I met Eric Brown about a month ago, what a remarkable, unaffected and nice man. In the time available he took us from late war aircraft through to post-war. He told us, unprompted, "if I had to choose which of all the WWII propeller aircraft to fly [in combat] it would be the Spitfire MkXIV, the FW190D-9 then probably the Mustang IV in that order". In the link he says P51D but he told us Mustang IV. He did also mention "the beautiful Macchi C205".
I asked him what made the difference for him between the Spit and the FW. He said "the maneouvrability of the Spitfire, but the FW had a very high rate of roll" which old IL-2 '46 hands here will already know. He had previously mentioned the stall/spin characteristic of the FW.
It was hard to believe I was talking to the man who had flown so many aircraft including first Wildcat carrier landing for the RAF, deck-landing Mosquitos (!! approved, but too late for WWII/Jets), Me262, Me163, Me162... most get a mention in that link......and on and on. You may have seen the demonstration on 'Discovery'/'History' channels of the German scientist dropping a single drop of both T-Stoff and C-Stoff onto a small dish and the resultant explosion. He said the demo he was given blew the pipettes out of the scientists hands. This was the mixture that powered the Me163.
I'm halfway through his book at the moment. Signed of course :)
My overfall best Aircraft? Me262 if it could have been reliable. I think that was Eric's feeling too subject to the realities of engine life, slow acceleration making it vulnerable around the airfields, etc.. As he said, it was 100mph faster than any allied aircraft, what could you do?
Best propeller aircfraft? I'm not going to argue with Mr Brown. I was very fond of the FW190D-9 in IL-2 and we often made low level fast GA runs in the Mustang IV.
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