On 30 Sep 2000, at 10:35, n|ck g wrote:
not your senorita wrote:
Our German friends, however, chose to call their aeroplanes "MESSERSCHMITT" which means "Mister Smith". I rest my case.>>>
i think that someone already pointed out that "das Messer" means "the knife" but i have to point out that i have never, ever heard anyone refer to "ein Flugzeug" (airplane : literally translated : flying thing) as anything but "Flugzeug." sorry to rain on the parade...
the closest thing to Messerschmitt that i can think of is Messerschnitt. which means "knife slice."
Sorry to piss in your lemonade, but... The Messerschmitt Bf109e and Bf109g were very famous and very feared World War II planes, as was the Messerschmitt BF110. The BF110 appeared near the end of the war, and was used for dogfighting and bombing -- mainly bombing, because it was a high- altitude plane. The BF109e was Germany's premier dogfighter: extremely stable in the air, as well as highly manoeuverable, but it lacked speed compared to the Spitfire Mk series, and the P51 Mustang. But what it lacked in speed it more than made up for in firepower, packing machine guns and cannons, whereas its adversaries -- the Hurricane, the Spitfire, and the Mustang P51 only had machine guns. The Zero (Japanese -- I think Mitsubishi made it, but I'm not sure) is by far the most kickass WWII fighter. Except for the Messerschmitt ME62e which came at the very end of the war, which was a jet. It was used very little in combat, as Messerschmitt was unable to construct enough numbers in time to put it into wide use. That's probably what they are referring to when they call their planes Messerschmitts. Incidentally, Messerschmitt made planes in World War I, and some of their planes were also used during the Korean War. +!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+! "That's why I eat Cadbury Eggs! NOT EVEN SUGAR HAS MORE SUGAR!!" -- Lots42, Alt.Religion.Kibology Some people need to get a *real* e-mail program that treats attachments as attachments, not as something to open up and spread across a vast network like hippies on reefer rides. But that's a different thing all together." --Taylor Netscum http://home.earthlink.net/~rtoad I AIN'T NO HIPPY ON A REEFER RIDE +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+