Maybe a bid of a throwback to this whole conversation, but I tend to agree with Thorsim that our 190 seems to be less capable than it was anecdotally. In a mere 5 minutes of web surfing I found this. Nowhere does it say that the 190 was an inferior handler but, quite to the contrary, accounts seemed to give it performance superior to the spits until the advent of the IX and one writer actually said in no uncertain terms that it OUT TURNED the 109. It just seems like the 190 we have is nowhere near as capable as the 190 accounted for in WWII.
(4) Alan Deere, Nine Lives (1959)
Savagely I hauled my reluctant Spitfire around to meet this new attack and the next moment I was engulfed in enemy fighters-above, below and on both sides, they crowded in on my section. Ahead and above, I caught a glimpse of a FW 190 as it poured cannon shells into the belly of an unsuspecting Spitfire. For a brief second the Spitfire seemed to stop in mid-air, and the next instant it folded inwards and broke in two, the two pieces plummeting earthwards; a terrifying demonstration of the punch of the FW 190s, four cannons and two machine-guns.
I twisted and turned my aircraft in an endeavour to avoid being jumped and at the same time to get myself into a favourable position for attack. Never had I seen the Huns stay and fight it out as these Focke-Wulf pilots were doing. In Messerschmitt 109s the Hun tactics had always followed the same pattern-a quick pass and away, sound tactics against Spitfires with their superior turning circle. Not so these FW 190 pilots, they were full of confidence.
(3) After the war the British fighter pilot Johnnie Johnson wrote about the merits of the Focke-Wulf 190.
The Focke-Wulf 190 was undoubtedly, the best German fighter. We were puzzled by the unfamiliar silhouette, for these new German fighters seemed to have squarer wingtips and more tapering fuselages than the Messerschmitts we usually encountered. We saw that the new aircraft had radial engines and a mixed armament of cannons and machine-guns, all firing from wing positions.
Whatever these strange fighters were, they gave us a hard time of it. They seemed to be faster in a zoom climb than the Me 109, and far more stable in a vertical dive. They also turned better. The first time we saw them we all had our work cut out to shake them off, and we lost several pilots.
Back at our fighter base and encouraged by our enthusiastic Intelligence Officers, we drew sketches and side views of this strange new aeroplane. We were all agreed that it was superior to the Me 109f and completely outclassed our Spitfire Vs. Our sketches disappeared into mysterious Intelligence channels and we heard no more of the matter,. But from then on, fighter pilots continually reported increasing numbers of these outstanding fighters over northern Franc
From Vectorsite.com
The V1 machine originally featured a three-bladed variable-pitch propeller with an oversized prop spinner. The spinner fitted flush to the edge of the engine cowling for streamlining, with a central duct surrounding a ten-bladed fan for airflow, but this configuration didn't cool the rear set of cylinders very well. The oversized prop spinner was replaced by a conventional prop spinner, which didn't do much to eliminate the overheating problem but demonstrated no real reduction in performance, and so was retained for all following FW-190s.
The cockpit overheating remained a serious nuisance. Temperatures reached up to 55 degrees Celsius (130 degrees Fahrenheit) and Sander complained that sitting in the cockpit "was like having your feet in a fire!" Unfortunately, the canopy couldn't be opened in flight to cool off, since the open canopy created disruptive turbulence over the tail.
The difficulties did not disguise the fact that the new fighter was fast, powerful, and agile. Sander demonstrated the V1 at the Luftwaffe flight test center at Rechlin in early July 1939, including a show for Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, who was so enthusiastic that he endorsed mass production of the type, saying it should be "turned out like hot rolls!" Luftwaffe test pilots were also enthusiastic about the new machine, stating that it handled better than the Bf-109.
* The British Royal Air Force (RAF) first encountered the FW-190A-1 in air combat over the coast of northern France in September 1941. The new German aircraft was more than a match for the Spitfire V. British intelligence was initially puzzled by reports of the new German fighter, with some speculation that the type might actually be a captured French Curtiss Hawk 75 or the Bloch 151 fighter, both of which were radial-engine machines with a vague resemblance to the FW-190. By the end of the year, the British had no doubt that they were up against something much more formidable.
* In February 1942, FW-190s of Adolf Galland's JG-26 squadron escorted the battle cruisers SCHARNHORST and GNEISENAU on their famous "Channel Dash" from France to the Baltic, with the Focke-Wulf fending off attacks by RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires, and shooting down all of a flight of six Swordfish torpedo-bombers that courageously pressed their attack despite the odds.
Many Luftwaffe pilots racked up large numbers of kills, particularly on the Eastern front. The Luftwaffe's fourth highest scoring pilot, Oberleutnant Otto Kittle, who scored 267 victories, got 220 of his kills in FW-190A-4s and A-5s, making him the high scorer with the type. Other German aces, including Walter Nowotny, Heinz Baer, Herman Graf, and Kurt Buhligen, all scored over a hundred kills in the FW-190.
From Aviation-history.com
The Focke-Wulf was not only faster but its superior handling and faster roll rate gave it an edge in the hands of even less experienced pilots.
Just seems like the 190 we have is NOWHERE near what was faced by the allies.
