Aviation Art…

10

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.

Comments

Aviation Art… — 7 Comments

  1. 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.

  2. Juvat- Yep! Purposely colliding with another object in flight is NOT the normal idea of a good thing to do… 🙂 And brass balls too!!!

  3. 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:)

  4. “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.

  5. 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”.