This one depicts the Spitfire Mk.XIVe as flown by Flying Officer Burgwal of 322 (Dutch) Squadron. Burgwal was a high scoring V-1 killer with 19 kills. This image shows one of his kills, this time by tipping over the V-1 flying bomb that was headed for London. This would make the V-1 crash as it had no ailerons or internal systems that could compensate for this unbalance.
The painting is by Wiek Luijken. He is an Art Director working for Criterion Games / EA and previously a director for game trailers and sometimes commercials.
Great painting! I suspect the maneuver took quite a bit of finesse. Too much and you might damage your wing (never a good thing). To little and the thing continues on. Took some groinal fortitude to do.
Juvat- Yep! Purposely colliding with another object in flight is NOT the normal idea of a good thing to do… 🙂 And brass balls too!!!
Hey Old NFO;
Yeap buzz bomb tipping wasn’t for the faint of heart…This tactic worked pretty good until the V-2 started..can’t tip those things. Very good Art:)
“I say old boy, would you be a good chap and ram that first generation cruise missile with your Spitfire? For King and Country of course.”
Awesome painting.
Bob- True… Sigh
SPE- And they DID it!!! 🙂
I love this art work. Thank-you for sharing it with us.
Weren’t these pilots among the first to discover control reversal at trans-sonic speeds?
IIRC, the Spitfire can’t match a V-1 in horizontal flight, so the pilots dived from above to catch up, and occasionally went a little too fast.
The air flow over their control surfaces got somewhat crazy, and a number of pilots were lost due to crashes that are now believed to have resulted from “pull up” becoming “steepen the dive”.