[Ruy Horta]

Isn't the whole Fw 190 Butcher Bird related to the (semi-)official Würger name, and unrelated to the term Schlachtflugzeug?

Würger literally being a shrike or butcher bird.

Of course it is likely that the later use as a Schlachtflugzeug may have influenced the choice towards Butcher Bird.

BTW, did RAF pilots ever call the Fw 190 Butcher bird, or is this purely post war translating?

(which reminds me of the age old "Fokkers flying Messerschmitts" joke).

But more interesting, Boandl, in your conversations with Wehrmacht veterans, did they indeed sneer at so many of these nicknames? To be honest, I have been proclaiming in the past that most of the nicknames that were attributed by the allies as being german, did not feel right. Personally I've yet find most if not all of them in reading.

Although I might understand if some of these attributed names are simply misunderstood.

Schlachtflugzeug (already discussed)

If I remmber correctly you germans use Pest in a similar way as we do in Dutch: Pestflugzeug!

Although I hate assumptions, it sounds much more likely that a couple of Landser sitting in a trench would call Sturmoviks a Plague or Pestflugzeugen, instead of the more poetic Black Death. Same source - The Plague - but very different meaning.

I find a similar approach for the famous Fork Tail Devil also more likely - Verteufeltes Flugzeug or Teufelsflugzeug (don't know if these are correct German). Perhaps some Landser did not use Doppelrumpf, but Gabelschwanz - Das verteufelte Flugzeug mit dem Gabelschwanz?

Apologies if I am making big german writing and spelling errors, but at school I was too lazy to learn my idiom and grammer (oh, I hated those rows).