[George Hopp]

For what it's worth, the first step to gaining ANY accurate understanding about the Me 210 is tearing out any reference to it by William Green, and by the many who followed the general tenor of his comments, and dumping it in the nearest garbage can.

For instance, he comments on page 610 of "The Warplanes of the Third Reich": "Me 210 V1, ..., when it made its initial flight on September 5, 1939 with Dr.-Ing. Hermann Wurster at the controls. This initial flight was considered to be successful only as much as its pilot succeeded in landing the prototype in the condition in which it left the ground.... The root cause of its unpleasent behaviour was believed to be the tail assembly, and the prototype was promptly returned to the experimental shop where the tail, with its endplate fins and rudders, was removed and replaced by an entirely new assembly comprising an inordinately large, centrally-mounted vertical surface, and a tapered tailplane of increased span. ... With this modification, the Me 210 V1 resumed flight testing on September 23, 1939."

His comments are accurate in only 2 matters of fact, the designation of the a/c and the name of the test pilot. Everything else is wrong, wrong, wrong! Having in my possession a fairly respectable collection of Me 210 test flight reports, I can state the following with a better than even chance of being accurate: The first test flight was actually on 2 Sep 39 (5 Sep 39, Green's date for the 1st flight was actually the date of the report on that flight and the 2nd flight on 4 Sep 39), and V1's tail unit does not appear to have been changed to the single vertical unit during its lifetime. The V1 completed its 11th test flight on 22.9.39 -- amazing, since it was still supposed to be getting its single tail at this time. Yes, there were a few problems on that first set of test flights; but, in a report on 15.9.39, Wurster said, "At present no essential changes are required. The minor complaints listed in the flight report were remedied." Amongst the problems mentioned were: The a/c was tail heavy, the ailerons and rudders were overbalanced, the stability about the vertical axis was weak, plus many others consistent with a/c first flights. They corrected the CofG problem by putting a 4 degree sweepback on the main spar of the outer panels. They would have problems with everything else to try to correct the weak stability about the verical axis. This would only be corrected when a longer fuselage was fitted to V17, and this a/c flew in Nov 41.

But, remember that the experienced pilots like Johannes Kaufmann, who I mentioned in an earlier thread, were eager to fly the short-fuselaged Me 210 operationally, and were disappointed when it was, instead, withdrawn.

Hope this helps somewhat,
George