warbird collector discusses best planes in Video

[silent_one]

On this site there is a guy with a huge collection of planes. Hes flown a huge amount of types and was in the filming of the Battle of Britain movie in the 1960's. The guys got like 6 109's and a dozen Merlin engines. and thats just the surface  of his collection.

 

Interestingly he says between the Mustang , the Spitfire and the BF109 he thought the 109 by far the better plane. Better climb , but more importantly less stiff in the controls and far more controllable at high speed.

 

There's people that are gonna slag this off . Say its a Spanish 109 so it doesn't count.  Anyway, if your interested in the views of a guy whos flown everything. Not a sim , the real thing. Give this a watch

 

Check out the video here.

 

http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2014/August/Pilot/f_talltale

[[KWN]T-oddball]

now that's  the big boy toy store

[71st_AH_Mastiff]

wow straight from his mouth the ME 5800 ft per min; is head and shoulders above the P51 3200pm, and spitfire 3100pm if your lucky lol!

[SYN_Vorlander]

fantastic post. ME rules

[Freycinet]

Power-to-weight ratios don't lie...

[Stemar]

Hm! Its seems that there are still a lot of pilots been flying this birds!

Is it so bloody difficult for the DEV to ask them if the flight model and planes behavior in this game is corresponding to the real one (or near close to it at least!)???

[Rama]

Why do you think they didn't ask to real pilots?

 

BTW, On pilot say is not an ultimate truth. The questions should be very preciselly asked to get something usefull. 

For exemple,

Interestingly he says between the Mustang , the Spitfire and the BF109 he thought the 109 by far the better plane. Better climb , but more importantly less stiff in the controls and far more controllable at high speed.

Is useless without more précisions.

One of the Spitfire test pilot explained that the Spitfire aileron command was stiffer at high speed than the Bf109E, until they made all-metal ailerons... and then it changed radically and became smoother than the Bf109E.

So to get something usable, you should extract a precise point (not just "command stiffness"), for a precise plane model and have a comparison with another precise model.

 

Asking a pilot that flew a warbird if a FM "corresponding near close" to the real flight envelope and behavior is also useless... you should define precise and measurable elements to get a usefull comparison. If you just ask for the pilot feeling, you will have as much opinions and advices as the number of pilots you ask the question.

[=LD=Hethwill]

Amazing collection he has there. IIRC the biggest collector ( including post ww2 jets and other military aircraft ) is a South African ultrallionaire.

Thanks for the link

 

Apart from that, and given all expansion and variants the airframes got, especially the control surfaces - no need to go further that the Spits and the P-40's - the performance difference between a mark was noticeable.

 

But then, sterile comparisons of planes of war tend to blur the real deal...

Same as asking USAAF vet that flew both p51 and p47 which is the better plane.

He starts with the Pony great range and flying abilities, but gives hands down on the Jug.

Why ? They ask- Well, the Pony surely flies great, but it was the Jug that always brought us back.

So "best planes" discussion is always relative to the task at hand.

 

Fighter planes make good movies. Attack planes make History.

 

S!

[andyw248]

In the meantime he has been able to sell most of the planes, including the Buchons. Apparently they went real quick, and the buyers were happy to pay the asking price.

 

Talking about private collectors, I like the approach of sharing his impressions with the community that Kermit Weeks takes, with his walkaround and cockpit view videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kermit+weeks+videos.

[69th_chuter]

Wow - Connie Edwards was a hero of mine (I'm a 109 idiot) when I was in high school ('70s).  Would not have guessed he was still living.  It's been awhile since he's flown fighters, tho.

[YSoMadTovarisch]

Interestingly he says between the Mustang , the Spitfire and the BF109 he thought the 109 by far the better plane. Better climb , but more importantly less stiff in the controls and far more controllable at high speed.

 

Ok.

 

Meanwhile, Skip Holm also flew a Buchon and he said that past 450km/h, the Mustang was far more maneuverable and was far more controllable.

 

So either old age's messed up Eddie's mind or he's selling us bullshit.

Edited November 13, 2014 by GrapeJam

[DD_bongodriver]

video of one of those Buchon's beginning it's journey to restoration.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmPw1GEpveU

[DD_bongodriver]

I forgot to add all 6 Buchons and 2 spare airframes are sold and going to Switzerland.

[SCG_Neun]

Wonderful story....Thanks for sharing.

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

Nice and hopefully they'll reccieve the Daimler Benz they are meant to have Gupy 109  always looks like it's trying to say "Please help me! I need a german engine!" to me, I just feel sry for them

[DD_bongodriver]

it is a waste of a Merlin.

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

it is a waste of a Merlin.

Na spanish people just didnt need anything more powerfull than the Merly and germans shot down moer than enought Spitties to sell them to Spain.

Edited November 13, 2014 by [Jg26]5tuka

[DD_bongodriver]

clearly they didn't shoot down enough

[silent_one]

When I started this thread it was to give you guys a chance to hear what a real pilot thought.  Personally since hes actually flown a lot of planes , I'll take his opinion over some armchair pilots any day. He obviously cant comment on all marks on all types. Give the guy a break. So rather than slagging off his view and saying hes lying or has forgotten. Just take it for what it is. After all hes flown a lot more real planes than you

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

Sad about Connie's son.  I first heard about this guy reading "Flying Through Time" (Doyle -- an excellent and enjoyable book about guys that trained in Stearmans and what they went on to do, the places they flew from and flying a 60 year old 90mph biplane across the country and back) about a decade before his son was killed, when these planes all probably had a future with him.

 

Connie speaks to the 109/Mustang/Spit debate in the book as I recall.  For the most part, these guys were working as teams, looking for advantages and withdrawing when they were disadvantaged if they could.  Lining up for a neutral 1v1 merge was probably uncommon.

 

To me, some of the debate seems a little silly.  While the planes did meet and fight one another, they had somewhat different purposes.  The Mustang had the legs to go with the bombers all the way to Berlin and back to England, a capability that the 109 never had.  The 109 might be the better interceptor, fighting over its own territory, but even then the 109 pilots would have preferred attacking the bombers to attacking the escorts -- that was what was really damaging Germany, not the Mustangs themselves so much.

 

To me it seems like different aircraft in different roles that did fight one another, but a head to head comparison seems like it misses the point that they had fundamentally different jobs.

Edited November 14, 2014 by HeavyCavalrySgt

[zorlac]

Buchons...

[mondog]

 I'll take his opinion over some armchair pilots any day. 

Me too but there is no context to what he says. Did he even fly those aircraft to the limits? Probably not, only a fool would take a 70 year old aircraft and give it full boost or submit it to flight routine which mimics combat. 

 

As far as I'm aware there is only 1 person alive today (probably ever!) that can tell you how a 109E matches up to a Spit Mk1 or 2, or how a 109F4 matches against a Spit MkV or indeed how a 109G6 matches against a P51D or Spitfire IX to the absolute edge of their potential.  He's 95, lives in Scotland and flew these aircraft to assess their fighting potential and wrote several interesting books about the topic. There's a big difference between testing these aircraft when they were at the cutting edge of technology and flying them in a display. 

[silent_one]

Worth remembering that he was a pilot in the filming of BOB which took 2 years. If you can remember that film there is some pretty good flying. He says himself that he crashed a spitfire in the filming. During the filming the planes were only 20 years old or less. 12 operational Spitfires of several marks and the Buchon would only be 10 years old or less. It only came out in 54. We need to remember the guys 80. He did his flying as a young man when these planes wernt hugely rare, decrepit or hugely expensive yet.

 

References to context in recent posts are valid. Im not making any statements about what plane can do what. Its just nice to hear an opinion thats not out of a book     Im still interested in a young guys opinion of planes hes flown in simulated dogfights. Im still going to pay more attention to him than an armchair pilot  

Edited November 14, 2014 by silent_one

[DD_bongodriver]

I would also values this old gents opinion, subject to it's validation against known performance data.

[SCG_Neun]

I would also values this old gents opinion, subject to it's validation against known performance data.

+1

[Crump]

even then the 109 pilots would have preferred attacking the bombers to attacking the escorts

 

 

No, they wanted to go after the escorts.  Killing fighters was what fighter pilots spend most of their time training for and want to do.

 

The Luftwaffe was so heavily outnumbered, the pilots were ordered not to engage enemy fighters.  Only a few units in each mission were designated to engage fighters and the rest had a duty to avoid enemy fighters and engage the bombers.

 

 

 

Absolutely nothing to do with what the pilot preferred or some imagined performance superiority.  Generally speaking, performance wise, most P-51's will be on the short end of the stick in the angles dogfight with most Bf-109's.  I can run the math for you comparing the sustainable turn performance.  

 

You can see that in 1944, when the USAAF fighters were allowed to be aggressive and actively pursue German fighters, the USAAF fighter loss rates increased fourfold.

 

 

 

The USAAF fighter casualty rate increase dramatically despite the fact the average USAAF fighter pilot had four times the experience in operational aircraft as well as training as 95% of the opposition.

 

 

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

No, they wanted to go after the escorts.  Killing fighters was what fighter pilots spend most of their time training for and want to do.

 

 

 

 

Shooting down the escorts doesn't stop the bombers. 

[Chuck_Owl]

Honestly I think it really depends which Spitfire Marks, which 109 variants and which P-51 series were flown in order to compare. The Spitfire Mk. XIV, for instance, could climb 5200 ft/min, while the V 3200 , the IX 3800...  The 109 performance also varied with different variants (K-4 had 4500 ft/min, F-4 3500 ft/min.) 

 

And even during the battle of Britain, the Spitifre Ia had a max climb rate of about 2500 while the Bf.109E4 had a little more than 3000 ft/min.

 

And even THEN, keep in mind that different websites gave me numbers that varied from more or less 1000 ft from the values I just wrote. Performance data really needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Comparing each aircraft by saying "this one was best" is silly if you don't compare aircraft that fought during the same time frame of the war. And most of the time, a model would prevail over another for a short amount of time before the opposition came up with something better. There are just sooo many factors at play, like cockpit visibility, maintenance, endurance and range, mission type... No wonder why the question has never been properly answered.

 

Hell, even the Poles of 303 Sqn. tore up 109s during the Battle of Britain... and guess what? They were flying Hurricanes, which were considered inferior to both the Spitfire and the 109 at that time.

Edited November 15, 2014 by 71st_AH_Chuck

[Streiff]

When I started this thread it was to give you guys a chance to hear what a real pilot thought.  Personally since hes actually flown a lot of planes , I'll take his opinion over some armchair pilots any day. He obviously cant comment on all marks on all types. Give the guy a break. So rather than slagging off his view and saying hes lying or has forgotten. Just take it for what it is. After all hes flown a lot more real planes than you

 

 

Keep dreaming. That`ll happen when pigs fly.

[tovarisch]

Na spanish people just didnt need anything more powerfull than the Merly and germans shot down moer than enought Spitties to sell them to Spain.

Images and photos of the crew and filming  of the Battle of Britain in Spain (Sevilla) with the buchones.. hope you like it. Photos from a Spanish pilot who participated in the film. Interesting info also (in Spanish)

http://www.jaon.es/batallainglaterra/batallainglaterra.htm

Edited November 15, 2014 by pix_pix_pix