Best German Fighter???

Well matt it looks like a 30mm was suppose to be standard firing through the prop hub and over the cowling were 15mm weapons. The Mk 112 55mm job was an expeiment and was an upgrade from the Mk 108 30mm piece. I suppose this would have been fitted with a longer barrel and fired through the prop hub.
The radar equipment was the 1944 slated FuG 217 Neptun which was just being fitted to some Bf 110 and Ju 88 G series night fighters during 1945.
The "Arrow" looks from published sources could reach about 475 mph at 21,000 feet, but not sure which variant this is. Must be a single seat A project or one of the V- sub types.

E

 

Just for interest. Here´s the competitor plane for Me-262 but lost the battle for production in March 1943.

http://www.angelfire.com/ab4/airplanes/Heinkels/He280/History.html

He 280 is mentioned to be quicker than Me-262, its ability to climb and top flight altitude were better as well.On the other hand it could only fly 1/3 of Me 262´s distance,it had a weaker weaponry, and other "technical" matters were on Me 262´s side, but might as well be political reasons.

The first He 280 flew its first flight -about three minutes- on 30 March 1941. Six weeks before Frank Whittle´s flight on 15 May with Gloster E.28/39. The first Me 262 flew on 18 July 1942 by Captain Fritz Wendel for some 12 minutes on the third prototype of the plane.
Me 262 was at the beginning called P.65. as it was named in the letter for the RLM
( Reichsluftfahrtministrium) in 1939 just a few weeks before He 280´s first flight.

 

Kai :

You are quite correct......the Heinkel was a nice little craft but only had 3 cannon in the nose, and the a/c was wicked when it landed, it literally bounced off the ground before coming to a stop. i have some film of this bird landing and it is real scary. There was much potential for this little thing but Willi Messerschmidt and his firm needed a moral booster and the prototype Me 262 won over and Heinkel took a back seat to develop some other minor a/c...... including a not so minor nachtjäger....the He 219.

E

 

The Heinkel sounds really scary to me. I would probably want to be flying in an Me.262 rather than the Heinkel.

Did you say that the Me.262 was more dependable/durable than the Heinkel? That sounds ridiculous, but I wouldn't doubt it.

 

Erich,

By the way. I read somewhere that if the Me 262´s engines would be put in contact with the plane´s main body both sides it might have made it more stable in flight and solved many problems in the process of making it mass productable.Ever heard of this or is it just rumours on some book?

 

Overall the Focke-Wulf Fw190 was the best German fighter of the war - excellent in its different versions (A,F,G, and D) for fighter combat, ground attack and bomber interception.

Since we are covering the whole war you can't just pick the last version - if you want to get into specific versions you have to look at specific missions in specific years.

The Ju88 was almost as versatile as the Fw190 but couldn't handle fighter vs fighter combat.

 

von M :

there you have it ! The workhorse of the Luftwaffe fighter force, the Fw 190 in all it's many variants.

Ju 88 seemed to be best suited for the night fighter role in my opinion with the Ju 88G-6. As you said fighter vs fighter was a disaster.

E

 

Erich,

you might have missed the question as the page changed but please check the previous page. Do you have any idea on that Me 262 question?

 

Kai :

No I saw the post from you......was looking back for some references, and most appear in the Lft 46 ideas. Though the Luftie techs were developing forward and back swept designs in 45 for replacement of the Me 262. The engines themselves-jet- were te be completely enclosed and Heinkel and Focke Wulf came up with brilliant ideas. Single jet engines housed at the rear of the fuselage. The example being taken to the operative stage in the F-86 Sabre used by the US in the Korean conflict. During late 44 into 45 tests were made with small rocket engines on a/c with the jets mounted on either side of the fueslage both at the front and in the back by the tail. Reverberation caused fuselage/structural failures and so it was back to the drawing board. It also appears that Luftie techs did not like the Me 262's engines due to the fack they were too complex and easily flamed during operative combat. Thus more streamlined and smaller external jet engines were developed at least in the experimental stages and also used as rocket boosters with bombers such as the AR 234 on take-off and even the outdated He 111.

E

 

I'll answer this one too. America's first jet fighter, the 1942 Lockheed P-59 used two jet engines in the fuselage. But the USAAF rejected it as the engines were underpowered and the plane was no faster than the P-51. And much less maneuverable since it was a good deal larger.

Putting the engines next to the fuselage on the ME 262 would not have made it any faster, but it would have given it a much better roll rate as the engines would have been much closer to the aircraft's centre of gravity (middle of the fuselage) instead of on the wings. Same reason why the Me 110's roll rate was much worse than that of the Me 109 - twin engined fighters with engines on the wings all suffer from this problem with roll rate.

A faster roll rate makes a fighter better able to roll and dive away from enemy fire. Even so, there was no way that even this theroretical Me 262 could have outrolled the P-51.

 

Well thank you Erich and vonManstein39,

Great stuff!

As there was discussion on Fw 190´s I thought of putting some ideas from " Fw 190 aces in the eastern front" by John Weal here.
------

" The biggest difference compared with good old Bf 109 was Fw 190A-3 engine, the 1700 horse power BMW 801D-2, which was huge. It was ideal for eastern front. It had two distinct advantages: Big engine gave cover against shooting from ahead, and it also took quite alot of damage without stopping. Both were valued as most flights took place low and in the reach of Russian flak.One hit in the cooling system could drop the Bf 109, but soon there were stories of Fw 190´s flying home crippled with one or more cylinder heads shot off.

One word of caution was heard. If the Fw 190 engine somehow would stop, you had to jump-and fast. Without power the Fw 190 would fall like a brick: " If the engine stops, the nose will immediately turn towards ground and the rest of the plane will follow tightly."

If you had to make a belly-landing, the pilot had quite good chances of survival.The huge engine behind the armor ring would plow anything smaller than a house away. You just had to remember to set the propeller so that two blades(?) would turn under the plane and would function as skis.Later on some pilots even boasted of making better and softer landings with the wheels up...

The width of landing gear ( the wheels ) was also usable in the eastern front.As Bf 109 swung around Fw 190 went easily through all the obstacles-like an bull frog with a pair of water skis...

During take off you had to remember that all three wheels had to leave the ground at the same time-otherwise there was danger that the huge engine would hit the ground and throw the plane upside down.

The problem of worse flight handling in heights was not a problem in the eastern front. The Russians usually flew low, like " bees around a lunch box ".

There was one basic fault on the plane. This could prove fatal in some instances. As the plane was "smooth"(?) ( the surface of the plane?? ), it would stall as the speed went below 204 km/h. The Fw 190 would turn left without warning and almost upside down as well.In a tight turn a Fw 190 drawn into a G stall would " swing to other direction and started falling in a downward spiral towards the ground!". This fault had its good sides. No enemy plane could follow this move...You just had to have enough height so that you could get the plane up again. "

 

Wish I still had our web-site up and running...... oh well all of you will have to wait for the new look and some incredible info on the Luftwaffe's Sturmgruppen/Fw 190's and pilot stories......

E

 

I'm laughing somewhat...hah, hah, ho hum.....

uh well it is amazing when you think your web-site is long gone off the net and you use your homepage and type in certain words.....and wha la presto ! For the heavy Fw 190 do this //

on your search engine / Punch in Fw190A-8/R-2 and look for sturmgruppen missions 1944. go to search within the site.

or try this :

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/neilpage/pilotsgerth.html

You will find Werner Gerth's bio as well as some sub-links. Warning do not punch Back to start as you will receive the standard non-working page.
It appears that at leat 6/7 pages of our site are still workable in the cyberspace world.....

have fun guys, and your quite right Stevin, there seems to be some materials of our site still floating around.....

E

 

Very nice site Erich. I can't wait 'til it can be reopened.

I get the feeling that the Fw-190 was pretty stubborn, and was pretty hard to handle. I'm starting to think that maybe I would rather fly a different German fighter plane......

Wasn't the Fw-190 made more durable because it was made entirely out of metal? Or is that just an old wise tale?

[ 09 October 2002, 07:49 PM: Message edited by: Mustang ]

 

Mustang :

It would depend if I was going to attack fighters or Allied bombers. first the 109 was better in the fighter vs fighter role, the 190 was a better armaments a/c. Our site covers those heavy boys as you have seen. And by going over the bio's you can see that some of these guys racked upa pretty mean score against US B-24's and B-17's. Most of the German pilots fell in action. guys like Willi Unger and Oskar Bösch that we have interviewed quite extensivley still have the fire in the eyes !, and are pretty tough cookies. Excellent marksmen and pilots. All the a/.c had aluminum skin and only latter marks of the Bf 109 such as the K was having a bit of fuselage and tail surfaces made of wood.

E

 

I saw that the Fw-190's hit the bombers pretty hard. So that would make it a pretty good fighter to bomber B-1-Rd. That still doesn't answer what the best fighter to fighter plane was though. I'm not sure, as I said earlier I don't know much about the German planes. Ecspecially not as much as our human encyclopedia, Erich Brown!

I'm somewhat glad that the Fw-190 made most of it's kills against bombers instead of the P-51, but saddened at the same time because the P-51 was supposed to protect the bombers.

 

Hey! I had forgotten about the "Arrow" Dornier Do-335. I really like that plane!

Everybody: Imagine this: autumn 1944, Do-335s and Ta-152s flying altogether over Germany shooting P-51s by the hundreds!

 

That is a sickening thought! Shame on you!!! You're just joshing me though, you know that no German plane would ever be able to take down a Mustang! Ecspecially not by the hundreds!

The fact is that neither of those planes were massed produced, nor had a very big impact on the war. Those are facts. Not what-ifs.

[ 11 October 2002, 10:29 PM: Message edited by: Mustang ]

 

I'll forget the what-if senario and stick with the topic. You're question regarding the P-51's is a good one actually, though you did not pose it as a question.
Simply the P-51's could not be everywhere at once during 44-45. If a bomb group was led off the route which did happen at times, it was awfully tough to send a fighter group after them to protect them by way of a different route via direction or altitude. The P-51's stuck with the bombers as escort if they were ordered to do so. Other P-51 groups would fly as higer cover warding off Bf 109's that would take on these particular Mustangs. This is one reason during the summer and fall months of 1944 the high gruppen of 109's would try and make the P-51 groups drop their long range tanks and come up and meet them for fighter vs fighter combat and this would allow in theory the Fw 190's(check my site) to come upon the Allied bombers with little or no resistance from Allied escorts.

E

 

That's a very nice argument. If the Fw-190 could put up a large enough fight and force the P-51 to drop his drop tanks then the P-51 wouldn't have a long enough range to stay with the bombers for the entire trip, but if the P-51 did drop his drop tanks then that Fw-190 was toast. Droping the drop tanks would provide for better maneuverability and less drag = higher speed. So when German plane was shot down then the P-51 fulfilled it's task. Which is to shoot down enemy planes. Besides, not all of the P-51's would have to drop the drop tanks, and B-17's are very heavily armed anyway.