Dose anbody have any info on the do 335 such as manuveribility, did it see any combat, how well it performed at hight altitudes, and how well did it dogfight. I just started in depth resirch of the do 335 the other day and found out that that plane is
! I was just wondering if it had entered large scale production if it would have the ability to change the corase of the war by shooting down large numbers of allied bombers and state of the art fighters.
Any info would be much apricated. I think that plane would have had a 8) awsome potental and I am just plane desperite for info on performince.
The Do 335 is probably my favorite German plane of WWII (just look at my siggy!); it had a lot of potential but, like so many other German
wunder weapons, it was just too late to see action. According to OFFICIAL records, no Do 335 took part in any combat with Allied aircraft. Supposedly, a couple were spotted in the air by Allied pilots, but they were (supposedly) unable to close with the a/c due to it's incredible speed (400 mph+ at low level, 470+ at altitude). Would it have been able to change the course of the War? Maybe, if it had been introduced in 1943 or 1944, instead of 1945. However, by then, the Me 262 was entering production, and the scant German resources available by then would probably have been better used on the 262, rather than the 335 (as much as I love the 335). It is, if nothing else, the ultimate piston-engine fighter, extremely fast, and reasonably maneuverable, especially for it's size. I have often wondered how it would've done at the Reno air races against other WWII "superfighters"; I suspect it would've walked away from them, given it's overwhelming power and extremely efficient airframe.
The initial production variant was the Do 335A, a single-seat fighter-bomber armed with one (1) 30mm Mk 103 cannon firing through the spinner, and two (2) 15mm MG 151 machine guns in the cowl, plus an internal bomb bay, capable of carrying either one (1) 500 kg bomb, or two (2) 250 kg bombs. The only other major variant scheduled to enter mass-production was the Do 335B bomber-destroyer, which carried two (2) 30mm Mk 103 cannons in the wings (firing outside of the propeller arc), along with the aforementioned MG 151's in the cowl position. The only German aviation unit to fly the 335 was the
Erprobungskommado, which was the Luftwaffe's wartime test evaluation unit. A total of approximately 40 airframes were built during 1944-45, but only one survives today. One can only imagine what would have happened if the 335 had been introduced even six months earlier; with a projected top speed of 474 mph+, no Allied a/c would've been able to touch it, until the advent of the P-80
Shooting Star in late 1945. Unfortunately, it didn't have much of a combat ceiling (37,400'/11,400m), so it's performance above 35,000' is questonable. However, for an airplane of it's size, it was surprisngly maneuverable, though not as maneuverable as a comparable single-engine fighter; the 335 would've excelled at destroying larger, less maneuverable targets (like two- and four-engine bombers). If you are into flight sims, and want to find out what it was like to fly the
Pfeil, try playing Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator 3.
Go
here for the link to a website that has some really good pictures of the sole surviving Do 335 at the Smithsonian Air Space Museum (actually, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center).