Messeschmitt Bf-109, Emil, Gustav and Konrad

[straffo]

Originally posted by Reynolds
40 kills, 352 kills. And yet they lost the war... something seem a bit wierd there?

5 * 100 > 352

[MiloMorai]

Diablo, you thinking about his 17 in one day?

There is some questions about his claims this day. To make a long story short, he claimed a/c that were not in the area where he made the claims  and/or claimed the wrong a/c type (this is not unusual).

[Angus]

The SAAF was also in the area which confuses things a bit but like Milo said, in short, the allied side has not been able to put together a total list of that.
Lots of fog about the med theater. Axis for instance had aircraft in the area while files show them at Stalingrad

[F4UDOA]

40 kills, 352 kills. And yet they lost the war... something seem a bit wierd there?

Reynolds,

Your kidding right?

Gripen,

Am I reading that chart wrong or does Ca=Clmax? It looks like clean the Clmax is approx 1.5 and with flaps almost 2.0, is that right? Where do you see the drag increase?

[Bruno]

There is some questions about his claims this day. To make a long story short, he claimed a/c that were not in the area where he made the claims and/or claimed the wrong a/c type (this is not unusual).

In Ring and Shores in 'Fighters Over the Desert' on 1 Sept '42 Marseille claimed 17 aircraft over 3 sorties:

First sortie with 4 claims @:

09:26
09:28
09:35
09:38

He used 80 cannon rounds and 240 MG rounds. Ring and Shores list the pilots shot down as:

Hurricane - Lt Bailey
Hurricane - Maj Metelerkamp (Damaged but managed to rtb)
Hurricane - F/O Matthews
Spitfire - P/O Bradley-Smith

Second Sortie with 8 claims @:

11:55
11:56
11:58
11:59
12:01
12:02
12:03
12:05

These were claimed as P-40s. Another JG 27 pilot filed 1 P-40 claim as well. According to 'Fighters Over the Desert' the RAF lost 6 fighters on an escort mission.

His third sortie he claimed 5 more @:

18:47
18:48
18:49
18:50
18:53

These were all Hurricanes. 4 other Hurricanes were claimed by other JG27 pilots. In 'Fighters Over the Desert' Ring and Shores write that 5 Hurricanes from 213sqn and 1 from 208sqn were lost at about the same time as these claims. They also write about other Allied losses and JG 27 claims. Allied losses total 22 (2 Spitfires, 4 Kittyhawks, 1 Warhawk, 4 Tomahawks, and 9 Hurricanes) and besides Marseille's claim of 17 JG 27 claimed 9 other aircraft.

JG 27 had some pilots who definitely 'padded their scores'. A section of 4 were observed in the desert firing their guns at the empty ground and later they filed claims. These 4 were later split up, Franz Stigler was one of them. However, I don't think there's any real 'proof' that Marseille's claims weren't 'genuine'. Whether he shot down 17 actual aircraft or 14, 15, or 16 on 1 Sept '42 is only the concern of 'kill total' geeks like us.

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by DiabloTX
If this machine still existed, can you imagine what the value of it would be?

Not that one, but close.  Think it's wreckage but anything is restorable these days
Bf 109B-0 (V10a)     Werk Nr. 1010        Privately owned, "Bayerische Flugzeug Historiker" Oberschleissheim, Munich

And of course much of the Me-209 still exists

[Porta]

Originally posted by F4UDOA

Am I reading that chart wrong or does Ca=Clmax? It looks like clean the Clmax is approx 1.5 and with flaps almost 2.0, is that right? Where do you see the drag increase? [/B]

Ca and Cw are, respectively, lift and drag coefficients.

FWIW, V24 had slotted flaps (Spaltklappe) while F-G-K series had plain flaps (Wölbungsklappe).

[Angus]

Bruno, - I wish I had that book
Had it in my hands in German (Sand & Sonne etc) while visiting a LW person in Germany.
(That person, scooled by Rall and others promptly declared that Rall had been the finest shot of the LW because of his deflection skills, while Marseille was simply better up close.)
Anyway...
This has been a teasing debate over the times, and some have doubted Marseilles score seriously - i.e. Duncan Smith.
Shores work is usually very good as I know it, and he has published incredible amounts of data, - with some help.
If one is to dig very deep into the day of Marseille, one will need some maps, distances and calculations. D.S. points is that many of the aircraft lost by the RAF (and SAAF) couldn't even have been close to Marseille.
Would be a lovely time-consuming project wouldn't it
OK, - bottom line, Marseille shot up incredible amounts of aircraft in very short timeframes. Be it 17 kills, or 12 doesn't really matter. It's incredible.
And the spoiler:
AFAIK, Marseille was the "shot" of the group, and the tactic was to cover him completely while he was in the business. That may explain why his claim is higher than the rest put together.

[Reynolds]

Originally posted by F4UDOA
Reynolds,

Your kidding right?

Gripen,

Am I reading that chart wrong or does Ca=Clmax? It looks like clean the Clmax is approx 1.5 and with flaps almost 2.0, is that right? Where do you see the drag increase?

Hey man, calm down. Im just stateing here, asking you guys, because info tends to conflict. And it was a nice link, thank you.

[Reynolds]

But, dont you think with skills like that, there was obviously horrible planning on the part of the Nazis and WWII Luftwaffe that caused them to lose the war?

[DiabloTX]

That's only a very small part of what caused them to lose the war.  The main thing the Nazi's didn't plan on was long-term strategic war plan, among other things.

[Reynolds]

Yeah. Why the f**k did they attack Britan AND Russia at the same time?!?

[Debonair]

easy to say that now, but if you pretend you're in the late fall of 1941 it seemed like quite a good idea.
teh hitler pwnd or was allied with just about all of europe & was on the march in the next continent.

[DiabloTX]

The Battle of Britain was July, 1940 – May, 1941.  Hitler's invasion of Russia started June, 1941.  By late fall '41 Hitler was half way to Moscow.

[Debonair]

yeah, put yourself somewhere reading a newspaper then & you'd think it would be about another 18 months before teh hitler had completed the 1st world conquest