# Why was the La-7 so fast ???



## timmy (Sep 3, 2014)

I cannot figure it out

Under 10 000ft nothing could touch this thing!

So let's compare it with say a FW-190 A8

LA-7 14 cyl 41 lt radial 1700hp vs FW-190 A8 14 cyl 41 lt radial 1700hp
LA-7 weight 3500kg vs FW-190 A8 weight 3500kg 

So unless the La-7 has a huge Aerodynamic Advantage over the FW-190, which I doubt
I cannot see where this plane gets all its speed from. What am I missing here ???


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## Denniss (Sep 3, 2014)

Supercharger setup and supercharger air intake were optimized for lower alts (Fw 190 suffered from internal air intake somewhat). Plus aerodynamic improvements on the La-7.
One has to be careful with soviet data though, Prototypes tended to be way faster than production machines.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 3, 2014)

The aerodynamic advantage for the La-7 would be 4 gun barrels chutes less. The wing area was also smaller by some 5%. The weight figures from the post #1 here are way off, loaded A-8 was 1/3rd heavier than the La-7. For a more realistic comparison, the lighter Fw-190 versions, with less armament-related drag, were making 580-590 km/h at lower altitudes, and 660 km/h at 6-7 km. 
The La-7s produced in 1944, on the other hand, were barely beating 650 km/h mark; it took some time (talk 1945) to produce the serial examples that can do 670 km/h.

So - the La-7 was fast because it featured a big powerful engine installed on a small airframe, while featuring a modest weapon fuel 'fraction'.

BTW, the 'TsAGI book' charts tables tend to show many Western aircraft in an unfavorable light, better to use data from Williams' site for those.


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## drgondog (Sep 3, 2014)

Both the FW 190A-8 and FW 190D-9 airspeeds shown are suspiciously low at SL.. the FW SL speed of 346mph is at 1.42 ata while the A-8 speed with 1.65 ata is 359mph.

Not enough known about La 7 test and engine ratings to offer lucid comments


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## buffnut453 (Sep 3, 2014)

Why is the La-7 so fast? Soviet propaganda perhaps? Naaah...couldn't be!


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## Ivan1GFP (Sep 3, 2014)

A better comparision is between the La-5FN and the La-7.
Both aircraft had the same engine and nearly the same weights, dimensions and planform and yet the La-7 is 20 mph faster. All of it was done with aerodynamic improvements.

The most obvious changes were
1. A laminar flow wing.
2. A reshaped cowl.
3. A relocated oil cooler.

The laminar flow wing would presumably offer some improvement. The typical low maximum CL would be partially offset by the leading edge slats that was typical of the Lavochkins.
The oil cooler was probably relocated on the theory that the further back you put a radiator, the better the aerodynamics because the air is turbulent behind the cooler. Perhaps it even makes some use of the Meredith effect.

As for the Russian table, The relative speeds are questionable. The typical FW 190A-8 was a LOT faster than this graph shows. I figure a good estimate would be around 415 mph at 1.42 ATA and prbably a bit faster with 1.65 ATA War Emergency Power. This is from the USN test of a captured FW 190G-3 which was done without War Emergency Power.
The speed claim for the La-7 is typicall 423 mph and 402 mph for the La-5FN. The Lavochkins also carry less armament, ammunition and fuel.

As for loaded weights, a better number for a normal loaded weight for the FW 190A-8 would be around 4380 kg. Depending on the source, it can be anywhere between 4300 and 4400 kg. I can point you to a thread in which I discussed this topic in another forum.

- Ivan.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 3, 2014)

The La-7 was still using the NACA 23000 series wing, as was the LaGG-3, La-5 and Fw-190. Laminar flow wing was introduced with La-9.


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## Juha (Sep 3, 2014)

Late war Soviet fighters had very good aerodynamics.


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## timmy (Sep 3, 2014)

Denniss said:


> *Supercharger setup and supercharger air intake were optimized for lower alts *(Fw 190 suffered from internal air intake somewhat). Plus aerodynamic improvements on the La-7.
> One has to be careful with soviet data though, Prototypes tended to be way faster than production machines.



It's making a bit more sense now 



tomo pauk said:


> The aerodynamic advantage for the La-7 would be 4 gun barrels chutes less. The wing area was also smaller by some 5%. *The weight figures from the post #1 here are way off, loaded A-8 was 1/3rd heavier than the La-7.* For a more realistic comparison, the lighter Fw-190 versions, with less armament-related drag, were making 580-590 km/h at lower altitudes, and 660 km/h at 6-7 km.
> The La-7s produced in 1944, on the other hand, were barely beating 650 km/h mark; it took some time (talk 1945) to produce the serial examples that can do 670 km/h.
> 
> So - the La-7 was fast because it featured a big powerful engine installed on a small airframe, while featuring a modest weapon fuel 'fraction'.
> ...



Got my weight figures from wiki, I should have looked a bit deeper


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## Milosh (Sep 3, 2014)

Your weight for the Fw190A-8 is empty weight. Normal loaded is 4400kg.


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Sep 3, 2014)

Terri-tzu oh where are you?


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## Ivan1GFP (Sep 3, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> The La-7 was still using the NACA 23000 series wing, as was the LaGG-3, La-5 and Fw-190. Laminar flow wing was introduced with La-9.



If that is the case that the airfoil is a 23000 series, then why do you think it was so much faster?
I thot the wing was a lot of the improvement, but if not, then how is La 7 so much faster than the La 5FN?

- Ivan.


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## Koopernic (Sep 3, 2014)

timmy said:


> I cannot figure it out
> 
> Under 10 000ft nothing could touch this thing!
> 
> ...



Ome of the problems with this chart is that from late 1943 BMW started introducing various improvements to the BMW801. The result is that By June 1944 both the BMW801D2 on the Fw 190A8 and the BMW801TS of the Fw 190A9 were producing 2000hp, not 1700hp.

The sea level speed was thus 360mph (nearly 580kmh) which is of course much faster than the charts indicate. The engine produced about 590kmh (365mph) on the Fw 190A5, which was still in use.

The BMW801TS had I believe slightly different supercharger settings and impellor fluid dynamics which showed up as an improvement at high altitude. The Fw 190A9/BMW801TS was set up with a supplementary fuel tank that could hold fuel, MW-50 or GM-1 depending on mission. If MW-50 was implemented it would have increased power to 2200hp. May have seen use on Bombers.

La 7 probably was fast due to a smooth wooden skinning. The Fw 190 lacked a laminar flow wing, like the P-51 or Tempest, while the Germans seem to have allowed excessive weight growth to develop in the aircraft. It was rather over gunned in my estimation with 4 x 20mm canon and 2 machine guns. I can't see the value of the MG.

The next engine for the Fw 190 was the BMW801F with 2400hp or 2600hp with MW-50, it was intended for the Fw 190A10 with an enlarged wing though I suspect it would have just gone into the A9 instead.

The power growth of the Jumo 213 was running slightly ahead of the BMW 801 or at least mass of great interest to the Luftwaffe because of its ability to work better with MW-50 with lower octane fuels. Speed of the Fw 190D13/R25 with the Jumo 213EB engine was expected to achieve 400mph at sea level and 488mph at altitude. By optimising the single stage two speed Jumo 213A as a 'bodden motor' ie sea level motor sea level speeds of 400mph were also possible and run.

I'm assuming the Fw 190A9 with BMW801F would achieve about 390-400mph at sea level given the 20% to 30% greater power and exhaust thrust.

Although the Germans were movoing to the Ta 152C and Ta 152H with their greater wing areas and fuel capacity the Fw 190D9 with the same engines was clearly going to be much faster at low altitude. They would have ended up with an armament of 3 x 20mm MG213 revolver canon which were being tested on Fw 190 at the end of the war. The outer wing gun stations would become fuel tanks.


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## Koopernic (Sep 3, 2014)

timmy said:


> I cannot figure it out
> 
> Under 10 000ft nothing could touch this thing!
> 
> ...



Ome of the problems with this chart is that from late 1943 BMW started introducing various improvements to the BMW801. The result is that By June 1944 both the BMW801D2 on the Fw 190A8 and the BMW801TS of the Fw 190A9 were producing 2000hp, not 1700hp.

The sea level speed was thus 360mph (nearly 580kmh) which is of course much faster than the charts indicate. The engine produced about 590kmh (365mph) on the Fw 190A5, which was still in use.

The BMW801TS had I believe slightly different supercharger settings and impellor fluid dynamics which showed up as an improvement at high altitude. The Fw 190A9/BMW801TS was set up with a supplementary fuel tank that could hold fuel, MW-50 or GM-1 depending on mission. If MW-50 was implemented it would have increased power to 2200hp. May have seen use on Bombers.

La 7 probably was fast due to a smooth wooden skinning. The Fw 190 lacked a laminar flow wing, like the P-51 or Tempest, while the Germans seem to have allowed excessive weight growth to develop in the aircraft. It was rather over gunned in my estimation with 4 x 20mm canon and 2 machine guns. I can't see the value of the MG.

The next engine for the Fw 190 was the BMW801F with 2400hp or 2600hp with MW-50, it was intended for the Fw 190A10 with an enlarged wing though I suspect it would have just gone into the A9 instead.

The power growth of the Jumo 213 was running slightly ahead of the BMW 801 or at least mass of great interest to the Luftwaffe because of its ability to work better with MW-50 with lower octane fuels. Speed of the Fw 190D13/R25 with the Jumo 213EB engine was expected to achieve 400mph at sea level and 488mph at altitude. By optimising the single stage two speed Jumo 213A as a 'bodden motor' ie sea level motor sea level speeds of 400mph were also possible and run.

I'm assuming the Fw 190A9 with BMW801F would achieve about 390-400mph at sea level given the 20% to 30% greater power and exhaust thrust.

Although the Germans were movoing to the Ta 152C and Ta 152H with their greater wing areas and fuel capacity the Fw 190D9 with the same engines was clearly going to be much faster at low altitude. They would have ended up with an armament of 3 x 20mm MG213 revolver canon which were being tested on Fw 190 at the end of the war. The outer wing gun stations would become fuel tanks.

The mike William site ww2 performance testing has charts with some of the boost improvements.


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## timmy (Sep 3, 2014)

Ivan1GFP said:


> If that is the case that the airfoil is a 23000 series, then why do you think it was so much faster?
> I thot the wing was a lot of the improvement, but if not, then how is La 7 so much faster than the La 5FN?
> 
> - Ivan.



Yes I agree, even without laminar flow this plane should be fast. But really this fast ???



Koopernic said:


> *Ome of the problems with this chart is that from late 1943 BMW started introducing various improvements to the BMW801. The result is that By June 1944 both the BMW801D2 on the Fw 190A8 and the BMW801TS of the Fw 190A9 were producing 2000hp, not 1700hp.*The sea level speed was thus 360mph (nearly 580kmh) which is of course much faster than the charts indicate. The engine produced about 590kmh (365mph) on the Fw 190A5, which was still in use.
> 
> The BMW801TS had I believe slightly different supercharger settings and impellor fluid dynamics which showed up as an improvement at high altitude. The Fw 190A9/BMW801TS was set up with a supplementary fuel tank that could hold fuel, MW-50 or GM-1 depending on mission. If MW-50 was implemented it would have increased power to 2200hp. May have seen use on Bombers.
> 
> ...



Well I'm not really doubting the Germans had planes close to equal performance by 1944

I really chose the Fw 190 A8 (early model) to make a point
To me that model had the same big engines producing the same horsepower as the LA-7
So all things being equal their performance should be similar 

But as has been pointed out to me the Russian plane does in fact have a weight advantage
Possibly an Aerodynamic Advantage as well. Better Supercharger settings would also explain the speed

Still if those charts are correct the Russians got a lot of plane for just 1700 hp
Maybe it had some excellent ram effect qualities as well ????

Edit: I keep quoting the LA-7 as having 1700 HP, when in fact I think its 1850 HP. _Damn you Wikipedia _


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## Ivan1GFP (Sep 4, 2014)

Aren't you a bit optimistic here?
At 1.58 ATA at sea level, the 190A-8 was making about 2050 HP and reaching 359 mph.
What kind of power output would it take to hit 390 mph at SL?

- Ivan.


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## Koopernic (Sep 4, 2014)

Ivan1GFP said:


> Aren't you a bit optimistic here?
> At 1.58 ATA at sea level, the 190A-8 was making about 2050 HP and reaching 359 mph.
> What kind of power output would it take to hit 390 mph at SL?
> 
> - Ivan.



I'm using a calculation.

Fw 190A8 at 2000hp with BMW 801D2 580kmh/360mph
Fw 190A9 at 2000hp with BMW 801TS 578kmh/359mph
The above are at a boost pressure of 1.58 or 1.65 ata or so.

The following power increase were planned:
BMW801TS 2200hp at 1.82 ata by using MW50, this is a 10% increase. The cube root of 1.1 is 1.032 so we might expect 596kmh/369mph.

The speed at sea level is still under 50% of Mach so the rule is still fairly good. Remember also that jet thrust is providing around 10% of the power not taken into account in this calculation and only a square law applies to jet thrust increase.

The BMW801F was expected to provide 2400hp and 2600hp with MW50. This is a 20% and 30% increase over the 2000hp BMW801TS. Using a cube law we would get 1.062 as cube root of 1.2 suggesting a speed of 614kmh/380mph and 
taking the cube root of 1.3 we get 1.095 and so a speed of 630kmh/391mph.

359mph with 2000hp
369mph with 2200hp
380mph with 2400hp
391mph with 2600hp

Maybe even better since the power increases are mainly from boost pressure increases and so jet thrust might be up disproportionatly.


The FW 190D9 speed is well documented: 376mph at 2100hp, possibly 385 or so with good tolerance of the airframe gap. 400mhh was reached with a version the Fw 190D9 with its 1st stage supercharger optimised for seal level power and 390 with C3 fuel.

This is the "A Ladder also boden motor". Its probably at 1.8 or 2 ata though. I wouldn't think the Jumo 213 was much more aerodynamic than the BMW801 which is a very small frontal area.

The 400/488 mph speed for the Fw 190D13/R25 comes from the Volume 3 of the Smith Creek book on the Fw 190.

Champion of speed really was the P-51 with 150PN fuel, well over 410mph/660km at sea level.

The Western allies had outstanding fuel. I would say Soviet fuel was fairly mediocre, about the same standard as German, which is why Russians used fuel injection on their engines as well.

Laminar flow is worth a lot in drag reduction once Mach exceeds 0.5 or so as it has a high Mach limit.

Germans did have laminar flow wings on Me 309 and BV 155 but neither entered production. One would have though that a simple conversion of Fw 190 to laminar flow wing would have added 20mph/30kmh.


I am only using educated guess but the cube law works perfectly up to Mach 0.5 when I have checked the estimate against real life flown. There is a chart of power versus speed for a B-17E at 15000ft ranging from 600hp to 1200hp and the cube law works perfectly up to 317mph (about Mach 0.45). The chart is at ww2 performance testing.

I would not dare to estimate the speed improvement at high altitude due to effects of Mach at high altitude and changes in engine full throttle height due to the higher boost failing.

We don't know enough about Russian aircraft, please stick around.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 4, 2014)

Ivan1GFP said:


> If that is the case that the airfoil is a 23000 series, then why do you think it was so much faster?
> I thot the wing was a lot of the improvement, but if not, then how is La 7 so much faster than the La 5FN?
> 
> - Ivan.



Some of the refinements include installation of the U/C wheel well covers, weight was also supposedly cut down some 150 kg, the oil cooler features the boundary layer splitter (shades of P-51), and A/C nose is without much of the lumps bumps.

The speed of the La-5 with the ASh-82FN engine is variously listed between 620 and 684 (!) km/h here:






For completeness sake:


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## razor1uk (Sep 4, 2014)

As a joke, ...they were fast because other wise Stalin or the Commissars would get them...

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## tomo pauk (Sep 4, 2014)

If I may cut in:



Koopernic said:


> I'm using a calculation.
> 
> Fw 190A8 at 2000hp with BMW 801D2 580kmh/360mph
> Fw 190A9 at 2000hp with BMW 801TS 578kmh/359mph
> The above are at a boost pressure of 1.58 or 1.65 ata or so.



In low gear, the max permissible (over)boost for the BMW 801D was 1.58, in high gear it was 1.65. Power setting known as "Erhöhter Notleistung" (roughly: "Increased emergency power"). Under the 'Start und Notleistung', max boost was 1.42 ata.
For the 801TS, the max boost for "Erhöhter Notleistung" was 1.82 ata. 2200 PS before cooling fan power is deduced. 'Start und Notleistung' max boost was 1.65 ata; 2000 PS minus 70 PS for the fan. 



> The following power increase were planned:
> BMW801TS 2200hp at 1.82 ata by using MW50, this is a 10% increase. The cube root of 1.1 is 1.032 so we might expect 596kmh/369mph.



Not this old chestnut 
1.82 ata was a 'simple' overboosting. This chart (here) shows that Fw-190A-8 carried no MW-50 mixture, ditto for the A-9.



> This is the "A Ladder also boden motor". Its probably at 1.8 or 2 ata though. I wouldn't think the Jumo 213 was much more aerodynamic than the BMW801 which is a very small frontal area.



It was more aerodynamic, as shown on the table posted several times elsewhere on this forum (erstwhile by our member with nickname 'bada')



> The Western allies had outstanding fuel. I would say Soviet fuel was fairly mediocre, about the same standard as German, which is why Russians used fuel injection on their engines as well.



Standard Soviet fuel on the onset of the Op Barbarossa was of oct rating = 95. During the 1st war years the fuel quality varied a bit, that convinced Soviets to lower the compression ratios on some engines, like at the AM-38F (from 6.8:1 at AM-38 to 6:1); because of that, ever greater boost was to be used. The AM-42 went down to 5.5:1 with CR! 
The Germans decided to increase the CR when going from the BMW 801C to 801D, that might be called as a self-inflicted wound - greater CR means it is not so easy to overboost the engine when hi-oct fuel becomes available.
Only major Soviet engine that used fuel injection was the ASh-82FN, with Klimovs and Mikulins staying with multiple carburetors.

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## swampyankee (Sep 4, 2014)

One is that it's certainly not impossible that the Soviet aircraft did have markedly better aerodynamics -- the people at TsAGI were no less competent than those in the German equivalent, at NACA, or at ARC -- and the Soviets were, by 1944, not having to deal with quite so many bombs falling on their production facilities as were the Germans. This may have made it a bit easier for their designers to concentrate, what with not having to worry about their home being turned into rubble by something from a Lancaster, B-17, or B-24.

A major source of drag in piston-engined aircraft is cooling drag. Some aircraft, like the P-51, had magnificently well-designed cooling systems. Some had poorly designed ones -- the Ju87 was reputed to have an especially high-drag cooling installation. Good cooling system design requires dealing with a lot of fiddly changes, some of which may seem counter-intuitive to non-specialists (I am not a specialist in aircraft cooling system design. I suspect that the only ones still around work for companies like Diamond and Cessna, where production cost and maintainability are much more important than a reducing the drag count by a couple of points). It's not inconceivable that Lavochkin had somebody who was better at cooling system design than anybody at Focke-Wolf. It's also possible that the labor working at the Soviet factories was a bit better motivated than the ones working in Speer's various slave-labor industries.


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## l'Omnivore Sobriquet (Sep 4, 2014)

Why was the Lagg-7 so fast ?



> All of it was done with aerodynamic improvements.



That's the classic explanation. 
Soviet engineers were locked-up and given orders to improve on the existing and forget about big futuristic plans. They spent months and months wind-testing tiny details, little improvements sparing no big science on the task, and so it gave : Lagg-7, Yak-3, and late marks Yak-9s.

Its the classic explanation again, then here in this WWIIaircraft forum I'm sure we're getting, hm... little improvements on this, too..


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## GrauGeist (Sep 4, 2014)

swampyankee said:


> It's also possible that the labor working at the Soviet factories was a bit better motivated than the ones working in Speer's various slave-labor industries.





l'Omnivore Sobriquet said:


> Soviet engineers were locked-up and given orders to improve on the existing and forget about big futuristic plans. They spent months and months wind-testing tiny details, little improvements sparing no big science on the task, and so it gave : Lagg-7, Yak-3, and late marks Yak-9s


Uncle Joe was a great motivator...


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## Koopernic (Sep 4, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> If I may cut in:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The Fw 190A-8 most certainly didn't have MW-50 but the FW 190A9 did have the supplementary tank added whose purpose was ultimately to be use of extra fuel, GM-1 or MW-50 given appropriate plumbing. That was the idea of moving equipment around and increasing cowling armour from 6mm to 10mm. Apart from the extra protection it helped with c of g issues. The Fw 190A9 and Fw 190D9 share internals as much as possible, hence the naming. The supplementary tank most definitely was used for MW-50 in the Fw 190D9. One system known as the oldenberg system used supercharger pressure to blow MW50 into the supercharger. A more powerful pump driven high flow system fitted in the field by Junkers field personnel was also used. The Fw 190A9 was to be a supercharger blown system known as the Ribbentrop. MW-50 may not have seen use on operational Fw 190A9 but I think it did see use on Ju 88H and Ju 188E to help with take-off.

The development of green dyed C fuel such as synthetic C3 (and mineral based C2) was very important in order to try and keep up with allied engine development. Hats off the Merlin engine designers and developers but it would have been a dog (ok inadequate is a better word) without 100/130 and RR would have been forced to ditch it and concentrate on Grifon development.

The increase in compression ratio, rather than over boosting, makes sense given the fuel economy improvements (about 10% more power with no increase in fuel consumption) in the context that C3 fuel was not a fixed specification. It started out at around 94/115 and improved in several steps: roughly 96/125, 97/130 or so. These are not official German numbers but the result of British analysis of German fuel. The rich mixture response initially wasn't there for really effective over boosting. Around late 1943 "C3 einspritzung" ie "C3 injection" was added to the ground attack versions of the Fw 190 (the F and G) in which fuel was injected into the eye of the supercharger to precool the air as well as create a rich mixture. By then you see the rich mixture response was there. For some reason this system was restricted to use below 800m (2600ft). Fighter version got a simpler increase boost which was much less powerful since it lacked the injection into the supercharger which meant the air was not precooled and contracted. Latter the systems were merged and the altitude restrictions removed. There is a lot going on between late 1943 and mid 1944 with BMW801 engine. 

The Germans were very concerned to speed up their fighter bombers when carrying a load of bombs. With it the Fw 190F could be quite difficult to intercept, hence the pressure on LaGG development and speed.


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## swampyankee (Sep 4, 2014)

GrauGeist said:


> Uncle Joe was a great motivator...



Probably no more so than Herr Schickelgruber.

Another issue, which is much less likely to involve any politics is that if the FW190 was tested by the Soviets, it's possible the aircraft were old and somewhat clapped-out, and the La-7s were new and well-tuned. Considering that one type of aircraft lost 20 mph in top speed due to a different type of paint and that other aircraft have had a paint seam radically change stall characteristics, it may not take much to make a significant difference in performance.


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## swampyankee (Sep 4, 2014)

GrauGeist said:


> Uncle Joe was a great motivator...



Probably no more so than Herr Schickelgruber.

Another issue, which is much less likely to involve any politics is that if the FW190 was tested by the Soviets, it's possible the aircraft were old and somewhat clapped-out, and the La-7s were new and well-tuned. Considering that one type of aircraft lost 20 mph in top speed due to a different type of paint and that other aircraft have had a paint seam radically change stall characteristics, it may not take much to make a significant difference in performance.


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## parsifal (Sep 4, 2014)

> Hats off the Merlin engine designers and developers but it would have been a dog (ok inadequate is a better word) without 100/130 and RR would have been forced to ditch it and concentrate on Grifon development


.


Wasn't the majority of fuel used up to the end of 1940 with standard 87 Octane rated fuel. Glider did a whole stack on this a couple of years back as I recall???


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## GrauGeist (Sep 4, 2014)

swampyankee said:


> Probably no more so than Herr Schickelgruber.
> 
> Another issue, which is much less likely to involve any politics is that if the FW190 was tested by the Soviets, it's possible the aircraft were old and somewhat clapped-out, and the La-7s were new and well-tuned. Considering that one type of aircraft lost 20 mph in top speed due to a different type of paint and that other aircraft have had a paint seam radically change stall characteristics, it may not take much to make a significant difference in performance.


The Soviet designers basically were told to develop and that was that. In Germany, there was alot of political in-fighting as well as developer competition. Chaotic, yes, but offered results across the board (sometimes, too many results).

And good point about the Russian tests of German equipment. They weren't testing factory fresh machines, they were testing captured aircraft, several had been crash recoveries. The Germans had done the same with captured Allied aircraft and the Allies tested German equipment that was recovered from crash sites or what wasn't able to fly out of an airfeild as German forces retreated.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 4, 2014)

The fighters were using 100 octane in 1940 (at least the large majority of them in the BoB ) and that 100 octane was actually 100/115-120. 
Even the Blenheim bombers/night fighters were rigged to use 100 octane in the outer tanks and 87 in the inner tanks to allow higher boost for take-off and bursts of speed. 

I don't know when the 100/130 was introduced but since 18lbs boost was quite usable with 100/130 then around 15lbs boost seems reasonable with 100/120.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 4, 2014)

GrauGeist said:


> The Soviet designers basically were told to develop and that was that. In Germany, there was alot of political in-fighting as well as developer competition. Chaotic, yes, but offered results across the board (sometimes, too many results).
> 
> And good point about the Russian tests of German equipment. They weren't testing factory fresh machines, they were testing captured aircraft, several had been crash recoveries. The Germans had done the same with captured Allied aircraft and the Allies tested German equipment that was recovered from crash sites or what wasn't able to fly out of an airfeild as German forces retreated.




There was a fair amount of "political in-fighting" or behind the scenes maneuvering in the Soviet union too.


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## Koopernic (Sep 4, 2014)

Quote Originally Posted by GrauGeist View Post 

Uncle Joe was a great motivator...




swampyankee said:


> Probably no more so than Herr Schickelgruber.
> 
> Another issue, which is much less likely to involve any politics is that if the FW190 was tested by the Soviets, it's possible the aircraft were old and somewhat clapped-out, and the La-7s were new and well-tuned. Considering that one type of aircraft lost 20 mph in top speed due to a different type of paint and that other aircraft have had a paint seam radically change stall characteristics, it may not take much to make a significant difference in performance.




Agree re testing of captured types, which were often also old models. One Fw 190A6 handed over the the USN was tested against corsairs, hellcats, P-47. they complained that the Fw 190 aileron flutter was so bad it blacked out the pilot. That's not normal, flutter also leads to premature stall, and it rather invalidates the subsequent comparative turn tests they did. The Fw 190 pushrod linkages were notorious to set up without special procedures.

As far as Adolf Hitler was concerned I think its clear he was a milder in the sense of being more predictable than Stalin with his own people. Stalin had his own designers such as Tupolev, working on Gulags. He had folks, including one naïve young man, executed for making a joke that was too familiar during his enforced group Vodka drinking sessions. The project manager for the MiG 3 was executed for not achieving sufficient range in the aircraft. Hitler did non of that. It did sometimes come from over enthusiastic minor Nazis. Kurt Tank was accused and briefly investigate for sabotaging the Ta 154 program. Of course Tank was just making rational technical decisions and the minor nazi just a passionate hot head, Ta 154 was a waste of time driven as much by a desire to make use of plentiful Jumo 211 production as its wooden construction impossible to implement due to German shortages of wood workers, experience etc. 

You'd be a lot safer around Hitler, getting caught up in an assassination attempts aside. Even if you were of partial Jewish ancestry eg Emil Maurice who took dictation for Mein Kampf or Erhard Milch (who was of partial Jewish ancestry) you needed the right politics and ww1 service.

The reason is that Stalin and several communists before him, including Lenin, used random killing to create a powerful and effective terror. It was the randomness that was the key to the terrors effectiveness. Under Hitler's regime there was at least consistency that could be mentally 'mapped' and so avoided. Stalins cult of personality was so supreme folks died in Gulags thinking that it was someone elses fault and that as soon as uncle Joe found out he'd fix things.

This was started by Lenin. Consider the problem he had with Ukrainian Kulaks (small farmers with 6-12 employees). To the metropolitan communists these were the equivalent of conservative farmers in the US disparaged as Rednecks. Lenin just issued order such as 'kill 15000 kulaks', not interest in any kind of judicial process or even political assessment. So Stalin was probably had to be the way he was given who he was working with.

Stalin was an extremely clever man that should never be underestimated in his intelligence or capacity for mass murder as an instrument of social change. He made many amusing quips that have had me in stiches. The one about "quantity having a quality all its own" or his "you may not be interested in the revolution but the revolution is interested in you". His brilliance was in getting other folks to fight themselves to destruction while he then romped in and cleaned up. A Machiavellian master.


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## tyrodtom (Sep 4, 2014)

Quantity has a quality all it's own, is one of Lenin's known quotes. But I'm sure Stalin wasn't adverse to repeating anything said by Lenin. 

You'd think a flutter that severe would result in structural failure before it could black out a pilot.


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## timmy (Sep 4, 2014)

Koopernic said:


> Quote Originally Posted by GrauGeist View Post
> 
> Uncle Joe was a great motivator...
> 
> ...



Man that is just crazy!

Aircraft Designers in WW2 where bringing incredible improvements to aircraft designs in just such a short period of time (1939-45). There was always going to be a long list of mistakes if your trying to achieve something that has never been done before.

I wonder how many talented people in Russia never entered the field because of the risk of getting a bullet in the head if you failed?

Take Hawker's Sydney Camm. Probably would have been executed by Stalin for the Typhoon. Before he could redeem himself with the Tempest


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## Koopernic (Sep 4, 2014)

Filin, Aleksandr Ivanovich 

Major-General of Aviation 

* 18th of January 1903 
† 23rd of February 1942 
Александр Иванович Филин

Promotions
1940-06-04 Major-General of Aviation 

Service:
1930-04-XX – 1931-06-XX Acting Senior Engineer, 6th Section, Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
1931-06-XX – Senior Engineer, 6th Section, Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
Acating Chief of ? Branch, 1st Section, Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
1933-06-XX – 1935-01-XX Chief of Scientific Research Sector Land Airplanes, Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
1935-01-XX – 1936-02-XX Chief of Scientific Research Branch, Land Airplanes Section, Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
1936-02-XX – 1937-11-XX Commanding Officer Scientific Research Operational Use Squadron, Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
1937-11-XX – 1941-05-23 Head of the Scientific Research Institute of the Air Force 
1941-05-23 Arrested 
*1942-02-13 Condemned to death *
1942-02-23 Executed 
*1955-03-26 Rehabilitated *


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## GrauGeist (Sep 4, 2014)

timmy said:


> Man that is just crazy!
> 
> Aircraft Designers in WW2 where bringing incredible improvements to aircraft designs in just such a short period of time (1939-45). There was always going to be a long list of mistakes if your trying to achieve something that has never been done before.
> 
> ...


Konstantin Kalinin was one such example. He was an accomplished pilot, a WWI veteran and an aircraft designer. He founded the aviation design bureau in Kharkov.

When his K-7 failed to produce results, Uncle Joe was displeased and Kalinin was branded an "enemy of the state" and was executed in 1940.

Stalin's recurring purges did more than stifle potential development in the young educated ranks, he darn-near dropped the Soviet Union in Hitler's lap after purging all the experienced military before the war with Finland and afterwards.


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## parsifal (Sep 5, 2014)

hitlers leadership was hardly consistent and hardly predictable. He had a habit of keeping people in the dark as to the overall situation, so that people could not get a wider view of what was happening. When faced with challenges he could not understand, he frequently defaulted to simplistic views of how to react, his infamous no retreat policy was good example of that thinking. When confronted with realities that were not to his likeing, he frequently turned on the messenger, eg his attacks on Raeder, his sackings of men such as Guderian his sacking of Brauschisch. When it came to aircraft he was just as bad, as the warped priorities for Me 262s, terror weapons and other projects with no immediate benefits for Germany clearly show. He was not quite as murderous as Stalin,but his interference, if anything was far more destructive and muddled than anything uncle Joe ever produced. 

My opinion onHitlers leadership, insofar as producing a coherent procurement policy for Germany was far worse than anything Stalin did.Unlike Hitler,Stalin learned reasonably early that his intervention directly was generally counter productive. Upset stalin, and you were likely to pay with your life, but Hitlers style was much more along the lines of direct intervention, with catastrophic results for the entire german war effort, including its procurement machine


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## Juha (Sep 5, 2014)

Koopernic said:


> ... The project manager for the MiG 3 was executed for not achieving sufficient range in the aircraft...



It wasn't so simple, Filin wasn't the project manager for the MiG 3 but the head of the VVS (Soviet AF) test facility (NII VVS), as your message #34 shows. He was accussed for that his test facility passed substandard a/c to service. Because Mikoyan's brother was a People's Commissar (SU Gov minister) the fact that the MiG didn't pass the 1,000km range demand in the NII VVS tests might has been the last straw. 

Juha


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## Denniss (Sep 5, 2014)

So Vitamin B (AKA connections) was used to save Mikoyan's live and have the other one killed. Not very nice.


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## Juha (Sep 5, 2014)

Denniss said:


> So Vitamin B (AKA connections) was used to save Mikoyan's live and have the other one killed. Not very nice.




Again, not so simple, there had been numerous complains levelled against NII VVS before the case of the MiG and I doubt that Mikoyan's life was in danger but probably his reputation and that of his older brother, if he had used his influence to promote his younger brother's career.

Juha


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## tomo pauk (Sep 5, 2014)

Koopernic said:


> The Fw 190A-8 most certainly didn't have MW-50 but the FW 190A9 did have the supplementary tank added whose purpose was ultimately to be use of extra fuel, GM-1 or MW-50 given appropriate plumbing. That was the idea of moving equipment around and increasing cowling armour from 6mm to 10mm. Apart from the extra protection it helped with c of g issues.



My take is that it was easy to install a tank. What was hard was to 'persuade' the BMW-801 to work well with MW-50. 



> The Fw 190A9 and Fw 190D9 share internals as much as possible, hence the naming.



Naming was a pure coincidence, if you mean that both were '-9s'? 



> The supplementary tank most definitely was used for MW-50 in the Fw 190D9.



Indeed.



> MW-50 may not have seen use on operational Fw 190A9 but I think it did see use on Ju 88H and Ju 188E to help with take-off.



I'd be grateful for any good info re. operative use of MW-50 on BMW-801. So far none surfaced?



> The development of green dyed C fuel such as synthetic C3 (and mineral based C2) was very important in order to try and keep up with allied engine development. Hats off the Merlin engine designers and developers but it would have been a dog (ok inadequate is a better word) without 100/130 and RR would have been forced to ditch it and concentrate on Grifon development.



Merlin would be a food for another topic - with 6:1 CR it can use more boost, on same fuel than major German engines. Intercooler would've helped, and it is not a long shot for the RR to have water injection installed in case hi-oct fuel is not around.



> The increase in compression ratio, rather than over boosting, makes sense given the fuel economy improvements (about 10% more power with no increase in fuel consumption) in the context that C3 fuel was not a fixed specification. It started out at around 94/115 and improved in several steps: roughly 96/125, 97/130 or so. These are not official German numbers but the result of British analysis of German fuel. The rich mixture response initially wasn't there for really effective over boosting.



That 10% of more power is an arbitrary number, unless we know what CRs are compared. 
Engine power was at a higher priority than consumption, if I'm not mistaking it badly.



> Around late 1943 "C3 einspritzung" ie "C3 injection" was added to the ground attack versions of the Fw 190 (the F and G) in which fuel was injected into the eye of the supercharger to precool the air as well as create a rich mixture. By then you see the rich mixture response was there.



Nobody is saying that there was no rich response with C3 fuel use. 



> For some reason this system was restricted to use below 800m (2600ft).



Makes sense, since the device was aimed for the GA versions? 



> Fighter version got a simpler increase boost which was much less powerful since it lacked the injection into the supercharger which meant the air was not precooled and contracted. Latter the systems were merged and the altitude restrictions removed. There is a lot going on between late 1943 and mid 1944 with BMW801 engine.



Were the systems merged? The A-8 and A-9 used 'simple' overboost, there was no need for the C3 injection.

added: the overboost was not a system, much as the overboost of the Merlin III from 6.5 psi to up to 12 psi was not a system.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 5, 2014)

R_R has some experimental engines using an intercooler on a single speed/single stage engine (R.M.7.S.) and on 2 speed/single stage engine (R.M.4.S.M.) and using methanol (water/methanol?) on the 2 speed/single stage engine instead of the intercooler (R.M.7.S.M.). 

The 2 speed/single stage engines managed to pick up about 1000ft of FTH in low gear using the same boost pressure (1250hp at 12500ft at 9lbs) over the early XX engines and a rather respectable 4500ft in high gear (1150hp at 23,000ft with 9lbs of boost).
The R.M.7.S. used the improved supercharger from a Merlin 46/47 and managed 1100hp at 26,000ft at 9lbs boost. about a 4000ft gain in FTH. Being a single speed engine take-off was a rather depressing 940hp at 9lbs. 

Two things that don't _seem_ to have been tried (or at least not mentioned in the list of Merlin engines) was combining the Merlin 46/47 supercharger with a 2 speed drive or using an intercooler _and_ water/methanol at the same time. 

Merlin 46/47 used a larger diameter impeller, circular arc rotating guide vanes and a modified diffuser. 

While not the stars the 2 stage engines were with 100/130 fuel the Merlin would _NOT_ have been relegated to _dog_ status using the same 100 octane fuel used in the BoB ( and issued in trial quantities to several squadrons in 1938.) 
It's performance in the the R.M.7.S. at altitude falling about in-between a DB605A and DB605AS. Given a two speed drive take-off or low altitude would have been around 1300hp.

The intercooler may have weighed 70lbs? at least the part on the engine but not including radiator and coolant? 

Please note all power ratings are for 9lbs of boost. I have no Idea if the 100 octane fuel would support 12lbs using the bigger superchargers or higher gear ratios but we do know that 12lbs boost was used in a number of Merlin engines using the old 100 octane fuel. 

Granted the Griffon might have been needed a bit quicker

Reactions: Like Like:
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## tomo pauk (Sep 5, 2014)

Merlins 46 and 47 used impeller of 10.85 in diameter, vs. the usual 10.25 in, used on eg. Merlin III, XX and 45, among other single stagers. Compare with V-1710 - 9.50 in in single stage versions. No wonder Merlin was better on higher altitudes.


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## Denniss (Sep 5, 2014)

Fw 190 A-8 carried the fuel tank as standard from summer 44 - limited availability prevented earlier widespread use.
There was no problem using MW-50 in the Fw 190A as testing with A-5 and A-6 showed, it was just not as effective as the C-3 injection in comparative tests. Just the same issues also found in the Bf 109 with incresed wear on sparkplugs etc.
I can't remember to have seen boost systems other than GM-1 in Ju 88/188 with 801 engine.
In 1945 with the fuel shortages I would not rule out the use of MW-50 instead of C-3 injection.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 5, 2014)

Again, I'd love to see reports that are better than D. Hermann's article at Deutsche Luftwaffe Cockpitinstrumente Homepage Titelseite Instrumente GerÃ¤tebrett Baumuster, that starts with "Schlechte Ergebnisse mit MW 50" ('Bad results with MW 50') and says at the end:

_Infolge des erheblichen Aufwandes an Einbauteilen bei der Methanolanlage wurde vorläufig von einer serienmäßigen Einführung bei der Truppe abgesehen, *zumal es bei der Flugerprobung beim Herstellerwerk BMW während des Methanolbetriebes zu Kolbenbrennern kam*._

Bolded part means that burned pistons were occurence during the flight tests conducted by BMW?


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## Denniss (Sep 5, 2014)

Except for the extra tank there were no more parts than C-3 injection unless they used compressed air instead of bleed air to feed the MW-50. DB 605 also had lots of burned pistons but finetuning of boost/injection parameters solved this.
If you run on high boost and MW-supply stutters or stop you'd expect engine trouble.


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## Koopernic (Sep 6, 2014)

double post


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## Koopernic (Sep 6, 2014)

tomo pauk said:


> Again, I'd love to see reports that are better than D. Hermann's article at Deutsche Luftwaffe Cockpitinstrumente Homepage Titelseite Instrumente GerÃ¤tebrett Baumuster, that starts with "Schlechte Ergebnisse mit MW 50" ('Bad results with MW 50') and says at the end:
> 
> _Infolge des erheblichen Aufwandes an Einbauteilen bei der Methanolanlage wurde vorläufig von einer serienmäßigen Einführung bei der Truppe abgesehen, *zumal es bei der Flugerprobung beim Herstellerwerk BMW während des Methanolbetriebes zu Kolbenbrennern kam*._
> 
> Bolded part means that burned pistons were occurence during the flight tests conducted by BMW?



A report that was written on engineering experiments with water injection in 1942 is not likely to be relevant to the situation in 1944 and 1945 because of progress in the engine such metallurgical fabrication, spark plugs etc. If MW 50 worked in the R-2800 and if it worked in the Bramo 323 then it will work with the 801. The reality is the the engine passed its 2200hp test, then passed even 2400hp and finally 2600hp in February 1945 for the BMW 801F, whose production was held up by tooling shortages.

BMW had just managed to homologate the 2000/2050 hp rating at 1.65 ATA with C3 einspritzung by May or June 1944 so it would be a few months before the next step in power increase, which would require water injection. Clearly the Fw 190A9 (and it seems also the Fw 180A8 ) had been setup for this next step. Had the Luftwaffe had a 150PN fuel they might have gone to the higher power rating directly.

The water injection experiments included attempts at direct injection into each cylinder and this is probably where the rumours of split cylinder heads came from.

In early 1943 British fuel intelligence picked up that German green dyed fuel was reaching a new greatly improved rich mixture response of around or nearly 125PN (up from 110 then 120) and stated that they therefore expected the deployment of a powerful new engine. That engine was the 801 with C3 injection into the supercharger. Files on Fischer-tropsch.org.
http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/Tom Reels/Linked/A5464/A5464-0560-0635 Item 5.pdf
Microfilm Reel A5464

Construction of production plant, such as alkylation plant, for producing much more C3 fuel was started in 1940 but little of it was commissioned, one alkylation plant was operational in 1943. The allied oil bombing campaign caused huge problems in fuel production, moreover it effected the fruition of German plans for a major expansion of C3 quality and quantity.

In jumping from 1700 to over 2000hp it makes more sense to use this new fuels aromatic nature and its charge cooling nature (rich mixture response) rather than to suffer the complexities of water tanks etc, best to delay that till the next round of increases.

Wikipedia.de in fact list and dates the approval for boost increases for mw50 but most interestingly says that due to C3 shortages it had been officially decided to operate the Fw 190 on B4 + MW50.


Incidently allied intelligence never picked up the boost increases that gave 350 extra hp till after the war according the Hermann.

The expansion of power boost seems to go something like this:

Toward the end off 1943 improvements in C3 fuel and the BMW801D2 engine allowed an increase in manifold boost from 1.42 atmospheres to 1.58 atmospheres. Remember between 1941 the fuel had gone from about 94/110 to 97/125 or 97/130. This increased boost represents an 11% increase in air mass and is probably the source of the 1850 or 1900hp rating often quoted. (the 11% increase is theoretically 1891 hp). This was called Ladedruckerhöhung (Or supercharger boost increase)

Around the same time Fw 190F Schlachtfluzeuge or ground attack aircraft were in a difficult situation as their aircraft slowed down when carrying bombs. These aircraft thus received a different system that worked by injecting fuel into the air inlet. This precooled the mixture, caused it to contract and thereby increased the mass flow into the engine and thereby power. The system also worked at the "Ladedruckerhöhung" increase boost of 1.58 ata but produced even more power. This system was restricted to use below 1000m, not a big issue with ground attack aircraft. I assume the restriction arose out of the crudeness of the control system which would need to cut back the direct injection of fuel to near idle and transfer a slightly higher flow of fuel to the air inlet before the supercharger. Altitude changes may have confounded the air fuel ratio.

The restriction on altitude was removed by mid 1944 (before Jun 44) I suspect due to control system changes that tracked altitude changes and the boost rating increased to 1.65 ata (which was the second supercharger gear rating) 

This gave a power of 2100hp, some references quote 2050 buy I think its 2100 at 1.65 ata. This system now found itself installed on both fighter and ground attack variants.

This is broadly correct, the boost rating of 1.65 ata seems to have been available at higher altitudes when using Ladedruckerhöhung without C3 einspritzung from the beginning.

The boost improvements having been accomplished mainly due to improved fuels the use of water injection was the next step.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 6, 2014)

To move a bit on-topic: here is a table with flight test results for La-7. Please note that it took some work to speed up a serial produced example, like hermetization of fuselage and engine covers, along with change of propeller, tweaking of fuel pump (?) RS-2 and some other improvements tweaks.







Here is the power chart for some late war engines; the dashed red line is the 'forsage' (overboost) regime of the ASh-82FN.


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## Koopernic (Sep 7, 2014)

It took me a while to wade through that chart you posted, thankyou.

The sea level speed of the Fw 190A8 and A9 with C3 einspritzung (about 2050hp) was 580kmh/360mph at sea level. At 800m the speed was about 595kmh. This means the LaGG was only 12kmh faster with an introduction into service maybe 6 months latter than the Fw 190s boost increase with C3 einspritzung. Speed is clearly not an advantage of the La 7.

The Fw 190A5 with Ladderdruckerhoing, ie with the same boost level but no injection into the eye of supercharger, thus with 1850-1900hp or so managed the same speed as the LaGG: 590kmh. In other words the Fw 190A5 and La 7 had about equal aerodynamics.

Had the C3 einspritzung been run (another 6.5% power) one might have expected another 2% speed so maybe around 600kmh/372mph.

In other words the Fw 190A5 with 1850hp was as fast as the La 7, also apparently with 1850hp. Given the rather late deployment of the La 7 (testing in September 44, small numbers entering service in 1945) its advantages were not decisive. 

The contemporary with La 7 was the Fw 190A8/A9 and it lost lost only a little speed due to its heavy armour and armament.

It is worth noting however that the La 7 had about the same speed, inferior fire power, it did *have a lower wing loading and those wings also had automatic slats.*

*It is likely to have been a very manoeuvrable aircraft.* The La 7's reputation would rest on this, not speed.

By the time the La 7 was deploying the Luftwaffe was deploying aircraft such as the Ta 152H, Ta 152C, Fw 190D9, Fw 190D13 and Me 262. It had wanted to develop a Fw 190A10 with increased wing area and a 2600hp engine.

Below links to Fw 190A5 test with increased boost (1.58/1.65 ata)
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/vb-126-level-speeds.jpg
Fw 190 flight testing


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## tomo pauk (Sep 7, 2014)

It is worth noting that ASh-82FN was allowed for overboost only in 1st S/C gear, while the BMW-801 was allowed for that in both S/C gears. That means that benefits in speed and RoC for the Fw-190s that use it are to be observed also at altitudes between, roughly, 3 and 6 km, not just under 2 km, like at La-7 (and LA-5FN, once overboost is allowed). Looking at the charts posted at Williams' site, max power was for the BMW-801 using the overboost was 1900 PS in 1st gear (with full speed/ram, ~1870 with low speed/ram), and ~1650 in 2nd gear; both values are after allowance for the fan.

The C3 einspritzung was limited for 1st S/C gear, though.

Once again, performance charts from the 'TsAGI book' need to be observed very carefully, with a grain of salt as it's said.


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## Milosh (Sep 7, 2014)

How many Ta152Hs, Ta152Cs and Fw190D-13s were deployed?

The La-7 went into Soviet service at the same time as the Bf109G-10, K-4 and Fw190D-9 did in the Luftwaffe. 

At the end of Dec 1944, there was 158 Bf109K-4s on hand and had suffered 214 losses (operational and non-operational).


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## parsifal (Sep 7, 2014)

> By the time the La 7 was deploying the Luftwaffe was deploying aircraft such as the Ta 152H, Ta 152C, Fw 190D9, Fw 190D13 and Me 262. It had wanted to develop a Fw 190A10 with increased wing area and a 2600hp engine.



The 63rd Guard Fighter Aviation Corps entered combat with the La-7 in mid-September 1944 in support of the 1st Baltic Front. Thirty aircraft were provided for the trials, which lasted one month. During this time the new fighters made 462 individual sorties and claimed 55 aerial victories while losing four aircraft in combat. Four other La-7s were lost to non-combat causes, mostly related to engine problems. A total of three pilots were killed during the trials to all causes.

One regimental commander, Colonel Ye. Gorbatyuk, a Hero of the Soviet Union, commented: "The La-7 exhibited unquestionable advantages over German aircraft in multiple air combats. In addition to fighter tasks, photo reconnaissance and bombing were undertaken with success. The aircraft surpasses the most german types in speed, manoeuvrability, and, is a big improvement over the LA5FN in the landing characteristics. It requires changes in its armament, and urgent fixing of its engine."

The 156th Fighter Air Corps of the 4th Air Army was the next unit to receive the La-7 in October 1944. At one point during the month, they had fourteen aircraft simultaneously unserviceable with engine failures. By 1 January 1945 there were 398 La-7s in front-line service of which 107 were unserviceable. By 9 May 1945 this had increased to 967 aircraft, of which only 169 were unserviceable. For the invasion of Japanese Manchuria, 313 La-7s were assigned and only 28 of these were unserviceable on 9 August 1945.

If you want a contemporary of the TA152 you need to compare with the LA9. Didn't enter service untilafter the war, but development occurred at the end of the war, contemporary to the late war german types Characterisitcs wwere as follows

Performance
Maximum speed: 690 km/h (428 mph) at altitude
Range: 1,735 km (1,077 mi)
Service ceiling: 10,800 m (35,433 ft)
Rate of climb: 17.7 m/s (3,484 ft/min)
Wing loading: 195 kg/m² (40 lb/ft²)
Power/mass: 0.40 kW/kg (0.25 hp/lb)

Armament

4 × 23 mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 cannons, 75 rpg


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## Koopernic (Sep 9, 2014)

Milosh said:


> How many Ta152Hs, Ta152Cs and Fw190D-13s were deployed?
> 
> The La-7 went into Soviet service at the same time as the Bf109G-10, K-4 and Fw190D-9 did in the Luftwaffe.
> 
> At the end of Dec 1944, there was 158 Bf109K-4s on hand and had suffered 214 losses (operational and non-operational).



After studying the aircraft I realise the La 7 was a formidable aircraft. 

However I would argue that comparing it against only the Fw 190A9 is inappropriate as the Luftwaffe was deploying more advanced types at approximately the same rate the VVS was deploying the La 7. There were also clearly substantial power improvements still on the way for the Fw 190A. There are indications that the Luftwaffe was about the abandon the Fw 190A series in favour of jets and the Fw 190D and Ta 152. The lower robustness of the engine being compensated by the use of standoff weapons such as rockets and cluster bombs for ground attack.

In comparison to the Fw 190A8 the La 7 had:
5% less wing area
10% less power
25% less weight and the wings had slats.
As a result the aircraft was 1.8% faster but must have had *much greater climb and manoeuvrability *due to the lower wing loading, lift loading and higher power to weight ratio. A 10% power increase for the Fw 190 would have eliminated the speed advantage but still left the wing loading to the La 7 advantage.

A dogfight would be in the La 7 favour by a good margin.

If we count the 13.2mm MG131 on the Fw 190A9 cowlings as equal to one 20mm canon the early La 7 has only 40% of the fire power and the late La7 60%. The La 7 also seems to have had less armour, less range(at least in early models). A Fw 190 may survive a La 7 attack but the reverse is less likely due to both armour and armament and this will effect exchange ratios. There were other issues "On the production machines it was not possible to take into account only one recommendation reflected in the conclusion about passage by a fighter - on an airplane there was no automatic control unit of operation control of an engine-screw combination. That on FW-190 was operated by moving of one lever, on La-7 demanded manipulations of eight controls. To simplify operation control of an engine-screw combination it was possible only on La-7 from factory number 38101356 which tests passed from March, 20 till April, 8, 1945."

In its specialist role of interception and air superiority over Soviet Army operations it was well adapted.

1 October 1944 the Me 109K4 enters service, taking it first losses. I'll accept your figures, but note that (Prien and Rodike) state that of the 12700 planed for production 534 had been delivered to the Luftwaffe by November 30 and maybe 1200 machines built by the time war ended.

2 November 1944 the Me 109G10 enters service, it is essentially a Me 109K4 without the retractable tail yoke, some are new production, some are reworks. Some 6000 were produced by wars end.(Prien and Rodike) It was perhaps 10km/h slower due to the tail yoke not being retractable.

3 November 1944 the Fw 190D9 enters service though it has been with combat squadrons since August. This date coincides with the release
of increased boost the previous month in large numbers which increases power from 1750hp to 1900. In that same month addition of
MW-50 increased power to 2100hp. Somewhere between 650 and 700 "Doras" were built before the occupation of Focke-Wulf factories by Allied forces brought production to an premature end. By the end of December 1944 there were 183 Fw 190's in operation with the increased performance modification, and 60 more had been delivered with the MW 50 system and were at the point of entering service. MW-50 could be field retrofitted by Luftwaffe personnel.

The Fw 190D9 had only a single stage two speed supercharger and the above versions operated at 1.75-1.80 ata. The aircraft could be run at 2.0 ata and its likely release was imminent. About 15 Fw 190D13 were produced and of these 2 flown in combat. This aircraft had the Jumo 213F engine which had a two stage 3 speed supercharger. It was in general indistinguishable. A version with a new engine called the Jumo 213EB which had an intercooler, much more power and required only B4 fuel was testing at the end of the war. The engine was to be used in the Ta 152H as well.


Non of the above aircraft are quite as new, as the La 7 was, in fact neither are their engines new, since the G10 and K4 initially enter service with the slightly less powerful DB605DM or AS engines before progressing to the slightly more powerful DB605DB/DC series about 2 weeks latter. They don't face quite as many teething problems and they used mainly existing factories and tooling.

4 The Me 262 started testing with the Luftwaffe in April 1944, flew an attack against a PRU Mosquito in August 1944. Effectively it started operations on 7 November 1944 apparently Nowotny did so against orders. That same month had seen the delivery of Jumo 004B4 engine with hollow air-cooled blades, which increase reliability. February saw a further improvement. April, the last days of the war, would have seen the delivery of engines with the "accelerator control valve" a device which did make it on to the He 162. This device controlled fuel not only via a centrifugal governor but measured the air flow so as to adjust fuel flow such that the danger of engine damage and reduced engine life from excessive heat or flameout from throttle handling was reduced.

Luftwaffe pilots eventually learned how to handle the Me 262's higher speed, and the Me 262 soon proved a formidable air superiority fighter, with pilots such as Franz Schall managing to shoot down 12 enemy fighters in the Me 262, 10 of them American P-51 Mustangs. Other notable Me 262 aces included Georg-Peter Eder, also with 12 enemy fighters to his credit (including nine P-51s), Walther Dahl with 11 (including three Lavochkin La-7s and six P-51s) and Heinz-Helmut Baudach with six (including one Spitfire and two P-51s) amongst many others.

About 1,400 Me 262s were produced, but a maximum of 200 were operational at the same time.

5 the He 162 was also deploying.

6 The Ta 152H was delivered to operation geschwadder at the beginning of 1945 with the pilots attempting to fly combat in January. There were several notable combats in the next 3 months. Perhaps 7 victories and 4 losses. I believe about 50 produced with perhaps a dozen in service at any one time.

The Ta 152C should have been delivered a few months earlier. It was delayed for two reasons. The DB603EM, which required C3+MW50, was abandoned due to impending C3 fuel shortages in favour of the DB603LA which could do the same job with only B4+MW50. The other reason was that the factory producing the wings had been damaged creating a shortage of wings.

In general it would seem to take 6-9 months to debug a new type once it enters initial combat.


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## Koopernic (Sep 9, 2014)

parsifal said:


> ............snip
> 
> If you want a contemporary of the TA152 you need to compare with the LA9. Didn't enter service untilafter the war, but development occurred at the end of the war, contemporary to the late war german types Characterisitcs wwere as follows
> 
> ...



The La 9 did not enter production till 1946. The Ta 152H was definitely having combat in 1945. Imagine what improvements the Germans might have achieved in 15 months. They started flying within 6 months of starting design of the He 162 and were starting combat trials about 2 months after that again, the Ta 183 swept wing fighter surely would have been in the air with the La 9.

Had the Luftwaffe survived a little longer it would have been a nearly all jet force with perhaps a few Ta 152C and Ta 152H and some Fw 190D13/D13/D15. Aircraft would be making attacks using standoff weapons: cluster bombs tossed accurately with the TSA 2D toss bombing sight, or rockets that disperse clusters as well. Speeds of up to 488mph were expected for the Fw 190D12 with the Jumo 213EB, about the same speed for the for the Ta 152H of 474mph but with no need for GM-1. (which would add even greater speed if activated)

Even a Ta 152C, which like the Ta 152H had a much lower wing loading than the Fw 190D was likely to do 400mph at ground level and 466 at altitude. This chart does not include two advanced DB engine the DB603L, the DB603N and the Jumo 213J which were only benching at the time.

I don't think there was any danger of the Luftwaffe being outclassed in piston fighters either by the Soviets at low altitude or the Western allies at high altitude. In fact they wanted to be an all jet force.


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## Juha (Sep 9, 2014)

Koopernic said:


> ...
> Luftwaffe pilots eventually learned how to handle the Me 262's higher speed, and the Me 262 soon proved a formidable air superiority fighter, with pilots such as Franz Schall managing to shoot down 12 enemy fighters in the Me 262, 10 of them American P-51 Mustangs. Other notable Me 262 aces included Georg-Peter Eder, also with 12 enemy fighters to his credit (including nine P-51s), Walther Dahl with 11 (including three Lavochkin La-7s and six P-51s) and Heinz-Helmut Baudach with six (including one Spitfire and two P-51s) amongst many others...



Claims and kills are different things, at most appr 10 USAAF P-51s were lost to Me 262s according to Drgondog. P-51s shot down many times more 262s than they lost to them, IIRC even ground attack Typhoons had positive exchange rate vs 262s. 262 wasn't a great air superiority fighter but it was an effective bomber killer.

Juha


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## parsifal (Sep 9, 2014)

> The La 9 did no enter production till 1946. The Ta 152H was definitely having combat in 1945.


Thats mostly because the soviets didnt need to rush the La9 into service with as much indecent haste as the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe in 1945 was a force losing aircraft at an exchange rate of roughly 6:1 against it. most of its aircraft were grounded for lack of fuel, most of its experienced pilots dead. it was forced to try and redress that imbalance with aircraft of superior performance, but most of these new types did not live up to the hype surrounding them, and certainly made little or no difference to the imbalance in the fighting that was occurring on all fronts. it wasnt just numbers, though numbers was a major cause of the demise. the Luftwaffe 1942-4 had squandered much of its strength and ability as it was used fire brigade style especially on the eastern front, and by 1945 that overuse, and mis-use was coming home to roost 



> Imagine what improvements the Germans might have achieved in 15 months. They started flying within 6m months of starting design of the He 162 and were starting combat trials about 2 months latter, the Ta 183 swept wing fighter surely would have been in the air with the La 9.



I can imagine what a continued slaughter of what was left of the LW continuing. i can imagine even more miserable readiness rates as vast numbers of inferior manufactured jet technologies were churned out and then left on the ground because they were unable to fly, due to fuel shortages, lack of aircrew, and engine QA issues. The engines for the 262 had an average run time of less than 10 hours between overhauls, and that meant, that despite having produced more than 1300 of these nasty little aircraft, serviceability rates remained well below 100 for the entire duration. There is no reason to suggest this would ever improve in a post may 1945 situation. 



> Had the Luftwaffe survived a little longer it would have been a nearly all jet force with perhaps a few Ta 152C and Ta 152H and some Fw 190D13/D13/D15. Aircraft would be making attacks using standoff weapons: cluster bombs tossed accurately the TSA 2d toss bombing sight, or rockets that disperse clusters as well.
> Speeds of up to 488mph were expected for the Fw 190D12 with the Jumo 213EB, about the same speed for the for the Ta 152H of 474mph but with no need for GM-1. (which would add even greater speed)



Ah, no. These are the theoretical things they might have been able to achieve. the reality is that with all that new hardware coming into play, the LWs serviceability rates would have sunk to even lower standards, perhaps 5% if they were lucky. The allies would have countered this threat very easily.....standing patrols over the known airfields, preemptive strikes wherever the luftwaffe tried to concentrate. For the russians, they would have continued as they had done since at least 1943....not worry too much about air superiority, the air battle was an extension of the ground battle, use the air assets to assist in punching holes in the German front lines, press through with deep penetration attacks, overrun the Luftwaffe airfields and destroy these wunderbar weapons by capturing them. this was the tactics they had used with great success since kursk. the germans had held technical superiority since that time as well, and it had delivered them nothing basically. nothing was going to change that. reliance on technology to get germany out of the pickle it was in was a proven failure as a strategy, and there is nothing in the 1945 wet dream scenano that is going to change that basic reality

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## Koopernic (Sep 9, 2014)

Juha said:


> Claims and kills are different things, at most appr 10 USAAF P-51s were lost to Me 262s according to Drgondog. P-51s shot down many times more 262s than they lost to them, IIRC even ground attack Typhoons had positive exchange rate vs 262s. 262 wasn't a great air superiority fighter but it was an effective bomber killer.
> 
> Juha



"262 wasn't a great air superiority fighter but it was an effective bomber killer."

This is a sort of given folklore based around preconceptions of what manoeuvrability is and the Me 109/Spitfire comparisons but doesn't stand up. It had always been intended to use Me 262 against the escorts so as to leave the Luftwaffe's conventional piston fighters free to attack the bombers, something the Fw 190A they did very well. One one occasions dozen Fw 190's almost wiped out a squadron of B-26 Marauders for instance a few minutes. By the time the Me 262 was fully operational the Luftwaffe's piston fighters themselves would have needed escorts. They usually survived by darting between clouds, a clear day was dreadful for them.

Thanks to the work of the USAF's John Boyd and the so called "Fighter Mafia" we have a more sophisticated understanding of manoeuvrability than just turning radius and wing loading. One involving concepts of specific excess energy and power. We also understand through his work how the decision loop interacts with aircraft performance. Because of the way jets work the Me 262 had at high speed, in effect, a very high power to weight ratio compared to a piston engine aircraft and thus the ability to conduct manoeuvres, climbs and position itself favourably. At certain altitudes the Me 262 turning rate (in time) was better than that of the P-51. 

P-51 could still turn inside but even that doesn't protect one if the firing cycle has already begun. 

Bottom line, the Me 262 when flown to its strengths was a dangerous and capable adversary to supposedly more manoeuvrable piston fighters. 

Air combat manoeuvring is more like a 3D chess game than the fantasy of quick violent physical reactions of fiction.

A pilot of a conventional piston fighter would need to understand the merits of his aircraft v the Me 262 very well.

Attacking an Me 262, low on fuel, on final approach to its landing field doesn't tell us about the dog fighting ability of the aircraft.

The would be supersonic gynaecologist Heinz Mutke showed no hesitation in seeking to dive to attack allied piston fighters who were attacking a squadron buddy of his. 

I have no doubt that over claiming or rather misclaiming occurred, the 2:1 ratio of real to false claims is pretty constant amongst all fliers of WW2.


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## dedalos (Sep 9, 2014)

Juha said:


> Claims and kills are different things, at most appr 10 USAAF P-51s were lost to Me 262s according to Drgondog. P-51s shot down many times more 262s than they lost to them, IIRC even ground attack Typhoons had positive exchange rate vs 262s. 262 wasn't a great air superiority fighter but it was an effective bomber killer.
> 
> Juha



Me 262 s Claims are just Claims . P 51s Claims are certain kills. Correct? 
And since drgondog says at most(!!!) 10 p51 s were lost to me 262s lets believe him and lets consider the german pilots that claimed dozens, frauds. He also says that no American p51s were lost to german fighters from august 44 to april 45
262 not a great Air superiority fighter? I suppose in a 1 vs 1 fight you would prefer to be at the controls of the p51 than the controls of the 262
By the way , American tests pilots , post war judged the 262 slighty superior to the early p80s but... i am sure they were wrong . After all it had just 100 mph speed advantage and excellent High speed agility. Clear indications of inferior Air superiority figter ...


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## Shortround6 (Sep 9, 2014)

Hmmm, use plane with four MK 108 cannon against fighters while using fighters with two 13mm MG and two/four 20mm guns (FWs) against bombers? or use planes with 2 13mm MGs and one 30mm or one/3 20mm cannon against the bombers while the four MK 108 armed planes play with the fighter escort? 
Firing time for the lower cannon was about 8 seconds and for the upper cannon 10 seconds. Fooling around with the escorts for too long means little or no ammo left for the bombers. P-51s had about 19-20 seconds of firing time for the 6 gun armament (with two guns lasting longer.) 

Germans figured _average_ pilot could hit with about 2% of round fired on a BOMBER. With the 30mm guns in the 262 an average pilot _might_ get two bombers per flight? With the 20mm guns they needed 15-20 hits and _*NO*_ German (or British) fighter plane (not including night fighters) carried enough 20mm ammo to _average_ one kill per flight. The aces or experts could certainly do it but there were nowhere near enough of them left to base strategy/tactics or equipment use/doctrine on.


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## Juha (Sep 9, 2014)

dedalos said:


> Me 262 s Claims are just Claims . P 51s Claims are certain kills. Correct?
> And since drgondog says at most(!!!) 10 p51 s were lost to me 262s lets believe him and lets consider the german pilots that claimed dozens, frauds. He also says that no American p51s were lost to german fighters from august 44 to april 45
> 262 not a great Air superiority fighter? I suppose in a 1 vs 1 fight you would prefer to be at the controls of the p51 than the controls of the 262
> By the way , American tests pilots , post war judged the 262 slighty superior to the early p80s but... i am sure they were wrong . After all it had just 100 mph speed advantage and excellent High speed agility. Clear indications of inferior Air superiority figter ...



No voihan
According to Drgondog aka Bill Marshall in 45 Of the 36 "known air" 8th AF P-51 losses, 5 were to Me 262s, 16 were to Me 109s and 15 were to Fw 190s, there were also 6 unknown cases. So those numbers were for 8th AF in 1945. Altogether 8th and 9th AFs' known P-51 losses to Me 262s were 9 plus a couple possible. Plus what 15th AF lost.

US claims are of course also only claims if they cannot be confirmed from German data. Or good gun camera film showing disintegration or destructive crash because scarcity of the German late war docus.

IIRC US test pilots oppinions on P-80 vs 262 varied.

Juha


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## Juha (Sep 9, 2014)

Koopernic said:


> ...One one occasions dozen Fw 190's almost wiped out a squadron of B-26 Marauders for instance a few minutes...



Difficult to say what combat you meant but if the bloodiest B-26 combat, 391st on 23 Dec 44, the 262s were nothing to do with it, just poor weather and aggressive 190 pilots


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## parsifal (Sep 9, 2014)

Juha said:


> No voihan
> According to Drgondog aka Bill Marshall in 45 Of the 36 "known air" 8th AF P-51 losses, 5 were to Me 262s, 16 were to Me 109s and 15 were to Fw 190s, there were also 6 unknown cases. So those numbers were for 8th AF in 1945. Altogether 8th and 9th AFs' known P-51 losses to Me 262s were 9 plus a couple possible. Plus what 15th AF lost.
> 
> US claims are of course also only claims if they cannot be confirmed from German data.
> ...



You can also go here to see the losses for 8AF for the final months of the war. Losses to air combat were shrinking fast as the LW lost all semblance of cohesive response to the absolute pasting it was receiving by that time. this applied incidentally to all TOs, its just that the attacks over the Reich are the best documented

Asisbiz The Official Chronology of the U.S. Army Airforce in World War II 1945

This is a typical entry for 1945

"Mission 774: 845 bombers and 725 fighters are dispatched to hit oil installations and rail bridges and junctions in W Germany visually and by PFF; they claim 23-1-3 Luftwaffe aircraft including a jet fighter; 8 bombers and 2 fighters are lost: 1. 451 B-17s are sent to hit an oil refinery at Magdeburg (11); secondary targets are the Henschel marshalling yard at Kassel (292) and the Gottingen marshalling yard (26); targets of opportunity are Hadamar (12), Wetzlar (12), Dillenburg (15), Koblenz (11), Wetter (12), Limburg (8), Kirchbunden (7) and other (22); 2 B-17s are lost, 3 damaged beyond repair and 71 damaged; 10 airmen are KIA, 8 WIA and 18 MIA. Escorting are 327 of 374 P-51s; they claim 17-1-1 aircraft; 2 P-51s are lost (pilots MIA) and 1 damaged beyond repair. 2. 109 B-17s are dispatched to hit oil industry targets at Dollbergen (54): and Ehmen (24); targets of opportunity are the Koblenz marshalling yard (12), Limburg (4) and other (5); 3 B-17s are damaged beyond repair and 43 damaged; 10 airmen are KIA. Escort is provided by 199 P-47s and P-51s without loss. 3. 273 B-24s hit the Lutzel (56) and Guls (30) rail bridges at Koblens, the Irlich rail bridge (57) and the Remagen rail bridge (6); targets of opportunity are Andernach (26), Engers rail bridge (9), Trier (1) and others (6); 1 B-24 is lost, 4 damaged beyond repair and 63 damaged; 20 airmen are KIA, 8 WIA and 10 MIA. The escort is 66 of 70 P-51s without loss. 4. 12 of 12 B-17s fly a screening force mission; they are 8 minutes late for their escort and are attacked by Fw 190s when 50 miles (80 km) ahead of the bombers; they claim 6-0-2 aircraft; 5 B-17s are lost and 1 damaged beyond repair; 45 airmen are MIA. Escort is supposed to be 23 of 26 P-51s. 5. 2 of 5 B-17s fly an APHRODITE mission against Oldenburg without loss. 6. 11 of 11 P-51 s escort 9 F-5s and 1Spitfire on a photo reconnaissance mission over Germany without loss. 7. 25 P-47s and P-51s escort 3 of 4 Mosquitoes on a special operations mission without loss"

I count 2 p-51 lost, there were obviously other aircraft, mostly bombers lost as well. in exchange the LW loses (ie claimed, not actual losses) of around 30a/c. US bomber losses were 8 by my count, not including cat Es


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## Milosh (Sep 9, 2014)

Another link to the same info, United States Army Air Forces in World War II

The Americans had a hard time testing the Me262 as they kept crashing. Iirc, it was tested against the YP-80, not P-80As.


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## Koopernic (Sep 9, 2014)

Can we leave Mr Drgndog out of it and maybe just link to his posts if there is specific value in them so he can speak for himself in the correct context. He's surely one of the most balanced, gentlemanly and scholarly posters around here devoid of truth distorting passions.


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## davparlr (Sep 9, 2014)

dedalos said:


> By the way , American tests pilots , post war judged the 262 slighty superior to the early p80s but... i am sure they were wrong . After all it had just 100 mph speed advantage and excellent High speed agility.



Surely you mean to compare the airspeed of the P-51 to the Me 262, not the P-80 to the 262, which had roughly equivalent airspeed.


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