Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Fw 190 V1

The V1 was the aircraft with which Kurt Tank's team at Focke-Wulf first took to the air the fighter that would end up sharing with the Messerschmitt Bf 109 the burden of German day fighting. It carried the civil registration D-OPZE and was powered by the BMW 139, a fourteen-cylinder two-row radial rated at 1,550 PS (1,140 kW) — an unconventional choice at a time when European fighters leaned towards liquid-cooled inline engines.

D-OPZE first flew on 1 June 1939. The prototype's layout departed from the norm at first glance: the radial engine sat inside a tightly fitted cowling capped by a very large propeller spinner, a solution meant to cut the drag of a broad frontal area. That aerodynamic approach forced intensive work on cooling the engine-and-cowling assembly, and the second prototype, the V2, already flew with a new spinner and with the cooling fan that would characterise the whole family.

The V1 had no direct continuation as a production airframe. Prototypes V3 and V4 were abandoned and the programme jumped to the V5, where the BMW 139 gave way to the more powerful BMW 801, the engine that would define the operational versions. Even so, the V1 sets the documentary starting point of the Fw 190: the date of its first flight is the one the model record keeps as the type's first flight.