke) was MUCH preferred :by the pilots of the squadron to which 7 planes of this type were given for :testing. Milch, upon hearing of the 'heresy', had the planes returned to :the plant. There was also the He-100 (or something like that) which could pull almost 400mph in 1937. Did they go with that design? Hell no. : The German offensive on Britain was badly conducted. Again, because of :political interference. In addition, some very peculiar decisions were :taken from time to time by the more immediate command echelons. A number :of British aircraft factories were bombed. However, they were not destroyed :completely, and often the higher command marked the plants as 'destroyed' :after only a single bombing sortie against them. When the Germans did actually hit primary airdromes, they had no idea of the importortance of these targets. When they found out about these targets later, they couldn't believe that primary air defense centers would be housed in above-ground shacks. : In fact, the Luftwaffe was NOT the proper tool for strategic bombing. It :lacked the planes to do the jobs. He-177 Grief and FW-200 Condor were either :not very reliable (He-177 was a flying torch cum casket) or too few. The Condor was a comercial airliner reworked into a shipping raider. It was very good in the role as long as nothing shot back. : As for the other side- for a very long time the Fighter Command (British) :demanded of its pilot to fly in close formations. The Germans used tactics :developed in the fighting in the Spanish civil war, and caused mayhem in the :British formations. Especially vulnerable were the 'Tail-end Charlies'. : : Question: does anyone have access to the _claim_ and _credit_lists of both :sides? Every book I have access to states that the German PUBLIC claims were :high (for propaganda purposes), but the actual credits were extremely :accurate. On the other hand, the British, French and (especially) Italians :overclaimed both publicly and in the lists. The Brits in the Battle for :Britain overclaimed actual German losses by 100%. : : : Marc A. Volovic, Sgt (res.) amoss@batata.huji.ac.il : I haven't seen actual lists, but I have seen copies of the paperwork that Luftwaffe pilots needed to fill out to be awarded a kill. Very detailed, witnesses needed - a real pain from the look of it. -MSM