German aircraft airworthiness requirements 1930s-1945

[Jukka Juutinen]

What kind of airworthiness requirements were demanded from aircraft companies during that period regarding handling? For example, were fighters required to pass certain spinning and spin recovery requirements and demonstrate them by company test pilots?

[harrison987]

Pretty sure spinning and recovery was all based on pilot skill, as opposed to aircraft airworthiness.

I believe the only testing done was basic start, stop, taxiing, flight, controls, engine, acceleration, dive, climb.

Mike

[Graham Boak]

I believe the basic test limitations described above can only a matter of production test flying, and even then some checks on stability and handling would have been included. The matter of spin behaviour will have been covered during the test flying stage under the general heading of handling behaviour (stability and control) as opposed to just performance. A number of types, particularly it seems the lighter twins, suffered major problems in this area - notably the Me 210 and Ar 240, although the Hs 129 has also been mentioned. Certainly such matters had gone far ahead of mere pilot skills.

The Germans certainly had a comprehensive set of airworthiness requirements, with variations for different classes of aircraft (as would be expected). I would expect this to be available to the manufacturers in a similar format the the British AvP 970, but I've not seen reference to anything specific.

[jschreiber]

Hello

A comprehensive overview of the subject can be found in the "Ringbuch der Luftfahrttechnik"



A little excerpt :



Regards

J Schreiber

[Steve Coates]

Can you confirm exactly which volume?

[jschreiber]

Book 1 (Flugwerk)
Volume B (Flugmechanik)
Chapter 11

[Steve Coates]

Thanks - much appreciated.

[Jukka Juutinen]

The reason for the question being that not a single book on e.g. the Fw 190 does describe its spinning and spin recovery characteristics while comparable data on the P-51, P-39 etc. is available. Www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org has spinning test reports on American aircraft but not a single on any German ones while it has plenty of other reports. German pilot memoirs are worthless in this respect.