Originally Posted by
compressor stall
Brilliantly written as always Centaurus. And you have brought back to life the memory of a brave man who stared into the barbaric face of history and ultimately met a tragic end whose story would otherwise be lost to the mists of time. Well done, and it does make one think how many others who have similar stories of bravery and tragedy are now sadly anonymous in death, forgotten..
Yea! One wonders why we don't hear more about the exploits of the brave airmen of Czech Air Force in WW2. Is it merely because there was no such a thing as CzAF before 1993.?
Oh, by the way, choosing George Petru as a name for Czech guy reminds me of one famous character who chose Ford Prefect as hıs human alias. It's not even Slovak name; it is quıte usual amongst Romanians. Sixty degrees wasn't typical Ju-87 dive angle; it was minimal, with preferable being vertical. Despite its huge wing, fixed undercarriage, dive brakes and flaps, its dive speed was in 300kt range, not eighty. The stick force needed to pull it out of the dive was not merely low, it was zero as StuKa had dive pullout autopilot. It was brave and somewhat cognitively impaired pilot who would disconnect the system and fly pullouts manually. Those pesky Russians who were chasing our poor hero had some scores from 1941. to settle. If StuKa isn't giveaway enough for you: our brave man George, flying either for Luftwaffe or Aeronautica Regala Romana, was staring into WW2 history from its far uglier face.