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Talking of bomb loads,as somebody was, it is interesting that the Mossy could carry half a ton more than a B 17 at 50 knots faster
Many pages ago I voted for the Mosquito and I'm sticking to that. I'm also making a case that the Mosquito was more versatile than the Ju 88: not only more roles, but also excelling at them. The Ju 88 excelled at what? In few (if any) of their shared roles was the Ju 88 superior to the Mosquito. Mosquito was the better fighter, night fighter, reconaissance aircraft, torpedo launcher, ground support aircraft ... and bomber. The Mosquito could carry more internally at higher speed or could do this over a longer distance.
Kris
Hey Chris,The fact the Mossie is more superior is not up for argument, however I will ask you what roles could the Mossie perform that the Ju 88 could not? I will also say that an aircraft does not have to be the best at every role to be considered the most versatile aircraft or the best in certain areas.
Overall I will agree that the Mossie is a better aircraft however.
However...
To say the Ju 88 did not excell at is intended roles is flat out wrong. I can not think of any roles that the Ju 88 failed at.
Hey Tomo!! nice to see you here man
Hey Chris,
please note that I said that the Ju 88 didn't excell at its intended roles, not that it failed at them. That means that the Ju 88 could perform those roles sufficiently but it wasn't thàt great at them while the Mosquito set new standards for them.
Civettone said:But let me explain what I mean by the Ju 88 being a good aircraft but not great. As a bomber it had mediocre range, and a small internal bomb load (it could only carry small bombs internally, so all 500+ kg bombs had to be carried externally), insufficient defensive armament and with its bomb load carried externally a low maximum speed. All of this compared to the other two German bombers it was to replace: the Do 17 and He 111. In the BoB relatively more Ju 88s were lost than He 111s and Do 17s which says quite a lot IMHO.
Civettone said:As a night fighter it was too slow. Until early 1944 the main version remained the Ju 88C which was hardly faster than the bomber version.
Civettone said:It was not succesful as a ground attack aircraft (Ju 88A-13 and P) because of insufficient manoeuvrability.
Civettone said:An icnreasingly important role for bombers was as a carrier for remote guided bombs/rockets. It's telling that the Ju 88 was not suitable for this role, and they had to revert to the He 111, Do 217 and He 177.
To say that something did not excell, is to say that it did not perform well in them. The Ju 88 performed all of her roles very well. That does not mean she performed the roles the best though.
Chris, doesn't excell not mean that the a/c was excellent, meaning not just performing well, but really outstanding? I'm not interfering with the discussion here, but just genuinely linguistically puzzled
Marcel said:And this to be add to the discussion: Mr. Bekker in his Luftwaffe diaries calls the Ju88 a failure. Not by being a bad aircraft, but by not living up to expectations. It was introduced as wonderbomber, but in fact it wasn't really that.It was as Kris (BTW welcome back) pointed out, too slow, under armed, low bombload etc. According to mr. Bekker the Ju88 was a good aircraft, but not a winner.
Correct! (I just wanted Soren to say itCivettone
the internal load of A series Ju 88s consisted 50kg bombs.
Juha
Chris, an interceptor needs to be faster to be able to catch the enemy aircraft. Especially in WW2 when radar guidanc e was faulty: the ground operators were constantly being mislead and sending the interceptors all over the place. If the Ju 88C flew 50 kmh faster but it was off by 50 km it would have taken a full hour to catch that bomber.
Faster fighters can also intercept more aircraft. Plus, it makes them more difficult for the Mosquito to intercept them.