Recent content by pattern14

The Arado Ar E.555 flying wing was a consideration, and appeared promising, but expense and resources ( as well as time) were against it. Given more favourable conditions it certainly would have out performed the other contenders. Still, these aircraft are best relegated to the Luft 46 basket as...

Getting back to the He 177, it was a flawed design, partly due to the twin engined bomber mindset of the Luftwaffe heads at the time. The 4 engined he 277 was a much more promising design. German bombers never had the success of their allied counterparts for a myriad of reasons, although you can...

Interesting topic, although much of what actually happened on the soviet side is still probably not easily accessed. Combat records from the Germans were pretty good, mainly due to the meticulous nature of the Germans themselves, and comparative freedom of information from British and U.S...

Sorry, I should have been more specific; I was looking at the European theatre.

While I was looking for some info for ANZAC day comming up in April ( 100 years this year), I came across some conflicting reports about the final air battles of WW2. While you could probably assume that the last encounters were between the handfull of remaining Me 262's and the FW Ta 152, I...

As it stands, the Ta 152 was the final development of the Fw 190 due to the war ending. The potential of this aircraft had not been reached, but it was by no means revolutionary. I still maintain that the luftwaffe would have done better by concentrating on this aircraft ( and the Me 262) than...

In the book "Darwin Spitfires", there is some comprehensive research into the combat results between the Zero and the Spitfire MkV. One of the more unknown but interesting aspects was the high rate of engine failures among the Spitfire. A significant number simply fell out of the sky during...

Initially in quality control. Any aircraft built of quality materials by skilled workers with adequate resources and back up will always perform better than one built under adverse condtions. It is very difficult to produce top quality machining and fabrication when survival is the primary goal...

I'm just chiming in on the end of this thread, after wading through the Me 262 diversion etc. I'm not sure what all the fuss was about, as factually, the Me 262 was the fastest, heavily armed fighter of WW2; just about everything else about it is a matter of opinion. Looking at the performance...

Been away for a while, but I will dig out my reference material tomorrow about the P38 incident, as well as the Me 262 escort mission(s). I'll post it tomorrow night sometime.

True, we will never know. On the subject of the FW190 doing the same job, I doubt if it could have done any better. As it was, the Me262 flew as escort in the Flak suppression role, and did provide a modicum of protection for the Ar234 which had to hold straight and level for a bit to achieve...

As far as I can tell, the AR234 could only carry out nuisance raids on advancing troops; ie "the Bridge at Remagen", advanced allied airfields, and such like. Carried externally, their bomb capacity was not large enough for anything more. The Recon versions actually flew over the UK without...

All that aside, the only German bomber to have any sort of impact ( pardon the pun),by the end of the war, was the Arado Ar234. By 44/45, allied air supremacy made every conventional Luftwaffe bomber ( and most of their other aircraft) well and truly obsolete, and the Ar234 was the ONLY luft...

In my book "luftwaffe secret projects;Bombers", there is a relatively good section on the He177, which showed that that the aircraft was basically flawed from the outset. Using two coupled engines to drive one prop was a mechanical absurdity, leading to extensive maintainence and cooling issues...

Thanks for all the data, but my point was that 4 engined bombers were not considered to be a necessary addition to the existing types in service. The Ju 88 was picked out at random as being a good medium twin engined bomber, although the He 111 was produced in greater numbers etc. The battle of...