Late Focke-Wulf Fw190D-9

[weinace]

With Eduard's announcement that they are going to release a late WWII (Ta152 tail) Fw190D-9 I thought I'd post this image.

It's called Desperate Days and is by an artist called Hector Gareth - I think it shows the 'tension' of air combat very well. It also shows what an excellent artist Hector is!!



Regards,

Weinace

[Crimea_River]

Very nice. What's the medium, do you know?

[weinace]

Thanks for reply.

He is a digital artist - though his work is so excellent I thought it was oils or acrylics!

Regards,

Weinace

[Maximowitz]

It's very good. But surely they would have lost the drop tank before engaging in combat?

[Lucky13]

Love it!

[Crimea_River]

It's very good. But surely they would have lost the drop tank before engaging in combat?

I was thinking the same Paul.

[Airframes]

Rather nice.

[Gnomey]

Nice!

[javlin]

It's very good. But surely they would have lost the drop tank before engaging in combat?

Seemed to be the thing to do Paul when the P-51's would engage.

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

So if they were engaging just the bombers with no fighter opposition they kept the tanks. Interesting.

[stona]

I would expect them to drop the tanks. There are many U.S. pilots' encounter reports in which they engage fighters with drop tanks attached with predictable results. This is either because the attacked aircraft was surprised or maybe an inexperienced pilot under the stress of an attack simply forgot to release it.
According to POW debriefs in 8th airforce documents drop tanks were to be jettisoned before engaging in combat and were only carried on the first sortie of the day anyway.



Here's an encounter report from Fred Christensen,it won't get better than that,which speaks for itself.



Interesting bit of colour info at the bottom of his report too. Maybe one in 74/75 and the other 82/83?
It does get better though. Here's a similar report by none other Francis Gabreski.



Steve

Edit. I'll just add that when allied pilots saw Luftwaffe aircraft with tanks still attached it seems to have been noteworthy enough for them to mention it in their reports.
That's still some great art work though.

[Maximowitz]

I don't think it distracts from the artwork, although I do wish sometimes the artist would do a bit more research.

I recently saw some prints of a pencil sketch done by an artist of one of Hartmann's Bf 109's.

Complete with bomb slung underneath.

[weinace]

I think Maximovitz is correct - it doesn't detract from the image and, possibly, the artist had in mind that the pilot was about to jettison the drop tank!!!

Thanks to Stonia for the really interesting 'historical background' papers.

Regards,

weinace

[stona]

I agree,it is an excellent piece of art work.
I was actually looking for more descriptions of camouflage,very rare in encounter reports and often mis-leading,when I found this. It shows exactly why combat with a drop tank was such a bad idea!



Cheers
Steve

[weinace]

Thanks Stoney for your 'combat report'

Regards,

weinace