Fw 190 F-8/U1 flown by ‘Winkle’ Brown heads to Berlin on loan
The RAF Museum’s unique two-seat Focke-Wulf Fw 190 F-8/U1 left Hendon on the morning of 24 October, heading for the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr at Berlin-Gatow, where it will be displayed during a three-year loan period. The museum in the German capital already has a single-seat Flug Werk FW 190 A-8/N finished as a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-8, which went on display in Gatow’s hangar 3 during the late spring of 2018.
The RAFM machine, Werknummer 584219, spent more than 30 years on display in the Bomber Command Hall at Hendon, painted in a fictitious 1./JG 54 scheme, prior to that building’s recent revamp. Built in 1944 — it is thought at the Arado plant at Warnemünde — as a standard F-8 single-seat fighter, during late 1944 it was, the RAFM’s record states, converted to two-seat configuration by R. Sochor Fabrik at Blanz-Blansko in Poland. About 20 two-seat Fw 190s were produced, being used as high-speed liaison aircraft and conversion trainers for Junkers Ju 87 Stuka pilots.
Captured at Grove airfield, Denmark during May 1945, the RAFM machine was ferried to RAE Farnborough, but is thought not to have been test-flown at the base. On 5 September 1945 it was ferried from Farnborough to No 6 Maintenance Unit at Brize Norton by none other than Lt Cdr Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown.
The single-seater already displayed at Gatow incorporates parts of several Fw 190s recovered from crash sites, while the BMW 801 engine came from the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the undercarriage and armament are original, and the fuselage and wings were new-builds from Flug Werk at Gammelsdorf, south-eastern Germany.
