The Focke Wulf, FW 190

1 September 1941. British pilots flying over the Dunkirk area got a nasty surprise when they came across a brand new German aircraft which turned out to be better than their Spitfire Mk V. The Allies had just run into the Luftwaffe's new fighter, the Focke-Wulf 190, construction of which had started four years earlier. The plane was to become one of the best fighters of WWII with more than 20 000 built in a host of versions although it had such a difficult beginning that at one point there were doubts about its continued development.

In the autumn of 1937, the RLM (Reichsluftfahrtministerium, the Reich's Air Ministry) started looking for a successor to the Messerschmitt Bf 109, put into service some eighteen months earlier. Apart from needing to renew its materiel in the long term, the RLM wanted to have two different fighter types at its disposal, like the other great powers (Great Britain, France, etc.), in case there should be a world conflict, an eventuality which was getting more and more likely as time went by.