ajcooper . # .

Superior German aerofoils: The funny thing is that the Germans didn\'t get much payoff from their more advanced aerofoils. For example, their 1918 scouts were slower than the British types with their old-technology flat & thin aerofoils. Another example: the postwar Junkers F.13, justifiably trumpeted as it is as the world\'s first unbraced metal monoplane airliner, was a very slow machine. The old technology D.H.50 cruised just as fast on the same horsepower.
These early German aerofoils were thick & highly cambered. The Junkers in the Deutsches Museum in Munich is a very large, solid, and imposing machine, & its wing is huge. Somehow the payoff for all the Germans\' good science did not come until the addition of flaps, stressed skin, variable pitch props, retractable undercarriages etc - and all this was scooped by the Americans! The lazy British did not suffer any practical disadvantage until they were swamped by superior US aeroplanes in the 1930s.