[Juha]

Hello Kurfürst

Your pages are very interesting as is Your message on 2000hp DB 605s. Have You seen the article on DB 600 series engines in Aeroplane Monthly May 2005? IIRC it seems to emphasis the importance of sparking plugs in achieving the 1850 and 2000hp in late DB 605 models.

On 109K, IMHO its worst feature was low permitted Vmax for a 1945 fighter. In Finnish manual for Bf 109 G-2/6 the Vmax permitted was 750km/h. It also warn that extra carefulness was needed when coming out from high speed dive because the risk of structural damage. Even with 1310 hp DB 605A (most if not all first line Finnish Bf 109Gs had restricted to 1,3 ata) it was not difficult to excess the Vmax. Finns had used high speed dive as a mean of disengagement since Fokker D.XXIs used it in Winter War). Many lived to tell the story but not all. I have also seen a pilot manual for Bf 109G/AS, date Aug. 44, which gave permissible Vmax as 750km/h at 0-4km altitude, 700km/h 4-5km, 600km/h 5-?km and 500km/h ?-?, I cannot remember the higher altitudes. The speed should be IAS. I don’t know the position error of Bf 109’s speedometer, so I cannot convert the speeds to TASs. Can You help me in this?

Finns seemed to have thought that Bf 109s wings and horizontal tail surfaces were rather weak and the heaviness of controls at high speed was a kind of protection against structural failures because of too harsh movements at those speeds. In fairness Finns also thought that probably Soviet fighters had even lower permitted Vmax because Bf 109s usually could rather easily disengage with high speed dive if altitude allowed that but heavier and more robust planes like Tempest had far greater permissible Vmax and had much lighter controls at very high speed (over 650km/h).

That said 109K should have been able to use its steep climbing ability to turn tables in tight spot. For example, IMHO the steep climbing spiral was an effective combat movement when used against poorer climber.

Juha