@noims -- My grandfather had about 10 war stories that he rotated through telling, pretty much exclusively after one of my uncles "broke the dam" by asking him to recall things as they were at the Oshkosh air show standing next to a P-47 airplane like he had worked on.

By the time that happened, my grandfather was in his 80's and in very good physical and mental shape (cattle rancher that did daily work manhandling heavy feed bags around, etc.) but had a quirky personality because he was 90%+ deaf. I don't think that was a result of the war, hearing problems seem to run in the family.

Anyway, he frequently used those hearing problems as an excuse for not having to interact with people. He had hearing aids, but he'd turn them off most of the time and just ignore people. I think some of that was being an introvert, and some was probably lingering "shell shock" / PTSD effects. But overall he really adjusted back to civilian life just fine. Got a degree in education on the GI Bill and taught and coached basketball to High School students, then worked as a small-town Postmaster, and eventually retired to work the ranch. I don't think any of us in his family, including his wife and children, thought of him as being "impaired" by the mental effects of the war. But it was clear that some of what he experienced had a very deep, lifelong effect on his outlook.


I wrote out the 3 stories of his above because they seemed to be the ones that had the most emotional impact on him. To me, it was interesting that a lot of stuff outside of combat hit him the hardest. He also had more traditional "war stories" stuff about victories and bravery, like when his unit captured / accepted the surrender of a young German pilot in a Bf-109 who deserted to avoid near certain death from flying too many missions after the handwriting was on the wall that the allies were going to win. But by far, he got more choked up about the other stuff like having to knock that French girl off her bike and seeing starving civilians and being unable to help them much.

Like you said, more banal stuff side-by-side with or against a backdrop of horror. I think it's pretty much impossible to imagine what those sorts of experiences in war are really like and what being in those situations would do to us mentally. And then WW2 in particular just had a massive impact on the entire generation. Basically everybody back home knew multiple people that went away and never came back. Then when some did come back, they were clearly different and yet reluctant to talk about what happened. Pretty messed up time to live through, I guess.

Counter-rotating propellers sparked my curiosity when I first saw them on a British Seafire Mk46 at a flight show in the early nineties.

So my amateur's answer would be that it's about the problem of turning the engine's power into thrust. With increasing power, you can either increase the propeller's RPM or its area. So you either a) spin it faster, b) increase its diameter, c) use a more favourable blade geometry, d) add more blades.

a) and b) both lead to blade tips moving faster, and once they approach the speed of sound, wave drag sets in and ruins your day. b) also runs into issues in terms of ground clearance. Thus the Kim Jong-un blades on planes like the An-70: short and fat.

c) is rather difficult to do in terms of manufacture -- that's why more pronounced blade shapes are a relatively recent development.

d) on a single propeller decreases the efficiency of each blade as it passes through the previous blade's vortex. That's why, for instance, German planes in WW2 almost exclusively relied on 3-bladed propellers with increasing blade size, whereas Supermarine went to four and even 5 blades rather quickly. You can work the issue to a certain degree by modifying the blade geometry, thus the 8 blade props on a modern A400M.

Adding more blades by adding another propeller gets around d), although the aft prop still loses efficiency compared to the front prop. On the other hand, counter-rotating props massively reduces problems with torque, which can be rather horrendous for single engine prop planes. The Bf 109, for instance, is (in)famous for being difficult during take-off as it pulls to the side quite violently.

[nerd]That's a Bf 109 G6, 6./JG 27 -- 27th fighter wing, 2nd group, 6th squadron, 2nd plane.[/nerd]

Even if the events unfolded just the way Candelaria reported them, there's one small detail missing from this video: his enemies, the Bf 109s, were "Schulungslehrgang Elbe", a suicide ramming squad with pilots who barely knew how to keep the airplanes airborne and planes without radios, armor or armament except for a single MG131 with very limited ammo. The squad might have been led by Oberst Hajo Herrman, a bomber pilot and night fighter pilot - not a proper fighter pilot for single seater like the 109.

You'll notice how they are basically climbing straight up to the bombers. That's either inexperience or they had no time to set up for a proper attack. Normally, you need to gain the altitude advantage in a 109, so you can dominate the fight without resorting to turnfights. As for the Me 262s: they could have easily outclimbed the Mustang, despite his initial altitude advantage. They played his game instead of forcing theirs upon him.

The defensive formation described as the circle was practiced by Bf 110s when they were used as escort fighters, because they were not nearly maneuverable enough to engage Hurricanes or Spitfires. Thus they resorted to a defensive formation, rendering them utterly useless for bomber protection. If 109 pilots employ this "tactic", you know they are as green as they get.

By the way: the fight between Sonderkommando Elbe and the bombers took place over the "Steinhuder Meer", a lake not even 20km from where I'm writing these very words. A memorial can be found in Celle, about 30km from here.

A survivor of the unit, who didn't take part in this sortie though, is Dr. Fritz Marktscheffel, who was active every now and then on Luftwaffe-Forum.de while it was still online.

>> ^Engels:
Kudos where kudos are due...but the 109 was no match for the P-51D and it was very easy to outmanouver those ME-262s. They were very primitive jets with only speed in a straight line on their side.

Can't leave this uncommented, sorry.

The Bf 109K4, deployed at the time of the engagement, outclimbs and outaccelerates the P51D at almost any altitude and has a similar top speed at high altitude. If used correctly - only BnZ, no TnB -, it can dominate the Mustangs. G6, G10 and G14 could hold their own as well. Even though they were inferior, to say they were "no match" is oversimplifying and/or exaggerating. Most Luftwaffe fighters simply had a different flight profile than the others.

Same for the Me 262 - keep to BnZ and no piston engine fighter will stand a chance. Unfortunatly, it's a luxury you can't quite afford if you have to shoot down bombers as quickly as possible, because they are already over your territory. Mustangs could easily outturn them, but they couldn't catch them either unless they started with a significant altitude advantage.

>> ^jimnms:
I have a sudden urge to fire up IL-2 Forgotten Battles, jump into a Yak and go shoot down some Stuka's.

Yaks, LaGGs, MiGs ... I loved BnZ'ing their buttocks with my Gustav (Bf 109 G-2) or my Kurfürst (Bf 109 K-4).

Hm, need to check if Gutted is still flying ...

The Bf 109, the Me 262, the Tiger and now the Panther ... i know it sounds wierd and maybe somewhat twisted for some people, but looking straight from an engineering perspective, these are pieces of art to me, in both sound and shape.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'messerschmidt, me 109, bf 109, gustav, fmbb, ww2, fighter' to 'messerschmidt, me 109, bf 109, gustav, fmbb, ww2, fighter, german' - edited by kronosposeidon