1940: Luftwaffe's ideal heavy fighter?

spicmart said:

According to the data provided by fellow members and reading my own books the Fw 187 very well could do that.

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So why wasn't it produced in large numbers at any time?

1940 is pretty irrelevant because the Luftwaffe didn't want a heavy fighter,as defined by various contributors to this thread,at that time. If the organisation that orders and pays for aircraft doesn't want one like the one you are hoping to produce then you won't sell it to them.

That seems a more relevant question than hypothetical discussions about what it could or couldn't have done.

There are many what ifs. Some at the British Air Ministry were still prevaricating over future Spitfire orders in 1939.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

1940 is pretty irrelevant because the Luftwaffe didn't want a heavy fighter,as defined by various contributors to this thread,at that time. If the organisation that orders and pays for aircraft doesn't want one like the one you are hoping to produce then you won't sell it to them.

That seems a more relevant question than hypothetical discussions about what it could or couldn't have done.

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Sorry if I may have been repeating the points that other members already posted...

So is this whole thread completely superfluous then?
I thought if we're looking for something "ideal" that it never can be based solely on facts, in this case historical ones.

spicmart said:

Sorry if I may have been repeating the points that other members already posted...

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Not really. Several people extol the virtues of the Fw 187 and I myself do not consider it to have been a bad aeroplane.

With hindsight it may or may not have been the ideal fighter for the sort of operations that the luftwaffe was volunteered for in 1940. We'll never know how it would have done against contemporary single engined types because it was never put to the test. Taking the data from a handful of prototypes and pre-production aircraft and extrapolating that into a game changing aeroplane is an excercise fraught with danger. There is many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

It was never put to the test because it wasn't an aeroplane which the RLM/Luftwaffe was looking for in the lead up to WW2. It was considered for other roles on several ocassions later,right up until August 1942, but was rejected every time

Cheers

Steve

IMO that's about five years too late.

Focke-Wulf Fw 187 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tank then took the design directly to Wolfram von Richthofen, chief of the development section of the Technischen Amt, the research and development arm of the RLM. Richtofen was not so convinced that bomber performance would remain superior to fighters, and gave the go-ahead for the construction of three prototypes, but on the condition that they replace the DB 600, which was in extremely short supply, with the less-powerful 515 kW (700 PS) Junkers Jumo 210.

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RLM refused to let Focke Wulf purchase DB601 engines. That was the kiss of death for the Fw-187. They killed the He-112B and He-100 using similiar bureaucratic methods.

Stating there weren't enough DB601 engines doesn't wash either. Daimler-Benz was in business to make a profit. If allowed to sell engines to paying customers they will expand engine production.

You have to love the RLM me first Germany last.

Unfortunately for Focke-Wulf, Daimler Benz did what the RLM wanted. The ancestor of the DB 600 series engines had been built to an RLM requirement and the initial contract for the engines was from the RLM,not an aircraft manufacturer.
This disconnection between aircraft and engine manufacturers would cause problems throughout the war.
Steve

The fairy god mother could flick her magic wand and new engines would be flying of the assembly line in an instant for the Fw187.

riacrato said:

Well I know they DID take a few Me 109 Ks with them, so there's that. Naturally they were more interested in new technology, such as jets.

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No they didn't,not one.

Both the British and Americans had tested captured Bf 109s of various types during the war but neither was interested in 1945. No Ks were ever taken to or tested in Britain or the USA.

Steve

There is a well known picture supposedly presenting a Bf 109 K-6 (but that apparently really is a K-4) that iirc has been taken on an airforce base in the US. I have no stakes in this discussion (I simply don't care or think it matters if they did or not), just passing along what I read. Feel free to correct me.





Just funny how the RLM gets panned for any debatable decision around here. I don't know where you work, but name an organization that makes 100% correct decisions all the time. Even with todays information technology, giving us much easier access to information, we can't do it. The He 112, He 100 would've been a waste of DB60xs, one in the short and the other in the long run, even with 20/20 hindsight that should be clear. The RLM settled for the Fw 190 instead and that was a very wise decision. Cancelling the Fw 187? Debatable. But the RLM was sure they needed a larger, more conventional and more developed fighter: The Bf 110. MAYBE they were not entirely correct. But that is far from being obvious truth, it's still very speculative and debatable. The Fw 187 would've been a decent escort. Would it change the outcome of the BOB? Hardly. MAYBE it, too, could've been converted into a decent nightfighter. VERY debatable since even the Bf 110 was borderline too small.

It's Bf 109 G-10/U4 from Wiener-Neustädter Flugzeugbau (WNF).Its WNr has been lost but it was in the 610000 series.

The fake US applied camouflage doesn't help. It was originally FE-123,captured at Neubiberg. It was taken by truck to Cherbourg and shipped to Newark. It was then either trucked or possibly trained to Freeman field. It and FE-122 another G-10 W.Nr. 611943,were taken at the same time and place. FE-122 eventually became Yellow 13 of Planes of Fame. Both were in poor condition,barely airworthy. As far as is known neither ever flew in the States.
FE-123 was restored to static display condition (with that awful camouflage) at Freeman Field. The photo you posted is one supposedly taken at Patterson Air Force Base but I wouldn't know. There is a good colour picture taken from the other side.

The people panning RLM decisions are doing so with the benefit of hindsight. At the time decisions had to be taken without that luxury. They managed to produce some good aeroplanes despite the inevitable mistakes. Mistakes are more likely under the pressure of losing the aerial war.

Cheers

Steve

"fraught with danger"

Why so?


The title of this thread lets one assume that hypothetical scenarios and aircraft can be included in this discussion.

It's a matter of preference if one goes for a discussion style based solely on hard (dry) facts whatsoever or for one that gives interesting scenarios (imho) of what could have been.

With the former we can debate about the political, economical, etc, circumstances that lead to the failure and rejection of Fw 187 program.
With the latter we can talk about the topic from a viewpoint as regards technical and operational properties and assumptions of the possibilities and potentials of this certain aircraft.
All this of course on available data and statements as a base for preliminary estimates.

Maybe there is room for both approaches without to simply discard the plane as irrelevant just because it never had the chance to prove itself or because noone wanted it at the time.

It may work differently in different countries and at different times, but in the US once you get to 1940 or so the engines were "GFE" Government Furnished Equipment. Curtiss and Bell ( and North American) bought very, very few Allison engines. The Government bought the vast majority and then "issued" them to the airframe makers. No the engines may have gone straight form Allison's loading dock to Curtiss's or Bell's loading dock but make no mistake, the engines were US government property. Pretty much the same for P&W and Wright. They did have commercial sales but if the Navy wanted 200 F4Fs with R-1830 engines the Navy contracted with with P&W for 200 plus engines ( an allotment of spare engines being contracted for at the same time) at teh rate of XX number of engines per month and/or the contract to be completed in YY number of months. IF P&W has enough capacity to build additional engines to sell at the same time to the Army or foreign countries or commercial customers, all well and good. BUT failure to deliver the Navy engines on time could result in severe penalties.
This is for pre-war factories, factories built after FDR's announcement of a 50,000plane air force in 1940 were built with government money and equipped with government owned machine tools. Who do you think got the final say in where the engines from those plants went?

In some cases French and British orders could only be accommodated by US armed services agreeing to take later deliveries (usually of improved models) so currant production could be used for the "new customers". It is not a case of highest bidder gets the engines or "just build an addition on the factory" which was done but the addition could take months to build and not really affect production for a year or so.

In Germany who was buying the engines? IF the RLM was buying every engine DB could make ( or 90 something percent) then the RLM decided what airplanes got the engines. IF the RLM was buying COMPLETE aircraft and the airframe maker was responsible for contracting with DB then it is a different story.

I am sure that the RLM decided which engines went to which aircraft. It was the RLM that assigned quotas of engines to the manufacturers of different aircraft types. There was certainly not a free market operating for aero engines.

Whether the ministry owned the engines at this point I'm not sure. I believe the manufacturer was paid the contract price of the aircraft after acceptance,including the engine. This is from memory and I stand to be corrected.

Steve