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changed. Unlike the concurring Messerschmitt design and the opposing Spitfire the Fw190
remained manoeuvrable at extremely high speeds. The plane reached 955kph in a dive
during a test flight later in the war and remained controllable with no harm to pilot and
machine.
Mock combats against captured planes clearly showed that the Fw190 was superior to
anything the allied had in their inventory.
The ground crews found the plane to be easily serviceable. Every part of the plane was
accessible through flaps. Engine changes where fast and simple. It’s sturdiness let the
plane survive belly landings without serious damage.
Everybody agreed that the airframe was a great hit.
There where however serious issues with the BMW 801 engine that almost caused the
cancellation of the entire project. The pistons seized at warm-up or when idling for too
long. Burst fuel and oil pipelines caused the ground crews to always have the fire
extinguisher at hand when a pilot was about to climb into the cockpit. Broken oil coolers
where a familiar sight. The pilots never lost sight of the runway when in the air.
Otto Behrens and his crew managed to convince the RLM that all of the failures where
fixable and mostly caused by peripherals, so tests continued and the Fw 190 eventually
reached serial production status.
By mid 1941 Nazi Germany turned it’s war effort towards the Soviet Union.
Only two fighter units remained at the channel coast in France and the Low Countries,
Jagdgeschwader 2 and 26, being badly in need of replacement equipment. The RLM,
without waiting for the final Rechlin test results and the engine troubles not yet ironed out
ordered production of the Fw 190 A-1 to begin.
II./JG 26, still having mostly the somewhat aged Messerschmitt Bf109 E in it’s inventory,
was the first unit to convert to the new Fw 190, even though combat trials of the fighter
were not yet completed.
The first production badge arrived at Paris-Le Bourget by late summer 1941 where the
conversion and final trials took place. This conversion proved to be a catastrophe.
Almost every flight ended with an engine failure, but more often than not the planes didn't
take off at all.
The engines died or the ammunition exploded at the engine’s warm-up run.
The repertoire of failures lasted from burst fuel pipelines over broken oil coolers to piston
seizure. The conversion was basically a re-run of the initial Rechlin tests.
It took about 50 modifications to bring the Fw 190 up to frontline serviceable conditions,
and it can be credited to the will and persuasive power of Otto Behrens that the project was
not cancelled.
This persistence paid off when the Fw 190 made it’s combat debut over Dunkirk by
September 1941. The aircraft proved to be clearly superior to the opposing Spitfire Mk V in
every respect except horizontal turn radius.
The Fw 190 could out-climb, out-run, out-dive and out-manoeuvre the Spitfire. So superior
was the Fw 190, that pilots could engage and disengage combat at will.
The attrition rates amongst the RAF Spitfire pilots rose dramatically. On the other hand,
thermal problems with the BMW 801C engine remained critical so that the Fw 190 pilots
where initially limited to sorties along the continental side of the channel coast.
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