The Focke-Wulf one ninety and the first flight of the Butcher Bird on June first, nineteen thirty-nine

The Focke-Wulf 190 made its first flight on June 1, 1939, in Bremen, Germany, with test pilot Hans Sander at the controls. Designed by engineer and pilot Kurt Tank, the radial-engine fighter defied conventional wisdom to become one of the most effective and feared combat aircraft of the Second World War. Known as the Butcher Bird — a translation of its German name Würger — over 20,000 were built across dozens of variants.

Why Did Kurt Tank Choose a Radial Engine?

In the late 1930s, the world’s best fighters ran inline liquid-cooled engines — the Rolls-Royce Merlin, the Daimler-Benz DB 601. The prevailing belief held that radial engines produced too much aerodynamic drag for a frontline fighter. Too fat. Too much frontal area. Too slow.

Kurt Tank disagreed. He selected the BMW 139, a fourteen-cylinder, two-row, air-cooled radial, and set out to prove the experts wrong. What made his approach work was a remarkably tight-fitting engine cowling with a ducted spinner that channeled cooling air through the cylinders with precision. From the front, the Fw 190 looked almost like it had an inline engine.

Tank also integrated the engine into the airframe as a single modular unit — engine, cowling, mounts, and accessories could all be swapped in the field in under an hour. In 1939, he was already thinking about maintainability and field serviceability in ways that were years ahead of contemporary practice.

What Happened on That First Flight?

Hans Sander got the prototype airborne that June morning, and the flight went well enough — but serious problems emerged. The BMW 139 ran dangerously hot. Cockpit temperatures behind the firewall became so extreme that pilots’ feet were literally burned through their boots. The engine overheated, threw oil, and proved unreliable.

A lesser program would have died there. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was already in production and winning battles, and Luftwaffe leadership saw no urgent need for a second fighter. But Tank refused to abandon the radial concept. He waited for a better engine.

It came in the form of the BMW 801, a fourteen-cylinder two-row radial producing over 1,600 horsepower that ran cooler and cleaner than the 139. Tank redesigned the cowling, widened the fuselage slightly, and transformed a troubled prototype into a world-class fighter.

How Did the Fw 190 Change the Air War?

The Fw 190 A, the first major production version, reached frontline squadrons in August 1941. The Allied reaction was immediate — and alarmed.

RAF pilots had been fighting the Bf 109 for over a year. They understood it, respected it, and had developed tactics to counter it. Then the Fw 190 appeared over northern France, and Spitfire Mk V pilots found themselves outclassed in almost every category:

Faster in level flight
Superior roll rate
Better dive performance than anything the British had
Heavier armament: two machine guns over the engine and four 20mm cannons in the wings
More survivable: the air-cooled radial had no fragile liquid cooling system that a single bullet could puncture

A famous intelligence evaluation from late 1941 at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough pitted a captured Fw 190 against the Spitfire V, the Typhoon, and the early Mustang. The conclusion: the Fw 190 was superior to all current British fighters in most respects. That finding sent a shockwave through Fighter Command and directly accelerated development of the Spitfire Mk IX — essentially a rush job to counter one specific threat.

What Made the Cockpit So Advanced?

Kurt Tank cared about the pilot as a component of the weapons system, and it showed in the Fw 190’s cockpit design.

The canopy was a clear-vision bubble offering outstanding visibility. The wide-track landing gear made ground handling far more forgiving than the notoriously narrow-legged Bf 109, which killed pilots on takeoff and landing with depressing regularity. Controls were light and well-harmonized. Pilots transitioning from the 109 to the 190 almost universally said the same thing: the 109 is a handful; the 190 is a friend.

Perhaps the most forward-thinking feature was the Kommandogerät, a single-lever engine management system. It automatically coordinated manifold pressure, RPM, mixture, boost, and supercharger gear. While Allied pilots juggled three or four separate controls in a dogfight, the Fw 190 pilot managed everything with one lever. That reduction in cockpit workload freed up critical mental bandwidth in combat — a concept Tank understood intuitively decades before human factors engineering became a formal discipline.

How Did the Fw 190 Evolve During the War?

The Fw 190 served in an extraordinary range of roles across every theater, from North Africa to Norway to the Eastern Front. It was adapted into a fighter-bomber, ground attack aircraft, torpedo bomber, and high-altitude interceptor.

The A models were the classic radial-engine fighters that terrorized the Channel front. The most significant evolution came with the D model, the “Long-Nose Dora,” which replaced the radial with a Junkers Jumo 213 inline engine and became one of the war’s finest high-altitude fighters.

The Fw 190 D-9 is often cited as the best piston-engine fighter Germany ever produced — and some historians argue it was the best anyone produced. Warbird pilots who have flown restored examples describe the Dora at altitude as a revelation: smooth, fast, responsive, with a climb rate that explains why late-war Allied bomber crews dreaded seeing that long nose rising from below.

What Happened to Kurt Tank After the War?

Tank survived the war and continued designing aircraft, working first in Argentina and then in India, creating jets for other nations’ air forces. He never stopped designing airplanes and died in 1983 at the age of 85.

A few restored Fw 190s are still flying today, including an A-8 in the former Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum collection. The sound of the BMW 801 radial at full power is unmistakable — deeper, rougher, and more aggressive than a Merlin or an Allison. It sounds exactly like the aircraft it was built to be.

Key Takeaways

The Focke-Wulf 190 first flew on June 1, 1939, overcoming severe engine overheating problems to become one of WWII’s most effective fighters
Designer Kurt Tank’s decision to use a radial engine defied contemporary thinking but produced an aircraft that was faster, tougher, and more maintainable than its competitors
The Fw 190’s appearance in 1941 rendered the Spitfire Mk V obsolete and forced the RAF into a crash development program
Innovations like the Kommandogerät single-lever engine control and modular powerplant design were years ahead of their time
Over 20,000 Fw 190s were built in variants ranging from low-level ground attack to high-altitude interception

Primary sources: Alfred Price’s definitive study of the Focke-Wulf 190, wartime RAF evaluation reports, and recent restoration documentation.