soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Eunometic wrote:

-snip-

> Kurt Tank (Fw 190 designer) was actually sent to Italy to evaluate the
> Italian fighters for production in Germany.
> Back at Rechlin he flew them. A test pilot, Petersen evaluated the G.
> 55 as the finest fighter in the Axis and
> it was decided to put the G.55 into production. This fell through due
> to the manhours required. 15000 hours
> per G.55, 8000 hours for productionised variants and 5000 hours for
> the 109.

Interestingly (at least to me), the Fiat G.55 was placed back in
production after the end of the war with about 50 being produced for the
Italian and Argentine air forces.

Even later, the Fiat produced G.59 which was basically a G.55 adapted to
take the Rolls Royce Merlin engine in place of the no longer available
DB 605s. The G.59 was used by both the Italian and Syrian air forces.

Cheers,