Word: messerschmitt
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...fuselage and rudder. Captain Heinz Knoke, winner of Nazi Germany's coveted Rit-terkreuz and the youngest squadron commander in the Luftwaffe, pinpoints his most vivid memory high above Helgoland, one July day in 1943. In I Flew for the Führer, Knoke tells how his Messerschmitt squadron loaded up with 500-lb. fragmentation bombs and climbed high above a formation of U.S. Flying Fortresses. To break up the deadly formation, which few German fighters could penetrate, Knoke was experimenting with a dangerous new technique: dropping bombs on the bombers...
Like many a young pilot, Knoke made an idol of his plane, a Messerschmitt 109 which he called Good Emil. He was so scared and excited on his first mission, a strafing run over the Thames estuary, that he forgot to fire at the target. But he soon tasted blood in Russia, flying alongside Stuka bombers as they chopped up Soviet columns. He was vastly enjoying the war when They-the anonymous, know-nothing They which is GHQ to every operational airman-shipped him back to Germany to patrol the North Sea. There Knoke learned that boredom is the first...
Since World War II, the industrialists who built Hitler's Luftwaffe have kept a prudent silence. Beset by denazification tribunals, forbidden by the occupation to make plans, the aircraft manufacturers switched their lines to make a living: Messerschmitt turned to midget automobiles; Dornier fell back upon his construction interests in Spain and Switzerland; Heinkel put out machine tools and motor scooters from his Stuttgart factory. Two months ago, they formed an "Aero Union" to handle orders that might be coming from NATO, but thanks to the ban, and to French and British opposition to German rearmament, no orders came...
...Unemployment fell below the 1,000,000 mark for the first time since the war. In Stuttgart, five industrialists formed a new "Aero Union" that would leap into production as soon as the Allies remove controls from German aircraft industry-some time next year. The names of their firms: Messerschmitt, Dornier, Heinkel, Focke-Wulf and Daimler-Benz...
...Mercedes, with its familiar emblem, a trylon star, was all but eclipsed during World War II, when the makers, Daimler-Benz A.G., having turned to producing engines for Hitler's Messerschmitt-109 and Tiger Tank, had their main Stuttgart plant almost destroyed by allied bombs. But since last year, when Mercedes' powerful new 300 SL (for Super Light) grabbed off top honors at one road race after another, the star has been shining brighter than ever. It is being polished by other stars such as Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper and Errol Flynn, who have been trooping to Germany...