[Flying Pencil]

Originally Posted by Ltbear

Realy hope this damedge is from an Internal explosion and not from MG`s....

I promise to find the interviuv i have from a German ground crew member who repaired the planes doing bob...

He statet that the Brit guns in many cases killed the crew but left the plane flyable....And he realy disliked repairing damedged HE-111`s because it took werry long pacthing up all the holes....

Hes opinion was that the british planes had werry effective guns against the bombers and the MG`s was a terror weapon against the crews. You dont need to aim at a specific spot, you just spray the entire bomber with these small bullets, no matter what you will kill some crew members.

He also statet that the ME-109 was a great fighter, but the pilots complained that there was not enough cannon ammo to be effective against bombers and the two MG`s was a waste of weight. They should have removed the MG`s and give the pilots 100 cannon rounds more...

He also told that the Pilots even before BOB complaintet that they had so little fuel. Doing the entire BOB ground crews was working on a field mod for a drop tank, that was what they used many hours on, trying to give the fighter pilots 200ltr more fuel. It was so stupid. We got told that we would get racks for bombs, but no one in high command thought about it was fuel they needed. They had so little fuel and then they would add 250KG of bombs so they would use even more fuel, it was stupid. The ME-109 was a fighter, this idea turning it into a Jabo just show how little the high command understood about airwar.

Who in there right mind would send fighters across the chanal with 400 ltr`s of fuel. With combat they had at most 70mins of fuel. We had to salvage many fighters who had to land somewhere because they didnt have the fuel to get back. Sometimes the "swimmer" in the gas tank would not work correctly so it would show the wrong ammount of fuel, it could also get stuck doing heawy combat manouvers. Many of us on the ground was glad that we didnt have to fly "over there"'

He talks werry little about the FW-190, but he says that it was a great plane in air, but could be a nightmare for the groundcrews. And many 109 pilots never got used to fly it. They joked about it. They give me a sportscar (109) then they let me have fun with it and after that they give me a truck(190)

I promise i try to dig the 15 mins clip up i have somewhere on the 1000 CD`s/DVD`s i have lol....

Concurs with other reports I read, but this mechanics perspective is excellent!

MOAH!!