Another strange WWII tale

[ozzy72]

Not one I'd heard before, but interesting nevertheless....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924720

[Strategic Retreat]

Well, yeah... the weak spot of the spitfire, or P51, or... whichever plane of the times with liquid cooling, is that a nothing could strand you, most of the times on enemy ground. Great planes that they all were, in a stark contrast with their radial-engined counterparts that could still fly with half the engine's pistons being destroyed, it sufficed a ricocheting single splinter going into the radiator or its non armored vicinities and you were in short forced to bail.

[ozzy72]

Many a Spit and P-51 limped home. I hear what you're saying about radials and I'll never deny the genius of Kurt Tanks Fw-190.
I just found their internment fascinating, the idea of them being in the same camp in a third country like this. And all the fascinating things they got up to. So different from interment anywhere else in the world

[1olehippy]

According to this wiki article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._133_Squadron_RAF

the aircraft was recovered yesterday June 28th, 2011

Dave

[Strategic Retreat]

Many P51s and Spits and Hurricanes and P40s and so on DID limp home, but only when said home wasn't really far away. Once you have a breach into the coolant circuit, there's only that much sky you can crawl on before all 12 pistons stop producing power. In contrast with some of the stories heard of the flying tank (P47, which only problem was the range, before the model M) and some of its exploits, or the F3U, or the F6F (though those two last on the pacific theater) that have saved some of their pilots flying on long distances with the engines almost dismantled and the fuselage riddled by bullets holes (there was this story on History Channel, recreated with computer graphics, that was really impressing).

Fascinating in that internment is more like only the pilot of this story, Roland Wolfe, thought to use their freedom to make it back to the corps and no one else ever tried. I don't think that a German would have been sent back into internment, had one of them escaped to return flying for the Luftwaffe. Probably none of them liked their fuhrer enough to return risking their lives for the reich that so desperately wanted to be millenarian, but lasted little more than 10 years (and they were still winning at that time too).

Such an understandable point of view.

[ozzy72]

Personally I always admired the chutzpah of Franz von Werra

[Steve M]

That's a great read, thanks for posting that.