109/190 link

[Wotan]

Willy What were you thinking......

link says it all. The more I learn how deficient the 109 actual was I'm amazed the lw could get antyone to fly it. But to go out and kill is sign of that tactics will win over technology...

[HoHun]

Hi Wotan,

Carson's article was written to make the Me 109 look bad, at the cost of historical and factual accuracy.

For example, Carson snipes at the Me 109 for its poor drag coefficient in comparison to the Spitfire, neglecting that the total drag is the product of drag coefficient and frontal area - where the Me 109 had the advantage.

Carson advice on how to improve the Me 109 is also quite ignorant. The Me 109's radiator design, which had been revised with the F variant, was highly efficient and acutually a different application of the same principles that made the Mustang's radiator famous.

Carson flew Mustangs and obviously didn't like the Me 109's automatic leading edge slats. Ironically, the experts at North American must have liked them a bit better, as they incorporated them into the F-86 Sabre, the Mustang's jet-driven successor.

There are many more statements that don't survive a closer look.

However, I'd suggest that his assertion

"That gap causes the outboard 15 feet of each wing to be totally turbulent."

must have merely been distorted by a typo, since there'd been little wing left for the 30-ft-wingspan Messerschmitt to create any useful lift with ;-)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[Wilbus]

Haven't read the whole thing, nor will I read such stupid things, IMO, by saying that the 109, wich was the most common fighter of the war, was a bad plane is just pure stupid, especially since he flew for the allies he's just saying "the 109 sucked, could hardly fly at all, yet, we had many of our pilots shot down by it". In other words "we didn't know S*it about flying att all". Now, I know this isn't true, US pilots were great pilots, so were the germans.

[Gunthr]

I havn't read the entire article yet, either.
 
It's no secret the 109's were trickier to fly and they had many training accidents due to the spindly gear, especially compared to the Spitfire. One German pilot who flew a captured Spit described it as being "...childishly simple and easy to fly." or words to that effect.

But early German pilots had outstanding training. The newer German pilots that came in later in the war, if they survived, amassed many, many hours of experience because they flew constantly, learning to work with the 109's idiosyncracies.
 
I think its clear that the 109's were harder to fly than the Spit, for instance. But I think this author is wayyyy emotionally biased on the topic.

[GRUNHERZ]

Spit landing gear is really quite little diffrent from the 109s. Experienced and unbiased allied test pilots who actually flew the 109 found no real problem with the gear and takeoff/landing procedures. The key point is, I suppose, experienced.