Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: dps@otter.hpl.hp.com (Duncan Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Memphis Belle + 25 Mission Crunch
Message-ID: <1990Oct26.015709.25351@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 26 Oct 90 01:57:09 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.190713.7324@cbnews.att.com>
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From: dps@otter.hpl.hp.com (Duncan Smith)

>From: ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Nur Iskandar Taib)
>
>I haven't seen pictures of the Me108 "Taifun", but
>it supposedly had a pretty ellitpical wing like 
>the Spitfire. R.J. Mitchell was supposedly influenced
>by this. Taifuns were popular as personal transports,

NO! NO! NO! The Bf108 had a very angular wing, like the
Bf109. The elliptical wing of the Spitfire, which was
incidentally much more difficult to manufacture, has
often been taken to represent British engineering's
quest for the elegant solution and British industry's
traditions of craftsmanship were fully exercised in
making it. The Spitfire took fully three times the
man hours to produce compared with a 109.

The memory of RJ Mitchell is well-nigh SACRED in
this country ..:-)

>But if Me109s are scarce, wouldn't 108s 
>be even scarcer?

There is now an airworthy 109 in the UK; it was
rebuilt at my old local airfield, Bournemouth/Hurn
where rumours about it persisted for years to the
point where nobody believed them anymore ... Until
they finally finished the thing.

Duncan