“Jawohl Herr Reichmarschall, geben Sie mir ein Staffel Spitfires”

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

The Sabre was a fine engine indeed, and once early problems (many related to quality control rather than inherent design) were dealt with, it was reliable. However, it was a very large and powerful engine with a high parts count, which I imagine equals expense when it comes down to stripping, rebuilding and replacing components, particularly when there’s less know-how about than for more conventional machinery.

By the end of the war, sleeve valve technology looked like the way to go, at least in Britain. In addition to Napier and Bristol, Rolls was working on the sleeve valve Eagle 24 (now no-one can tell me that’s not complex) and a larger version of the Boreas/Exe 24 cylinder air cooled ‘X’ with sleeve valves.

However, improved metallurgy suddenly made conventional valves able to take higher temperatures and engine speeds than they had previously been able, and when Rolls dropped its piston designs to concentrate on jets, sleeve valves died a bit of a death. As a result, there’s far less know-how and confidence with these systems than there is with conventional valves.

I think there has been an over reaction to the reliability of the Napier Sabre, the engine that powered the Tempest was a much improved version compared to the early Typhoons, it would be ignoring the history of the development of the engine to write it off as not suitable, and the service time was much more than 25 hours, that was the Early engines.
And with the modern metals and lubricants of today I am sure it is possible to get even more out of it.
You only have to think about some of the even more obscure flying restorations to realise that a lot is possible with the will and money.

Graham

I imagine the problem with the Sabre is actually not so much unreliability as complexity. It is a fearsomely complex piece of machinery, and whilst not necessarily more unreliable than, say, a Merlin, must have many more components, each of which can go wrong. After all, the Centaurus is hardly a simple bit of kit.

I dare say rarity is another problem.

I think I’m right in saying that all Sabre-engined aircraft were single-engined fighters (in fact did anything other than Typhoons, Tempests and a few prototypes use them?), most of which were scrapped shortly after the war. Merlins, for example, on the other hand were used in a multitude of postwar bombers, trainers and transport aircraft, allowing them to survive until people thought to start preserving Merlin powered aircraft. How many Sabres are even still in existence and fairly complete?

True, with will and money much is possible, so never say never, but I would counsel against holding one’s breath.

It would be great to see and hear though wouldn’t it?

Come on, it can’t be accurate anyway, everyone knows MvR was a raging homosexual who beat up his dog!

Is that a euphemism I’m not familiar with?

Right… I’m also a little confused by particular posters seeking to call into question Von Richthofens credentials as the best ace of the War.

Has anyone actually attempted to do this? I don’t believe so. A number of people have tried to call into question the folk myths that have grown up around von Richthofen and, sensibly, tried to separate the fact from the reality, dispassionately and without value judgement. On the other hand naming anyone ‘the best ace of the war’ is rather a sweeping statement and will need far more than ‘a cursory examination of his combat career’.

He was the top scoring fighter pilot of the war. There is evidence that his actual first 2 kills were not awarded due to the fact that both victims crashed behind Allied lines. One of these claims was when he was an observer handling the defensive MG.

Granted, but the best score doesn’t automatically make anyone ‘the best’. The fact is that German fighter/scout pilots in both wars competed to get the best score and to do so used tactics like using their entire squadrons to protect their back and shepherd aircraft towards their own guns. Allied pilots tended to have a much less individualistic approach to their air combat, and scored much lower – does this make them worse?

And this brings me to the next point. The Baron was a supurb marksman. This is universally acknowledged, yet has not been so far acknowledged here in this thread. Rather, it appears important to some that his aerobatic prowess was not the absolute best, and that this is something of a deficiency!

And yet we also have a situation where…

von Richthofen got Hawker with one round in the head from his last burst before his guns jammed, just yards from no mans land. The only hit that Richthofen made on Hawker’s DH2 out of 900 odd rounds in the engagement.

Voss, on the other hand, in his last dogfight, battled eight SE5s, five of them piloted by aces, and put bullets into all of them.

His suburb (sic) tactics and marksmanship are quietly played down.

Where is it played down? To take my own posts only:

…his extraordinary score of enemy aircraft destroyed had as much to do with his tactics…
There’s no doubt that he was a genius at choosing his battles…
…militarily, he was absolutely right…
…incredibly shrewd…

Going back over the thread, I can’t see anywhere anyone denigrating von Richthofen, just a few cases where people are questioning the circumstances around his victories and not wanting to blindly put him on a pedestal without examining the facts.

It is interesting that the majority of his victories were gained against a numerically superior enemy flying tecnically superior machines.

This I’m not sure about. He scored his first confirmed victory in September 1916, at the height of the German superiority in scout/fighter aircraft. The SE5a appeared in June 1917, but build-up was painfully slow until well into the next year because of engine shortages. The Sopwith Camel appeared in July 1917, and expansion of those squadrons was rather more rapid. In July 1917von Richthofen received the head injury that is now thought to have contributed to his death. He returned to combat in October of that year and died the following April – so only in those six months did he face fighter aircraft of comparable quality – and this coincided with Allied pilots generally being more inexperienced and hastily trained.

Once again – this is not meant as a criticism, just as context.

I don’t know why posters keep refering to Von Richtofen as a scout pilot, when he clealy was a fighter pilot.

Richtofen flew in Oswald Boelcke Jagdstaffel (fighter squadron), led his own Jasta 11 (also a fighter squadron), he flew mostly in an Albertros model – a fighter not a scout airplane (his other aircraft were also fighters).

Richtofen posessed the qualities, that would have made him an outstanding fighter pilot even in WWII, where aircraft performance allowed for more advanced flying and dog-fighting.

‘Scout’ was the contemporary Allied term for what later became known as fighter – it does not mean reconnaissance. I don’t know what the direct translation of Jagdstaffeln is. Quite honestly the fact that the German Jagdstaffeln were primarily defensive in nature and the tactic of patrolling the lines looking for Allied aircraft that had penetrated their airspace makes use of the term ‘scout’ quite appropriate in my view.

No doubt von Richthofen would have been as successful as e.g. Galland in WWII mainly because early war tactics favoured his style in extremis – the top scoring ‘experten’ effectively went out hunting with their entire squadron covering them.

A bit unfair for Lanoe Hawker, that comment, seeing the Hawker was also fighting the wind, which was blowing him away from British lines with his fuel running out in an inferior aircraft as far as speed went. Plus of course, von Richthofen only hit the DH2 with one round (which happened to hit Hawker and fatally wound him) out of 900 odd fired by the German before his guns jammed.

Yes, that’s a fair comment. And von Richthofen only got a clear shot at Hawker when the latter had to break for his own lines or risk running out of fuel. I didn’t know that about the single bullet though.

Well the Yanks were actually in Burma, the other side of it from where the Empire forces were, so I don’t have a problem with that. As for U-571, the US Navy did actually get thier little pinkys on an Engima off a U-Boat themselves, without British involvement whatsoever…Didn’t have to fight half the Germany Navy to do it though, but so what, its only a film.

Well, if you must use facts to back up your arguments…:D I believe the first one to be captured from a U-boat was by a British destroyer however.