Blohm & Voss BV-141 - was I hallucinating?

[Garry Russell]

Hi John

During the War there was rumours of an Allied asymetric design being seen similar to the BV-141

It truns out it was Dakotas that at certain angles the closeness of the engines with the camo paint and lighting made only one engine visible and giving that effect.

I have been looking at what was flying around or could be yesterday and what that could be largish.I suspect it was bigger and further away than you think hence the slowness and deep noise........... and give that sort of optical illusion. A squarish ended wing, fin not raked. I don't know if anything going to Duxford would fly anywhere near you but they were due a JU.52. :think:

I just wondered about a long shot and thinking of angle etc and the way the eyesight works on tags and then draws from memory and perhaps you never saw enough to update your 'tag'

Just a thought....I'll go back and hide now. :lazy:

ATB

Garry

[johnhinson]

Hi Garry,

Certainly I am open to any and all ideas but the sad fact is that now I am fixated on the BV-141 it is entirely possible that as time passes I am recalling more of what I see in those photos than the reality of what I saw in that precious minute. (I always wonder about people who stand up in court as witnesses two years after an event, how much do they really remember and how much has their mind created?).

Now I don't reckon to be particularly good at aircraft recognition, particularly military stuff which isn't really what interests me, but both my wife and I are pretty hot on DC-3s both by sound and looks - two weeks ago I was walking in the nearby churchyard with a friend and heard the unmistakable (to me) sound of a DC-3. Just like this curiosity, it was initially shielded by trees but when it was almost overhead it came into view and it was exactly as I expected.

From my fairly limited experience of flights in DC-3s, my observations are that aircraft of that size seem to fly VFR at 3000 feet in any direction - all that stuff in Flight Simulator about flying VFR at x500 feet doesn't seem to apply in this country, nor the odd/even business for direction.

That DC-3 that passed over was definitely heading in the direction of Duxford but this oddity was flying a line of something like right-angles to that (I'm right at the south end of Northamptonshire) and I suggested Coventry simply by looking at Google Earth and drawing an imaginary line in the direction it was going.

Although as I said I'm pretty weak on identification, I think I would have known if it was a Ju52 and would have been mighty pleased if it was. But their fuselage is very box-like, squarish in cross-section and one bit of my weakening memory I an still confident of was that it was quite rounded.

As for size, I'm thinking retrospectively that if what I initially thought was an engine was really the crew pod as per the BV-141 it would be pretty cramped for a pilot, rear gunner and any other crew. So maybe it was bigger and higher, or maybe it was exactly what I first thought - an engine. As for the corresponding (port) engine, although I didn''t notice its absence until the aircraft had passed me, I did watch it disappear slowly into the distance so I had my eyes on it for quite some time. I'm pretty sure there was nothing there. I suspect my jaw was wide open!

Best wishes,

John

[simondix]

There is a twin engined Diamond based at Coventry.