Next two videos and a Museum visit this Sunday
The next video will be about my favorite 109 variant, the F model. The one after that will explain why the Wrights made certain design choices that seem odd now. They did have good reasons for everything they did, or at least good at the time.
For the Wright video I'm going to take a quick weekend trip up to Chicago because at the Museum of Science and Industry they have a replica of the 1903 flyer that actually flew (barely) and I want to used pictures of it as it's the most accurate replica possible and I can get close enough to it to get the detailed pictures I'll need for the video.
If any of you happen to be at the museum that day, feel free to say hi. I'll be there with Max, my grandson who helps out on videos sometimes, and Isaac, my youngest child who has Downs. He is a huge Spiderman fan, and there is a big Spiderman exhibit going on. If I remember, I'll wear my red Old Rhinebeck cap.
Greg
Comments (4)
I have a friend who like to give grief that the Wright Brothers were the first to fly and he asked why didn’t the Brothers have wheels on the Flyer. AI came up with very soft sand for ground and it would create too much drag. And my coconut came up with this question: We know the P-47’s performance improved significantly with addition of paddle-props but other aircraft also used that engine but you only hear of that performance increase when related to P-47s and not other planes. Why is that?
Love the f my favorite 109 and the most focused as a fighter in my opinion. Didnt have all the weight added later. If it had had a reliable water meth and maybe nx it would be un beatable
The F was a big improvement on the E which in turn was a performance leap relative to the Jumo powered models. And, whatever their downsides, the 109’s had the merit of being economical to build. The Germans admitted that Italian fighters powered by the DB601 and 605 were better in some ways, but they required more than twice the man-hours. That said, I think the F also marks the point were the 109 became a franchise with too many sequels, and Messerschmitt would take his attempts up stretch and upgrade it, or at least re-use sections, to ridiculous extremes.
The F model was also the favorite of Hans-Joachim Marseille. An argument could be made that he was the most skilled fighter pilot of WWII. He died in November 1942 with 158 victories bailing out of a G model due to non-combat related engine failure. If he had continued for another 2.5 years, there is no telling what his score would have been.