Hi Andy,

Since when is ‘first’ better, or indeed ‘right’?

You collected big on the Deighton discussion.

Care for another? :p

No James
now I’m a full time semi civil servant I only have six hours a day to spend on this forum and therefore can’t argue for as long as I used to do.

I accept that Australian water is always going to be better than Pommy water–more inteligent, better to taste and it’s won a gold medal and the H2O equivalent of The Ashes every year for the last eighteen years.

Glad you’re all having a good time.
I’ll PM you later.
Cheers
Andy

Details, details.

Incidentally, in the southern hemisphere the water goes the right way. 😉

Seeing as the northern hemishere had running water before the Southern hemishere–it must by definition be the wrong way in the south!!! 🙂 🙂

It’s a fast car.

The houses lean in the slipstream.

By the look of those flagettes on the wings it’s going backwards!
Do cars in the southern hemisphere travel backwards?
I mean the water goes down the plug-hole the wrong way. :confused: :confused: :confused:

Dodgy, very dodgy.

Where did they use corrugated iron on B-17s?

The early ones were built under license by Junkers.

Fighter by Len Deighton.

Hi all
A few weeks ago on this very thread I was challenged about my comments and asked to elaborate about some of the things I had to say about the book ‘Fighter’ by Len Deighton.
So keen were some of our little congregation that I should eat my own words that one person (thanks Damien) even lent me a copy so that I could re-read it.
As those of you who’ve been following this saga know I’ve already admitted that I was wrong and the book is good, very good actually and well worth reading and below I’ll try to explain why I think it’s worth a read or even a re-read if you haven’t visited the book for a while.

I think I now realise that when I first read this book over twenty years ago, much of what it contained was ‘flying in the face’ of what was then the conventional wisdom on the Battle, much of which had been produced during the war or shortly after.
Deighton must have been one of the first authors to challenge that wisdom and much of the very good research carried out since then has tended to confirm rather than deny what he had to say and in that respect the book hasn’t aged too badly and much of what we now accept about the history of that time is really being expressed in this book which was written back in 1977.

As I said above, I first read this book back in 1982 so I suppose that in the intervening twenty-three years my knowledge, tastes and understanding of historical events may have altered so while reading I did check what Deighton had to say against other sources and although they weren’t primary sources themselves they are generally considered reliable.
I ended up with half a school exercise book filled with notes and there were a couple of occasions when I thought ‘I’ve got you now Mr D’ but on checking I found him to be very accurate.
One instance of this was an incident that occurred on 18th August 1940 at Croydon.
Deighton relates how a 615 Sqn. Hurricane crash landed at Croydon Airport after a raid elsewhere. The aircraft (L1592 coded KW-Z) was flown by Pilot Officer D.J. Looker who was amazed to be the subject of a complaint by airport officials for using the field as an emergency landing ground (Page 214).
I must say I found this story a bit unlikely especially as Croydon airport had been quite badly bombed three days earlier on 15th Aug by elements of Erprobungs Gruppe 210, which I had supposed might have blown away much of pre-war petty officialdom and it’s attitudes but on checking in ‘Battle of Britain, Then and Now Mk V’ (After the Battle Publications 1989 page 56) this story was confirmed and it also confirmed that Pilot Officer Looker’s Hurricane is now preserved in the Imperial war Museum in Lambeth.

There were only two relatively minor points where I found other sources disagreed with Deighton and neither of them was really crucial to the story of the events of 1940.
The first was the part the Junkers Ju87 played in The Spanish Civil War and the other was some aspects of the design of the Messerschmitt Bf109.

The Spanish Civil War matter can be quickly cleared up.
Deighton perpetuates the story that the JU87 was particularly effective in Spain. This is a myth; there were no squadrons of Ju87’s causing havoc in Spain.
I can’t say I really blame Deighton for this as I think the Stuka stories go all the way back to the civil war itself.
More recent research would suggest that at any one time there were never more than five JU87’s in Spain and their use was very limited. The bulk of close support operations in Spain carried out by the Condor Legion were by Heinkel He 51’s and Henschel Hs123’s. The Hs123 was a dive-bomber but the He 51 was originally designed as a fighter. The Germans did however use the experience gained in Spain using these two types to develop tactics and these were perfected by the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939. A good reference for the use of German types in Spain is ‘Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War’ by Gerald Howson (Putnams 1990) and I used this more recent publication to check up on Ju87 deployment in Spain.

What Deighton has to say about the Messerschmitt Bf109 is more involved and to his credit he goes to great lengths in the book to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of all three of the main fighter types, again much of which is very well written and accurate.
Deighton makes the point several times that the Messerschmitt Bf 109E had fundamental shortcomings in it’s design, most especially in the area of it’s wing and of course in it’s range and I found the section in the book about the development of the 109 particularly interesting.
While I agree with Mr Deighton that the Bf.109 had a number of deficiencies I cannot find anywhere else a report of structural weakness in the wings.
This is not to say Mr Deighton is incorrect, I haven’t got a great amount of reference material available on the 109.
I did resort to two references that I have on the shelf, one is old and I’m not sure how accurate and is ‘The Messerschmitt 109. A Famous German Fighter’ by Heinz J. Nowarra. (Harleyford 1963) and the other is ‘The German Fighter Since 1915’ by Rudiger Kosin (Putnams 1988) This was originally a German language publication and Kosin was himself an aeronautical engineer and I suspect his version of events has some validity. The Bf109 had some very difficult handling characteristics near the ground, which I suspect were never really resolved, and Kosin discusses them in depth.
He discusses the fact that the original German test pilots at the Reichlin Test Centre were unhappy with the 109 and it’s handling near the ground and especially with it’s stall (always apparently left wing first—caused by slightly different airflow over the port wing by the propeller or propeller torque?) and goes on to say that at least one test pilot had the slats wired shut because he felt the handling of the 109 was more benign without them.
He goes onto say that in the prevailing political climate of Nazi Germany that the unfavourable reports were quietly shelved and production proceeded with the consequence that the 109 had throughout it’s life a shockingly bad accident rate. What is also seemingly certain is that German fighter pilots in 1940 were reluctant to pull the 109 into as tight a turns as they might have wanted as they were concerned either with the structural strength of the airframe or the way the aircraft might behave in very tight turns and this set them at something of a disadvantage at times when flying against Spitfires and Hurricanes.
One last point I’d like to make about the Messerschmitt 109 is that the later ‘F’ model did suffer from structural weaknesses in the wing and this was recognised and airframe modifications were put in place to cure this.

In conclusion a very good book, not only did I enjoy reading it again for pleasure but I did enjoy looking into it at a deeper level for this review and I’ve certainly enjoyed discussing my thoughts with Gnome (Don) by E-mail while I’ve been putting the pieces together.
Recommended!

Oh, and if anyone else among our little congregation would like to chose another book to discuss I’ll be happy to read their thoughts.

I’ve just read ‘Fighter Boys’ by Patrick Bishop (for the second time) and I’d be happy to look at that in detail if anyone’s interested.
Cheers
Andy

PS Do any of the pilots, engineers and mechanics who frequent this site have an explanation of why the 109always stalled port wing first?

Have a good one mate.