"Jukka O. Kauppinen" wrote in
message ...
decides the fight! Alas for the luftwaffe the Bf109 wings were not
designed
for guns etc so were not terrifically robust, the pilots were often more
worried about the wings falling off than blacking out......

Incorrect.

Having guns or not doesn't have anything to do with the strenght of the
wings. 109s from A-E had wing weapons, again one of the K models was
designed for wing weapons. The wings were also one single structure,
which made it possible to make them very strong.

"- Are the stories true, that the 109 had weak wings and would loose
them easily?
He has never heard of a 109 loosing its wings from his experience or
others. The wings could withstand 12 g's and since most pilots could
only handle at most 9 g's there was never a problem. He was never
worried about loosing a wing in any form of combat."
- Franz Stigler, German fighter ace. 28 victories. Interview of Franz
Stigler.

snip

The reference that I was using was Len Deightons book "Fighter" which
examines the Battle of Britain. When discussing tactics he asserts that the
Bf109 pilots used the tactic of diving away as the Bf109 engine maintained
power during the dive unlike that generation of Merlin. However the 109
pilots tended to pull out of their dives in a shallower curve, due to fears
over the wings. The spitfire pilots would continue the dive longer and then
pull out harder, so overhauling them and pushing home their attack. This is
of course a generalisation, and it is not a claim that the Bf109 was a bad
aircraft.

I do wonder how much of this stemmed from the narrow undercarraige, which
while it allowed wing removal while the aircraft sat on its own wheels, also
forced a narrow undercarraige. Presumably if the thing toppled over the
main area of damage would be the wings. Something like 5% of Bf109s made
were reportedly lost in landing accidents. One would assume that a
contributing factor was the narrow undercarraige. Something that was
certainly looked at in the Fw190, which had one of the widest fighter
undercarraiges of the war!

In summary the Bf109 could probably take a lot of stress and it is not as
though they were falling out of the sky due to wings falling off. However
in all likelyhood the pilots did have a concern. It could be one of those
cases where perception is everything....


Mark