In 1937 even though the Me-109 was a very capable fighter the Reich Air Ministry called for submissions of better designs. Kurt Tank won the competition with his radical use of an air-cooled radial engine that he dubbed the Fw-190 Würger (Butcher Bird). There were many skeptics who believed this new aircraft wouldn’t surpass the performance of the Me-109 but they were proven wrong. Over 20,000 of all variants of the Fw-190 were built with 13,291 of these being of the 9 different “A” variants.