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Originally Posted by Ruy Horta
Using a captured a/c in combat is more of a liability than an asset, since the risk of friendly fire is greatly enhanced. (...)
The investment of maintaining a valuable enemy type in the air for testing purposes outweighs any use of it flying single combat sorties, unsupported btw, that could not be flown much more effectively by readily available types. So why fly a single P-47 when you could operate a Staffel of Fw 190s?
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All this is true. On top of that I'd like to add that fighter pilots needed a very high level of training and flying abilities in particular on the specific aircraft type they were just flying. A rookie flying the best fighter in the world was just a sitting duck. This could be seen clearly 1944 over Germany, when many German fighters flown by scared, green youngsters were just flying targets for American gunnery practice and made many US "aces". The Germans were not able to give a pilot sufficient training on an enemy type to make him as proficient as any so there was hardly any point in the whole business.
But can we entirely rule out that some eager German ace, probably owning a high rank, wanted to have a go and see what would happen? Possibly some of these pilots felt it would be very useful to test an enemy fighter in actual combat, which is always different from practice.
Something else : I'd rather suspect that so many US fighters made emergency landings on German-held territory, many being only slightly damaged, that the LW could afford to divert a few for such purposes. They'd got enough for testing anyway. What do you think?