The Spitfire's most feared opponent

If you mentioned BMW to most people, they think of a car. They don't think of something with an engine of 1,800 horsepower powering one of the deadliest fighters of the Second World War. The Focke-Wulf 190.

Kurt Tank's design of the Focke-Wulf 190 was hunched like a pitbull. Very strong in design. Tapered wing edges. It could roll very fast. It could take a lot of punishment. And the performance was electrifying.

In this video, IWM Duxford's Graham Rodgers explored the history of Germany's 'Butcher Bird'.

Plan your visit to IWM Duxford: https://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-duxford

Explore and licence the film clips used in this video from IWM Film:
https://film.iwmcollections.org.uk/collections/4020

War in the Air book: https://shop.iwm.org.uk/p/26905/War-In-The-Air---The-Second-World-War-in-Colour

Kurt Tank images:
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-L18396 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-676-7975A-31 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-676-7975A-23 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-676-7975A-28 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en

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#aircraft #history #ww2