1940: ideal fighter for the Luftwaffe?

The demarkation between "strategic" and "tactical" is blurred. I think better terms are 'Light", "Medium" and "heavy".


Examples of the blurred demarkation between tactical and strategic is the mosquito. It was both a tactical and a strategic bomber, as wll a a CAS aircraft. It carried as much bombs a a B-25 at range, and bombed all manner of targets. so what is it. You cannot call it a "tactical bomber, or a strategic bomber, or a ground support aircraft, without doing a dis-service to the other two categories. If however, you refer to it as it should be, a "Light" bomber, these difficulties fall away. b-17 becomes a heavy bomber and b-25 or wellington becomes a medium bomber. Each of these categories have characteristics that act as strgths and weaknesses for the type.

davebender said:

Heinkel He 112 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hungary wanted to and apparently they preferred the He-112B over the He-100. Romania and Spain also opted for the He-112B rather then the He-100. Why would that happen if the newer He-100 design was considered superior?

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Had the two been built side by side I would agree with that but the He112 rolled out in 1935 was already blooded and production models delivered and the first he100 prototype was barely out of the hanger in 1938. The Wiki He112 article implies a political decision and not on the merits of the aircraft. In other sources there seems to be a lot of rivalry between Hungary and Romania and because of that the RLM sided with Romania. But Poland was attacked and that pretty much ended any sales.

On Wiki it is a good starting point for research to get you going in the right direction but I treat it like the SALT missile treaty..........Trust but Verify!!!

RLM cannot take sides in diplomatic disputes. That's what the German Foreign Secretary is for.

Hungary and Romania had a border dispute created by the Versallies Treaty. Slovakia, Poland and Hungary also had border disputes when the artificial state of Czechoslovakia disolved. These disputes were mediated by the governments of Germany and Italy before they boiled over into shooting wars.

These disputes were mediated by the governments of Germany and Italy before they boiled over into shooting wars.

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tell me you are joking right????

These disputes were mediated by the governments of Germany and Italy

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Ähm
Sometimes I'm speechless!

Mediated is to my opinion the wrongest phrase you can choose for this issue!
Aggressively blackmailed would be a much better description.

I don't want this thread to go political but I can understand the reaction from parsifal and it is irresponsible to write somthing as above.

parsifal said:

The demarkation between "strategic" and "tactical" is blurred. I think better terms are 'Light", "Medium" and "heavy".

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Unfortunately those categories are equally flawed.

The Fairey Battle, Bristol Blenheim and Mosquito were all "light bombers" at some point in their careers.

The Bristol Blenheim (again), Handley Page Hampden, Vickers Wellington have all been referred to, at times as medium bombers.

The Armstrong Whitley, Short Stirling, Handley Page Halifax, Avro Lancaster were all heavy bombers.

The Bristol Beaufort and Blackburn Botha, were called torpedo bombers and were never put in a "light, medium, heavy" category.

There seems to be some confusion as to the Avro Manchester, some sources saying the original specification was for a "medium bomber" but I think most every body agrees the result was a "heavy".

While the Vickers Warwick was built to the same specification it seems to have been considered a heavy, but then at times the Wellington seemed to float in and out of the heavy class depending on date, who was speaking/writing and perhaps the needs of a press release.

As an interesting "factoid" (at least to me) the MK I Whitley ( a Heavy bomber) had a max take-off weight of 23,300lbs, The MK II and III had a max take-off of 24,430lbs. A MK XVI Mosquito ( LIGHT bomber) had a Max take-off of 25,000lbs?

Granted this took a few years.

And this is just for the British, trying to figure out other counties light, medium and heavy bombers can get really confusing

Another extreme case. Take-off weight for a Y1B-17 was 34,880 pounds normal loaded, 42,600 pounds maximum, 7 years later the A-26B ( attack plane or light bomber?) went 22,362 pounds empty, 26,000 pounds loaded, 41,800 pounds maximum ( with water injected engines) . Figures are from Joe Baugher's web site but the loaded figure does not make sense.

The A-26B held 800 gallons in the nacelle and wing tanks for about 4800lbs of fuel. 27,162lbs with no oil, no crew, no ammo, and no bombs? Max fuel included a 125gal protected tank in the bomb bay and an unprotected 675 ferry tank in the bomb bay for a total of 1600 gallons of fuel.

A few notes/thoughts on the He 100.

I see no reason it could not have been upgraded to later models of the DB 601 engine as far as the engine mount goes. The bigger problem is cooling. For every increase in propeller HP a corresponding increase in heat rejection to cooling medium and oil almost always occurred. Granted this could be solved by fitting a small auxiliary radiator ( or a bigger one than under the late He 100s) but this alters the drag and affects the projected performance numbers.

According to some sources there were 2/4 fuel tanks in the wings. At least photos and drawings showing four fuel fillers are available. Photos also exist a one or more He 100s with a fuel filler behind the cockpit indicating a fuselage tank. What may be questionable is if any of these tanks were self sealing and what the increase in weight and decrease in fuel capacity would be if they were fitted with protection.

Armament in 1940 was crap. later versions (1941?) may benefit enormously from the MG 151 and/or MG 131, both programs were apparently running late so the armament problem is not Heinkel's fault alone. The larger wing ( 4 gun?) may also have helped with a minimal performance loss. Changing wing sizes usually changed the speed performance less than some people anticipate. However, gun ports, barrels, and shell casing slots may screw things up more than many people think.

I am not sure about the advantage of the He cooling system in regards to battle damage. I see no reason to doubt the idea that it could take hits better than a conventional radiator. The problem as I see it is that the likely hood of hitting the cooling system is an order of magnitude greater than hitting a conventional radiator. While planes did go down from a single ( or two) bullet hit/s to the radiator/oil cooler, how many returned with a dozen of more hits in the wings or tail surfaces that hit nothing important? or even a 20mm cannon hit or two? On the He 100 those non-critical hits become holes in the cooling system/s. I don't know how many holes equal one hit in a conventional radiator but hits cannot be shrugged off forever.

For the engine oil the solution on the Ki-61 test bed utilizing a conventional radiator which frees up the aft evaporators to add cooling capability. The auxiliary radiator fitted to the V-4 through the production models was retractable and was used while on the ground or in the climb.

The wing had four tanks as shown. They are not self-sealing but then in 1939-early 1940 period you'd hard pressed to find someone that has besides the German bombers. And the effectiveness of early attempts at fuel protection is debatable. An example of fuel reduction and weight increase can be shown on tank protection on the P-40. The unprotected system capacity was 180 gallons and was 170 lbs. With late war high quality protection the capacity was reduced to 135 gallons and weighed 420 lbs.

Heinkel had already fitted a loaned MG151 to the engine mount to confirm its engineering but I don't know if it was trialed. This was always the problem of waiting for technology to catch up with planning.

I agree that turning the evaporators into Swiss cheese would have the same effect as holing a radiator. Each evaporator was independent from the others and they were sectionalized. So the section with the hole would vent steam but not the whole evaporator. The steam was not under pressure from the engine except that from heat expansion. The process of steam loss from damage is slower than a radiator so the pilot would have more time to sort out options. I guess it would be a function or how many hits per the area of the cooling components.

There was a good fighter somewhere in the He 112 but where? I cant blame the Luftwaffe for taking the Me 109 over the 112.

Sometimes you pick what is good there and then. No point waiting for the 112 to mature because by 1940 you could still be waiting!

And it still will be an ageing design. The He 100 was certainly a design which should have gone into limited production to see what it was capable of then maybe ramped up as time went on.

But we get back to the original question...was the Bf 109 so bad?

1944? Yeah...perhaps...1940...nope. I don't see how one can blame designers for getting it wrong 9 years in the future.

No it wasn't bad for 1940, the 109 was the best you could do on 1000 HP for a fighter of standard designs and the He100 was thinking out of the box to squeeze the maximum performance from 1000HP. It wasn't until later in 1940 that engines were becoming available delivering more HP.

It is just conjecture about trying to speed up engine or gun development, the planners and manufacturers were hindered by politics, lack of money and resources (and possibly technology) They also don't have our advantage of Monday morning quarterbacking.

The Germans simply did not have the resources available to them that USA had. Which means they had to put eggs in one basket. However bad that basket was.

Shortround6 said:

There seems to be some confusion as to the Avro Manchester, some sources saying the original specification was for a "medium bomber" but I think most every body agrees the result was a "heavy".

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The Manchester was designed and built to specification P.13/36. The P signifies it as a specification for a medium bomber.


From our friends at Wiki Air Ministry Specifications

Each specification name usually followed a pattern. A leading letter was usually present to identify the aircraft purpose. The codes used included B for "heavy bomber", e.g., B.12/36, P for "medium bomber", e.g., P.13/36, F for "fighter", e.g., F.10/35, and A for "army co-operation", e.g., A.39/34. The second part was a number identifying it in sequence and then after the slash, the year it was formulated, so in the example given above, B.12/36 signifies a specification for a heavy bomber, the twelfth specification of all types issued in 1936.

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Shortround6 said:

While the Vickers Warwick was built to the same specification it seems to have been considered a heavy, but then at times the Wellington seemed to float in and out of the heavy class depending on date, who was speaking/writing and perhaps the needs of a press release.

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The Vickers Warwick was built to B.1/35 for a twin engined heavy bomber (according to the Warwick Wiki page, twin engined medium bomber according to the Air Ministry Specifications page).

The Short Stirling and Supermarine 316 were designed to B.12/36 for a heavy bomber. Interestingly a Warwick with Vulture engines was included under this specification.

DonL said:

To my opinion the He 100 is a dead horse and very much overrated because of the philosophy to join the smallest possible cabin/fuselage with the "biggest" engine.
This philosophy has not much room for development and space for a perhaps more powerful engine with the need of more space for cooling.
The He 100 was an extreme of this philosophy but to my opinion the Bf 109 suffered also from this philosophy but on a less extreme way.

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The Yak-3 was also built with that philosophy in mind AFAIK (well, not exactly, yet I think it's close enough). But why did this work where other attempts failed?

It "worked" because it limited in it's mission and because the Russians had other aircraft available to do some of the missions it could not perform. The later Yak-9s had longer range ( some much longer) and could better handle the big 37 and 45 mm guns.
I am not sure if the Yak-3 carried bombs or not.
It was a great fighter for what it did, but most other countries were not interested in such a specialized aircraft at that point in the war.