While there was some aerial activity for The Aeroplane to report, such as the sinking by Luftwaffe aircraft of HM Trawler Fifeshire east of the Orkneys on 20 February with the loss of all but one on board, things remained relatively quiet. "Six months of War have not yielded the results, good or ill, which all the World expected in September" the 'War in the Air' column commented. But the prediction that better weather would bring a change proved to be on the mark. Already more sorties were being flown, even if major air combats had so far not taken place. An aircraft type not destined to feature in the air war to come was the 'Focke-Wulf Fw 198,' a single-seat, twin-boom fighter believed to be powered by a Daimler-Benz DB601. It was the subject of a extensive profile in this issue, which said the type was "Germany's Fastest Fighter" and was "believed to be coming into squadron service in the Luftwaffe" Trouble was, it didn't exist. The Fw 189 did, of course, but the design shown wasn't that. Rather, it more closely resembled the De Schelde S21, a pre-war Dutch fighter design which remained under development until Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Focke-Wulf's Kurt Tank later told author Bill Gunston he had no idea how the 'Fw 198' fake came about. Presumably it was another deliberate product of the fog of war.
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