Messerspit - The Frankenstein Fighter

this episode is brought to you by curiosity stream a subscription streaming service that offers thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers including exclusive originals like berlin 1945 time travel in cinematic style into the city's most fateful year through the eyes of those who experienced it and apocalypse stalin the rise of stalin from bank robber to cold-blooded leader of the soviet union go to curiositystream.com forward slash mark feltom for unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and non-fiction series and for our fans use the promo code mark felton and you will save 25 percent off which comes to only 14.99 a year that's just one dollar 25 cents per month for the very best in history programming choose curiosity stream spitfire mark 5b en 830 built at castle bromage made its first flight on the 30th of april 1942. in may he was taken on the strength of number 37 maintenance unit at raf burtonwood in preparation for frontline service and in june 1942 joined number 131 squadron based in wales at raf clan beda the royal air force was operating a new type of mission in northwest france from south coast bases the number 131 squadron had relocated to raf westhempnet to take part in rhubarb operations on the continent what this involved was sections of fighters crossing the english channel at low altitude and then streaking across the french countryside hitting targets of opportunity any german vehicles or military buildings were fair game to be strafed by the mark 5bs two 20 millimeter hispano cannons and four 303-inch machine guns it was dangerous as the pilots were exposed to german flack and ground fire from all sorts of weapons not to mention patrolling german fighters pouncing down from higher altitudes and there was also the problems of terrain tall buildings especially church towers and the like flying en 830 on one such rhubarb sorti on the 18th of november 1942 was pilot officer bernard scheidhauer a free french airman accompanied by his compatriot pilot officer andriy de bordeaux both of number 131 squadron raf the pair of spitfires blasted across the english channel crossing into france at san oban zamere near col then flew to karantan seen of heavy fighting between us and german troops less than 18 months later during the normandy campaign coming under fire as they shut up targets of opportunity scheidhauer's aircraft was hit by flack and his wingman de bordeaux managed to fly back to england while scheidthauer struggled to nurse his aircraft back to the channel coast in a confused state scheidthauer mistook jersey in the channel islands the only bit of britain occupied by the germans for the isle of wight of england's south coast and made an emergency landing in a turnip field near the village of trinity scheidthauer was less than pleased when locals arrived and informed him of where he actually was working fast he tried to destroy the intact spitfire but due to battle damage his fuel had all leaked away and he couldn't burn the plane instead he smashed as many of the instruments in the cockpit as he could before a truckload of german soldiers turned up scheidhauer was taken prisoner and the germans were very happy they just received an intact spitfire following some field repairs by luftwaffe mechanics in jersey a german pilot flew en-830 to germany the aircraft's still in raf camouflage scheme but with luftwaffe crosses covering over the raf randalls and the fuselage and wings and black swastikas on the tail moved in stages under escort to reklin in germany where the luftwaffe evaluated captured enemy aircraft the plane's colour scheme was dramatically altered its nose underside and tail painted yellow and the fuselage and wingtops dark green the raf code en 830 was also deleted and the aircraft received the luftwaffe designation cj zy but the biggest changes were the removal of the spitfire's guns and cannons and the loss of its rolls royce merlin 45 engine replaced with the daimler-benz db-605a the engine fitted to the messerschmitt bf-109 the german's equivalent fighter changing the entire front end of the spitfire creating the world's one and only messerschmitt the plane was then moved to ektadingen where the me-109s propeller and carburetor scoop were fitted so why had the germans created such an abomination to test how the spitfire performed powered by a 109s engine in comparison to the regular messerschmitt 109. for two years the messerschmitt remained at the daimler-benz test facility being evaluated what the germans discovered was that the messerschmitt retained the spitfire's superb handling characteristics both on the ground and in the air but now with increased engine power and with higher speed amazingly this frankenstein creation was actually superior to both the spitfire and the 109. the messer spit was able to attain a higher ceiling than the spitfire or 109 measured at 12 700 meters or about 41 and a half thousand feet that was a thousand meters or 3280 feet higher than the 109 and 1475 meters or about 5000 feet better than the spitfire mark v the aircraft's climb rate was also better than both of the regular aircraft it does beg the question that if the germans had managed to build spitfires equipped with dame leben's engines would they have had the best fighter of world war ii at that time thankfully for all concerned the germans did not have the blueprints to the supermarine spitfire only a few captured examples and a few wrecks these tests continued until the 14th of august 1944 the aircraft flying often against 109s it was very popular among pilots who queued up to take the message bit airborne often flying it off duty as well however the americans spoiled the fun for the germans by bombing ekta dingan wrecking the messerschmitt this unique experimental aircraft ended up on the scrap heap interestingly enough post-war the spanish company hispano licence-built messerschmitt 109s known as the bukon and they were fitted with british merlin engines appearing in the 1969 film the battle of britain and are of course regularly seen at air shows today question is did the germans ever try this during the war i'd be interested to know the final part of the story is unfortunately a sad one pilot officer scheidhauer ended up in stalaglouf iii pow camp in poland and took part in the famous great escape unfortunately he was one of 50 allied pilots murdered by the gestapo following the escape thanks for watching please subscribe and share also visit my audiobook channel war stories with mark felton you can also help to support both of my channels at paypal and patreon details in the description box below

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 101,017

Rating: 4.9661417 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Felton, Spitfire, Messerschmitt 109, Messerspit, The Great Escape, Luftwaffe, RAF

Id: 5s2YabkzSrg

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 14 2021