davparlr
Senior Master Sergeant
I certainly agree with this. We also don't know if the improvements would have worked or not.
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Looks to me like fewer then fifty Ta-152H were produced. So I wouldn't place much weight on performance of the handful that made it into combat. We don't know what improvements would be made after the first 100 or so enter service.
Mr Juha
1) We also knowthat these were not operational Jg11 machines.They were the first of the type to be assigned to the unit and were on their transfer flight, by pilots of unknown type experience, and who knows the tactical situation of the engagement. Even Me262 was vulnerable under certain conditions
2) Brown also writes ,in the same article ,that they had not neither Mw50 nor GM1 in England , so Ta 152 never showed its full capabilities. Its final conclusion was that the two aircrafts , as flown at those test, were very close. But it is really nery strange that it compares the Ta to a recce version of the Spitfire.
My personal opinion is that Ta 152H with boosted ailerons would be better at all altitudes than C version and with C3 fuel a formidable opponent for any fighter of its time.
How many times 152Hs fought with Spitfires? Did Ta 152 pilots ever claim a Spitfire? Now we know that JG 11 lost 2 Ta 152Hs to Spitfires and third made wheels-up landing to Lech a/f for whatever reason, so only one of the 4 152s in that Schwarm arrived intakt.
Juha
And what Brown writes (in Air Enthusiast Quarterly 1) "In so far as manoeuvrability was concerned, the story was very much the same; the Spitfire was certainly the better of the two below 30,000 ft (9 145m), there being little to choose between the British and German fighters between that altitude and 35,000 ft (10 670 m), but above the latter altitude the Ta 152H-1 enjoyed a decisive edge..." And I'd not call Spit PR 19 as "light" It weighted 9000lb with full internal fuel and its max permissible was 10,450lb, it was unarmed but not light Spitfire.
Juha
Hello Jim
All true and nobody had claimed that Ta 152 wasn't a very formitable fighter. But
1) a) Do you know any other Ta 152 vs Spit combats? If not, how would LW pilots knew that one should not be anymore "leary of the Spitfie" b) Now some Ta 152 fans have claimed that because Reschke succeeded to shot down a Tempest, that shows that Ta 152 was a superior plane totally forgetting that the 152s surprised the Tempest pair while it was strafing trains. Juha
What does that have to do with German fighter pilots? I doubt 1 out of 100 joined the National Socialist Party.
These Ta 152H were pre production aircraft, all of a technically different configuration. A squadron of Spitfire XIV bouncing what were only 6 essentially prototype Ta 152H on a transfer (evacuation) flight in the 10th last day of the war, when Germany conisisted of tiny territory, cleaven in 2 (or 3 or more) and swarmed by hundreds of allied aircraft counts for nothing in evaluating the aircraft. We have no record of the event, only a hearsay account...
Brown has to be taken with a grain of salt in this,
Brown also writes that the PR XIX latter known as the PR.19 was less manouverable above 25,000ft.
Of course Browns evaluation is purely subjective. The superior manouverabillity of the Ta 152H over the MK XIV above 25,000 that he acknowledges etc etc can't be explained in terms of better engine power for the German aircraft...
They weren't suprised, they had an extensive dog fight. While WO Mitchell of NZ RAF 486 is often descrive as a Rookie he would have had at least 300 hours of training before he went to a squadron and then more when he got there. He may have had more total hours than Reschke who would have learned 'on the job' rather than at a fighter school in Canada.
The Tempest wasn't a notworthy turning fighter, the Ta 152H simpy out turned the Tempest, probably easily. This is the side effect of building a wing with a high L/D ratio. Had Michell come across a plain FW 190A his tactic of turning might have worked as even if he couldn't have matched the FW 190 turn he would have just flown around the circle faster. Again the Ta 152H was a new aircraft.
The Ta 152H1 the RAF captured had MW-50 installed. Simply running the engine of C3 achieves much the same result as B4+MW50.
Mr JuhaNow Mitchell was Reschke's 25th kill and he had been 10 month in a front line unit, and because of the history of JG 301s had got instrument flying training, so he had got more flight time than a normal LW fighter pilot during his training, Mitschell was a newcomer.
As I wrote earlier the two other Tempest pilots participating the combat claimed in their combat reports that they out-turned their opponents.
Juha
Then why was it employed for ground attack?
Mr Juha
1) According to our Anglosaxons friends Tempest at that stage of war was running at 13lb boost and had over 3000hp and was a specilized low level fighter. Ta 152 H had 1750 hp. It is amazing that the other two Tempest pilots did not destroy the Ta s or that Mitchel was unable to escape Rescke, all he had to do was put the throttle forward. But it appears that Tempest ,even with massive power advantage, was not able to dominate the Ta.
2) Mr Juha you must decide, german pilots overclaimed or not? In many threads you question their reliability of claims, but in this thread you use Rescke s 25 claims with no question, to prove that he was very more experienced than Mitchel.
4) Indeed , there were no combats between Spits and Ta s. But an experienced pilot that had faced Spitfires and knew their turning abilities, could judge if Ta 52H abilities was adequate to face Spitfires turning..
5) I agree that Ta 152H with just 1750 hp , and lacking the aerodynamic improvements intended for the normal production machines,were not something special performance wise at low altitude. But they desplayed that the type possesed qualities very very important that some people prefer to ignore
"""4 The one opportunity they had of evaluating the Ta 152H flown by an experienced German fighter pilots against a Spitfire in post war mock combat was avoided (see Hermann) because it was feared that the German pilot would bail out and destroy the aircraft. This is a case of the allies being victims of lurid propaganda about the nature of Germans as fanatics. Possibly the comparison was good for the longevity of the Spitfire legend but now we'll never know."""
The Nazi's were fanatics mate,"
The Mauser MG 213 would not solve much of the weight problem for the 152 armamment?
Because of load lifting ability. and the fact that a plane DOES NOT have to be a great dogfighter in order to be a ground attack machine. Few strafing runs, rocket firings or bomb drops were done in 4-6 G turns. AS long as the plane responded to the controls in a predictable fashion and perhaps more importantly, had decent aileron response at high speed that may be all that was needed.
All the aileron (or roll response) charts at at indicated airspeeds, which is darn close to actual speed at sea level. Trying to do a ground attack run at 350mph (if the plane can go that fast) with severely degraded aileron response is going to difficult no matter how well the plane turns ONCE it has banked.
Now Mitchell was Reschke's 25th kill and he had been 10 month in a front line unit, and because of the history of JG 301s had got instrument flying training, so he had got more flight time than a normal LW fighter pilot during his training, Mitschell was a newcomer.
As I wrote earlier the two other Tempest pilots participating the combat claimed in their combat reports that they out-turned their opponents.
Juha