An interesting interview of a great testpilot and aviator. I recently read “Wings on my Sleeve” as well as “Wings of the Luftwaffe” and was immediately impressed by Captain Brown´s skill as an author but even more so as an extraordinary pilot with excellent and literally unique experience. He surely is one of a kind.

Michael

I flew to Stansted on Friday morning, going to the hotel at Cambridge by train. I was in Duxford by around 11 a.m., I think Friday was the perfect day, much sun, few people, very good training flights and quite few people in the hangars. Very good performance by Patrouille de France and Red Arrows as well, very good Hurricane formation and display. Stunning were the 16 Spitfires, very impressing. I liked the Sea Fury and Bearcat, you could hear all those horses under the cowling running…. Nice display of the 2 Bückers as well, especially liked the Jungmann, the silver one. Astonishing tight turns and display in a quite narrow space, just turning on it´s heels… It was all in all the very best airshow I have ever seen. Thanks to everybody involved, who made this show possible, especially organisers and pilots. Very well done, I enjoyed every minute.

Michael

Very nice, as Bruce says they are reasonably common, would love to see one running however and would like to restore one myself so if your looking to offload it 😉

There is a possibility Hafner has a manual for it if you have a search (it may be contained within the 262 manual), sorry if he doesnt!

http://www.luftfahrt-archiv-hafner.de/

All the best

Matt

@Tom: Matt is right, Hafner has a manual for the “Riedel-Anlasser” (Riedel-starter) it´s called: Riedel-Anlasser Technische Unterlagen, for 19 €, you will find it listed under Junkers Motorenwerke JUMO, scroll down to JUMO 004, second last item above Junkers Verstelluftschrauben VLS (variable pitch propellers).

Michael

Flugwerk provided the fuselage / wings for the restoration of the 190/A-8, so is the D-9 following the same path ?
this would be the third / fourth D-9 built by Flug-Werk

As far as I know Flugwerk at least provided large parts for this rebuild. I don´t know if they counted it as one of the D-9`s in their production log, or only as parts. There are 3 Doras I know of:
Tom Blair´s at Kissimmee,
Eric Vormezeele´s at Brasschaat,
and 1 with Flugwerk at Gammelsdof, as they want to keep one Dora for themselves, they intend to operate it as well.

The one with German Luftwaffe is not intended to fly, just static example. Luftwaffe does not operate any historic planes, neither itself, nor through a club or company. It´s a shame, but I believe they fear problems regarding history might occur.

Michael

Thats two damaged now is there a connection??

It´s bad news the plane is ditched, but the priority is the pilot is safe.

@Peter: Don´t think so. In another forum a member quoted a french paper, that it is believed to be engine failure during performing a roll. The other accident of the four bladed version happened during a highspeed taxirun.

Michael

Absolutely corking shots Brian, nice work! Love the Spit/Buchon shots especially, thanks for sharing them.

Excellent shots yet again, Brian. Love the Spitfire/Buchon formation shot in particular.

@AdlerTag;@DazDaMan:

You are both absolutely right, I have nothing to add but stating that I fully agree with you.

Michael

….. the 262 was better in just about every way except it’s engines.

The 262’s engines needed to be replaced after just 10 flight hours due to putting the limited amount of quality metal Germany had into tank production, the engines couldn’t withstand their own heat. Not to mention they’d catch fire if they were powered up too quickly. …….

…Germany didn’t have enough materials to build them, which resulted in the ones that were built having engines which needed to be replaced pretty much on a per-flight basis, making the material problem even worse…

Bottom line (as far as I know): They very well did know how to build quality jetengines, but the required raw material to produce the right steel alloys just were not available, at least not as much as needed. They did know their material were “Ersatz”, maybe even crap, but couldn´t do any better. I have read, they used iron fan blades when at the end of war nothing else was available, though I personally doubt it. I think it was just some kind of quite inferior low grade steel.

Good thing it did work out as it did in the long run, or I might not be able to visit Britain for holiday vacation. Otherwise I might have to stay there on duty. :diablo:

Michael

I’m sure the ARCo boys did their homework on the Buchon’s paintscheme…. 😉

However, if you think about it, the Buchons in the film started off nice and clean. A few months of hard film work would certainly put paid to that! 😉

Thanks, of course you are right about that. I never even thought about it…. 😮

Michael