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My vote for the apex will probably go to the A-6, it sported more firepower than earlier versions (and cannon fire was of same muzzle velocity), while not as draggy as the A-7 and later. Though I'd delete the cowl MGs and install the external air ram intakes to improve high alt performance, that was an easy expedient.
Thanks for the pic, it is a handy reference.
The D-9 have had less power at altitude than A-9, it's supercharger was not better. The weight was less if it didn't sported outboard cannons. The hi-alt power of the BMW 801D2 remained the same from late 1942 to late 1944 (unless GM1 was used), by what time the 801S entered production.
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Bluntly, a lot of the critcism of the tests of the FW190 vs Allied aircraft shrieks of special pleading. And don't get me started about the "brilliant fan-cooled engine." If everybody else manages without a power-sucking fan, why is it so smart to add one?
...The particular "FW 190A-5/U4" tested in this report was at best a "well-used" aircraft....
But weren't the speeds attained during these tests at least commensurate with the tests performed by the Germans on new production machines? I'm talking without any type of added emergency boost system of course, as it wasn't utilized during the testing (I didn't notice it mentioned anyway). If this is true then it wouldn't be stretch to believe that it was in decent enough condition and could provide a reasonable example of an operational machine in current use by the Luftwaffe.
The speeds quoted here are pretty consistent with the typical specifications given for the type and with reports by the Germans themselves.
The question is whether or not the Germans normally measured maximum speed with emergency power. I believe that they did not.
The Americans typically quoted maximum speeds with emergency power and that is pretty much what we are seeing here.
Japanese, FWIW, did not use emergency or take-off power for their performance tests.
The way I interpret this is that if you have three aircraft with identical book performance from their respective nations' specifications, in actual combat when everyone was running emergency power, the Germans and Japanese aeroplanes would actually have an advantage.
- Ivan.
Hi Ivan and Tomo,
So in a nutshell, if the testing of this particular FW-190 were performed with boost it would have been even faster. I fully agree with this assumption. However this doesn't take away the fact that this particular airframe hit speeds similar to what one would expect from a A-5 model, without the application of some form of emergency boost. I have heard that a typical war emergency injection system will add about 10 - 15% more engine horsepower and in most cases will increase the speed of the airplane by 10-15 mph (15 to 25 kph). To me this proves that the aircraft tested by the US Navy was in decent shape and was not a worn-out machine as implied earlier in this thread. What are your thoughts on this?
A "war on two fronts" is an old military nightmare, not only for Germany. However increasingly Germany had a war on multiple fronts. Stalingrad and El Alamein were at about the same time, as were Kursk and the invasion of Italy. Rome fell at the same time as D Day and Bagration, while through all of this there were the wars on the sea and in the air. That is the major conflicts there were many others in places like Greece Norway, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
I worked in Germany and it goes back much further than the two world wars, in fact back to before the Thirty Years War. If you had a mind to you could call the Napoleonic wars a World War and Prussia was on the side of Great Britain in that, while in the Franco Prussian war, France declared.And Germany voluntarily put itself into that very situation twice in a generation.
I worked in Germany and it goes back much further than the two world wars, in fact back to before the Thirty Years War. If you had a mind to you could call the Napoleonic wars a World War and Prussia was on the side of Great Britain in that, while in the Franco Prussian war, France declared.
This has nothing to do with WW"s best dogfighter.
German fighter aircraft were always using emergency power (usualy called 'Notleistung') for maximum performance, tests included, eg. 5 min worth for DB 601A/E/605, 3 min for BMW 801C/D, 5 min for 801S. The only time period they will not do it was when it was explicitely banned, for example on DB 601E (~6 months), or 605A (~15 months). Engine setting that improved boost (over-boosting), and thus power, was called 'Special emergency power' ('Sondernotleistung', used MW 50, worked both on 87 and 100+ oct fuel) and 'Increased emergency power' ('Erhoehte Notleistung') that took advantage of high oct fuel resistance for detonantion. For the BMW 801D, the 'Increased emergency power' went to 1.58 ata in low S/C gear and 1.65 in high gear, power rising up to 1900 and 1700 PS for low and high gear respectively.
Hopefully we'd get Japanese A/C test reports translated, in order to better understand how they actually tested their fighters. I myself don't believe they didn't make tests with max engine power.
Points well taken. I suppose one could also argue that Japan was fighting on multiple fronts as well in the PTO- all of the Allied "island hopping" campaigns, plus China, Burma, and after May 5th 1945, the potential threat from Russia as well.A "war on two fronts" is an old military nightmare, not only for Germany. However increasingly Germany had a war on multiple fronts. Stalingrad and El Alamein were at about the same time, as were Kursk and the invasion of Italy. Rome fell at the same time as D Day and Bagration, while through all of this there were the wars on the sea and in the air. That is the major conflicts there were many others in places like Greece Norway, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
I never realized that the "normal" speeds attained by most A-5 aircraft was so high. But then again it was a relatively light aircraft with a wing of minimal area and fuselage that had much less wetted area than either the Hellcat or Corsair. And given that the Hellcat weighed pratically fifty percent more than the German machine and had a much larger wing area, I would actually expect the FW-190A-5's speed to be even higher than the numbers quoted in the last post. It leads one to believe that the it wasn't as aerodynamically advanced as either the F6F or F4U.....
I never realized that the "normal" speeds attained by most A-5 aircraft was so high. But then again it was a relatively light aircraft with a wing of minimal area and fuselage that had much less wetted area than either the Hellcat or Corsair. And given that the Hellcat weighed pratically fifty percent more than the German machine and had a much larger wing area, I would actually expect the FW-190A-5's speed to be even higher than the numbers quoted in the last post. It leads one to believe that the it wasn't as aerodynamically advanced as either the F6F or F4U.....
I never realized that the "normal" speeds attained by most A-5 aircraft was so high. But then again it was a relatively light aircraft with a wing of minimal area and fuselage that had much less wetted area than either the Hellcat or Corsair. And given that the Hellcat weighed pratically fifty percent more than the German machine and had a much larger wing area, I would actually expect the FW-190A-5's speed to be even higher than the numbers quoted in the last post. It leads one to believe that the it wasn't as aerodynamically advanced as either the F6F or F4U.....