Best medium bomber?

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just one that hasn't come up yet...

the Ar 234 blitz

fast.....really fast, good handeling, ok reliability(darn jets )

not suggesting best, (not enough carrying capacity) but concidering it had a good chance of surviving in 1945, that has to count for something
 
1. Mossie
2. ju88
3. tu-2

Mossie and 88 obvious but IMO i think the Tu-2 is pretty underrated, it was very fast with good bombload and range, long served with significant numbers.
 
Sure 3 engines mean more speed. The Z.1007 ter proved to be faster than the Z.1018 which had two stronger engines.
The main advantage of having three engines is survivability. One engine out on a twin engined aircraft usually means a crash but that cannot be said for a three engined aircraft which will then only lose 33 % of its power.

It's bad for the defensive fire arrangement though.

Kris
 


It doesn't always work that way Chris. One has to look at the specific aircraft single engine performance and that will determine part of the survivability of the aircraft. Some aircraft fly real well on one engine and can attain at least a 200' per minute climb on one engine (which in many cases is all you need). Other aircraft will actually loose altitude and will not sustain any climb performance on one engine. If I remember most US twins had real good engine out performance and in some cases were actually overpowered. I do know the He 111 did not fly well on one engine. The the event of a tri motor you're still playing with engine out procedures if one of the outboard engines fail, if the center engine goes it's almost a non issue and I would guess the degradation of performance would not be as great as with a twin..
 
I think if I had to choose one to fight the last six months of the war, it would be a toss-up among the A-26 Invader, the Ju 188, and the Tu-2. Now for the record, the Pe-2 was a good plane too, and I think the Do 217 was fairly effective, at least when it first came out, the A-20 was serious business in 1942, the Ju 88 couldn't be kept down, the Mosquito too, but then, some might argue whether it was truly a medium. I would like to know more about the operational record of the PY1 Frances and also the LeO 451, which seem to have made a good account for themselves considering the formidable circumstances they faced. One thing to keep in mind is the rapid changing pace of technology and A/C development. Consider not how a plane was in the context of the whole war, but rather in the context of the part of the war it served in. The PZL P.37 Los was an excellent bomber for 1939, and had there been enough of them available, it might have done some serious damage to Germany. Amazingly, it carried a heavier bombload (some 5,000 lbs) in 1939 than most mediums carried in 1945. Another one I'd like to know more about is the Yer-2 from Russia, a twin-engine bomber with a range of over 3,000 miles. . . .
 
I like the japanese Mitsubishi Ki-67 "Hiryu". It is often classified as a Heavy, but, with only 800kg bomb-load and two-engined, it´s a true medium i think.
The "Hiryu" carried only a third from the bomb-load of the JU-88-A4 and have a fewer range, but was faster, fly higher and was heavier armed.
My Allied favorite is the Mitchell B-25.
 
Aren't the Ar 234, Mosquito and Ju-88 light bombers? Surely medium bombers are the likes of the Wellington, He 111 and B-25?
 
The Ar 234 was more of an attack/light bomber (in terms of mombload, range, size, and since all bombs were carried on external racks)

I think the Ju 88 and Mossie would classify as medium bombers. (fairly long range and fairly large bombload, though in the case of the Ju 88 the max internal load was 1,400 kg/3084 lbs -28x 50kg bombs-)

The Blenheim, Do 17, and A-20 would fit in as light-bombers.
 
That doesn't work for me KK as the Mossie was a small and fast light bomber, the first 'strike aircraft' in the modern sense. It was about the same size as the Blenheim and much smaller than the Wellington or Hampden which were medium bombers.

Similarly I think the Ju88 is much closer to the light class than the Do 17 was, I would call that a medium bomber in the He 111 class.

Having said all that I have read several times that Americans class light/medium or heavy by payload rather than actual size so we may not be arguing the same point anyway. But I don't see how a Ju 88 can be medium while a Do 17 is light ?
 
As far as I know Ernst Udet ordered the Ju-88 to be developed as a 'heavy dive bomber' after the prototype had flown but that does not make it a heavy bomber either. I can give you the Ju 88 though as it is very borderline, although a fraction too small to be a true medium bomber, it is also too big to be 'light' . Also, all of my own references describe the type merely as a 'twin engined bomber' which seems a bit too vague really. I suppose I think of it as a light bomber simply by comparison alongside 'real' medium bombers like the He 111 and Wellington which were much bigger.

"Mossie was concieved at first as a unarmed fast bomber.

Read all about it here
"

I do actually know the Mosquito quite well thanks and it was not just concieved that way, it was built that way too. Just look at a Miossie next to a Wellington, they are not in the same size class. Even the Manchester was classed as a Medium bomber initially as this was the class of aircraft that P.13/36 called for.

Despite this DH deliberately set out to prove that the medium bomber spec could be met by a small light bomber, and this became the Mosquito.

There was a project to develop a larger medium bomber from the same design, this was the DH 102 but the Mossie was definitely a fast light bomber as was the Hawker P.1005. The Albemarle and its ilk were medium bombers while the Halifax and the (by now) Lancaster were reclassified as heavies.
 
The B-26 Marauder is my pick. Bombing from medium altitudes of 10,000 to 15,000 feet, the Marauder had the lowest loss rate of any Allied bomber--less than one-half of one percent. By the end of World War II, it had flown more than 110,000 sorties and had dropped150,000 tons of bombs, and had been used in combat by British, Free French, Australian, South African and Canadian forces in addition to U.S. units. In 1945.
 
I'll go with the B-25, for its adaptability. It went from level bomber, to close support bomber, to gunship and was still viable in the other roles. The one qualm I have with it is having seen it in person it is very cramped for the gunners in the waist section, and presumably the rest of the plane.
 
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