Me 410: "on a knife's edge"

Eric Brown who test flew practically every aircraft of the war in "Wings of the Luftwaffe", described the twin engined Messerschmitt 410 as the most like "flying on a knife's edge" of any aircraft he had been in.

Around which axis? What did he mean, & why should the Me410 be like that?

[robert_schulte]

What are your sources

According to the German edition of this book, Eric Brown never got into contact with the Me 410.

[Lars Sundin]

It seems (after some googling) that the Me 210 was horrible but the Me 410 was better. How much better is difficult to say.

The 210 had a rather short fuselage and the slats arrangement was not the best it seems. The 410 was changed in these respects.

See Joe Baughers presentation on http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevo...her/me210.html

Lars Sundin

[Jukka Juutinen]

Brown´s report can be found in "Wings of the Weird&Wonderful, vol. 2".

[Jukka Juutinen]

Here is what Brown wrote in personal correspondence:"My comment on the Me 410 that it was "a real knife edger" means that it felt in flight as if it was finely balanced on a knife edge where ot could topple off into an area of risk due to its inherently dangerous flying characteristics...". In short, another gem from Willy M.

[Jon]

Also remember we Brits always compared Luftwaffe twin engined fighters against the Mosquito.... The Mosquito could fly perfectly well on one engine.

Most Luftwaffe twin engined fighters including the HE 219 and i would imagine the ME 410 would struggle.

[George Hopp]

It seems (after some googling) that the Me 210 was horrible but the Me 410 was better. How much better is difficult to say.

Here you need to be careful because there were two versions of the Me 210. The first, with the short fuselage was not a beginner's a/c, although a seasoned pilot could easily cope with it's vices, as noted by Johannes Kaufmann in "Meine Flugberichte 1935 - 1945." The longer fuselaged Me 210 was apparently the most vicefree of the series to fly, and suffered least from ground-loops on take-off and landing. Apparently, with its longer engine nacelles, the Me 410 began having that problem again, and quite a few a/c were damaged or written-off in take-offs and landings. Remember, the long-fuselaged Me 210 and the Me 410 were virtually identical except that the Me 410 had longer engine nacelles to house the DB 603A, and it had a straight spar, rather than the sweptback one of the Me 210. This was done for CofG purposes.

[ArtieBob]

Eric Brown, IIRC, flew several HUNDRED aircraft types, many not covered in his various books. IMHO he probably had the best overview of the relative "flyability" of WWII types of any allied pilot, perhaps there were a few USSR test pilots with similar experience. It seems certain the Me 410 was relatively a better handling aircraft than the 210, but that still does not make it a very "good" aircraft to fly, just not a "death wish" experience. Many combat types during WWII were neither very easy or safe to fly, if possibly the most experienced allied pilot says it was a real handful, I personally believe that the Me 410 was much worse than the WWII "norm". It seems clear that the Luftwaffe continued production of the Bf 110 after stopping Me 410 production, not a very good advertisement for an aircraft that was to be the Bf 110s replacement three years earlier. I think the Me 410 was a neat looking aircraft, with lots of neat "gadgets", fortunately, none of us had to fly one. Last I heard, Eric was still alive, can anyone go back to him in GB at this point and see if he would comment further.

Best regards,

Artie Bob

[Kjetil Aakra]

I don't mean to say that the Me 210/410 series was the best there was, but sometimes I do get the feeling that it has received an unfair amount of bad press.

Sure, the early short-fuselage Me 210s were bad, but in my view the Germans managed to get a good front-line aircraft out of it in the latter-series long-fuselage Me 210s. Didn't the Hungarians love their verion with DB 605s?

Furthermore, the Me 410 was a quite versatile aircraft, with a tremendous range of weapons options.

Of course its flight characteristics did leave soemthing to be desired and as I understand Eric Brown he felt that the margins of safety were quite narrow in this type. Didn't he also state that it was about the last aircraft he wished to return to base in with one engine out, or was that the He 219?

Most importantly though, it is a very cool and good-looking aircraft! It looks right!

Regards,

Kjetil

[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