re: History in Pictures is a great twitter feed. Here is one just posted.

quote:

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Also supposed to be flown by guys who had some glider training and a few hours in powered craft. Complete disaster, especially once the tail started falling off.

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You're right about it having problems but I don't think it is fair to call it a complete disaster.

Eric Brown, who flew almost every British, German, and American aircraft was very fond of it. It had very good performance and he said he had doubt it would have flown rings around a Meteor. He did note that it was NOT an aircraft to put a novice in and he thought the rudder/tail was a bit suspect.

It was the first generation of a design that was built in a big hurry under extreme pressure but it didn't have a fundamental design flaw. The tail problem would have been resolved in pretty short order - fortunately for us the Germans didn't have the time to get it done.