A story related by aviation writer Bill Gunston concerned the early days of the Europan Airbus passenger aircraft.

British engineers (then in Hawker Siddeley, before it was merged into BAe) had designed a wing which gave enhanced lift, reduced drag etc. At a huge meeting attended by all the contributors (several hundred apparently), they described the benefits of their design. At this point, someone from the German delegation stood up and began pontificating that, in his view, the Hawker wing would have too short a fatigue life in service.

The German spokesman was the great Dipl. Ing. Willi Messerschmidt himself. As he continued to pronounce his criticisms ex cathedra, steam could be seen rising from the British contingent. When he had finished, one of them stood up and said that he had heard that some of Herr Messerschmidt's designs had a service fatigue life of only 200 hours. This scarcely mattered. A Spitfire usually got them first.