Previous  1  2  3  Next

Would you enjoy going to a museum to see nothing?

   

Nope. Surely they have other examples of this aircraft. But even if they don't, it sounds way too expensive to bring this one up. Stuff like this doesn't seem worth it to me to spend a lot of money on. Sure, display what you've got already, but don't spend a fortune digging up other stuff. I mean excavating pyramids or something is way more interesting to me than hardware from recent history. It's not as if this plane will add anything significant to our knowledge of WW II.

   

Few Dornier Do 17s survived the war. The last was scrapped in Finland in 1952.

   

Dude, are you feeding the intellectual relativists again? Shame.

   

   

Not sure about this....

Some area's off the English coast are naturally low on oxygen content. Some well preserved stuff has been found off East Anglia especially in the "Wash" area, although they were buried in mud. The article mentions sand, but it could be a possibility.

   

The confederate submarine the Hunley was encased in mud and was in the water a lot longer than this plane. The Hunley was way in very good condition and is being restored. The same might be possible with this plane.

   

To be fair, the RAF was on its heels and reeling. If it hadn't been for that German bomber that got lost and dumped its bombs on London proper, causing Britian to retaliate in kind on Berlin, Hitler wouldn't have shifted his focus from destroying the RAF and its infrastructure, to getting revenge for the Berlin bombing.
This gave the RAF the MUCH needed breather it needed since it was no longer a specific target of bombings.
Almost every estimate I've read indicates that the RAF had 2 maybe 3 weeks left as an effective defensive force if the Luftwaffe had continued to concentrate on RAF facilties and production.
Of course, I don't mean to take one thing away from the British and Allied pilots of various nations that fought so valiantly in the Battle of Britain. Especially when you figure the Hurricane was pretty much outclassed by the Bf-109.

But this is a great find. Once it's restored (if it can be), I think any air museum would be proud to display it.

   

Given the rarity of any war-era Dornier aircraft, I say go for it. I'd do it for any potentially intact German bomber, including the relatively more numerous He-111 or Ju-88. If it were just another run-of-the-mill Bf109 fossil then I wouldn't even bother though. Those were very common and existant ones can already be found practically anywhere, especially in British and European museums.

Too bad the French and Yanks have the only two intact copies of the Dornier Do-335 hidden away somewhere, because that's the one (probably even more than an Me-262) that every war museum in the world would likely kill to get their hands on. If the Germans hadn't fucked around so much and wasted so much time on the basic research, and been able to produce about a thousand of those vicious bloody things, then the air war over Western Europe might have turned out a lot differently for both sides. Given the heavy cannon carrying capability of them, if I'd been a bomber pilot I would have been a hell of alot more scared of seeing multiple 335's coming at me than I would have been with any of the early jets.

   

No, they never had air superiority. Name one British bombing mission where the mission was entirely stopped before reaching their target or before getting back home?

The Germans were in the air, true, and they did menace the Brits, but they never enjoyed air superiority.

   

Agreed Bart.

   

No bombing mission on either side was ever completely stopped. But when there comes a point of not being able to sustain losses, it becomes very close to being stopped as were some targets in mainland Europe.

   

Every victorious army (in this case air force) going back to the Legions, held the line against all odds and won the day. We could look at recent-ish examples in Stalingrad, Bastogne etc.

In the Battle of Britain, all this 'would have lasted 2 weeks at best if the Nazis hadn't gone for the RAF bases' is moot. These are hypothetical arguments put forward by historians musing alternate outcomes.

The reality is the Luftwaffe was soundly beaten by the RAF. That's history PA9. And no offence taken!

   

Respectfully, I beg to differ. The bombing missions in support of Operation Sea Lion never occured because Fighter Command had at least prevented German air superioity over the UK. Subsequently, by spring of 1945 British and American fighters ruled the air over the Allied theatre of operations and German bombers were wholly absent from the Western front. Arguably, planned German missions had been obviated by Allied air superiority.



Agreed. At the very end of the war it was people like Adolph Galland who were more interested in preserving the lives of their men than in further prosecuting a lost war who kept their planes on the ground instead of wasting them.

   

'Never have so many owed so much to so few.'

   

Previous  1  2  3  Next