Fw-187 could have been German P-51?

One problem we have the Fw 187 is that we don't KNOW how it would actually perform at high speeds. It is a contemporary of the P-38 in timing. In fact first prototype flew over two years before the P-38. Newer does not always mean better but if both the P-38 and P-47 had problems with compressablity (among other planes) and the Spitfire escaped pretty much by chance instead of design then why are to believe the the FW 187 wouldn't run into trouble?

The Fw 187 might have been a formidable warplane but it also required much more resources than the 109 and 190.

As far as "Also do you realy think, that a significant better single engine fighter was possible with the DB 601,605 and Jumo 211 engines as the Bf 109?"

Just think a P-51 with a DB 605 instead of the Allison.

OldSkeptic said:

Good points overall, but don't be too hard on the P-51. It delivered the coup de gras to the Luftwaffe. The hard worked and suffering P-38s, plus the ;ater longer ranged P-47s carried the 'heavy load' of the first part of the destruction of the Luftwaffe in late '43 through early 44. The Germans Twins (mostly 110s, though some 88s and 410s) were cleared form the skies by them, which were critical for the Luftwaffe's tactics in winning the 2 air wars over Germany in late 43 (against the USAAF and the RAF). Once they were gone they were left with the 109, insufficient guns against the US bombers (and if they were added terrible performance) and the 190As, which had the guns, but had insufficient high altitude performance. The Germans paid a terrible price for their poor high altitude engine development.

Where the Mustang was critical was that the Luftwaffe had pulled back, yes leaving areas like most of the Ruhr vulnerable, but many things, especially the oil refineries and coal to oil plants were still out of range of the escorts. and the Germans could inflict terrible losses on those bombers who tried.

The Mustang had that range and it's performance was superior, at those altitudes, to anything the Germans had at the time. Plus, it's range was so good that they could (and did) chase the Luftwaffe right back to their bases, giving no respite at all.There was no, up and hit the escorts/bombers, then disengage and get back refuel/reload and then do the same. It was up and hit the escorts/bombers, then get chased all the way back... Then, if you got back at all, you had to face getting through a gauntlet after that refuel/reload, even before you got close to the bombers (though German tactics in that mid-late 44 period were woeful which aided the escorts job immensely).

The Mustang was not an 'uber plane', just very, very good and had terrific range (aided by good planning and tactics of course thanks to Doolittle who, after Park, I put as the finest air tactician of the western air forces).

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No intention to belittle the P51, it's just that I have always considered them to be given more credit as a fighter plane and less as a tactical weapon. That's not really an opinion, but more of an observation. It would be interesting to see how they would have fared, if the roles had been reversed. i.e, THEY were on the back foot, totally outnumbered with inadequately trained pilots and resources. While thousands of FW190-D's piloted by freshly rotated, well trained crew, were breathing down their necks day in day out. It's just that I have seen and read so much over the years how the P51 was this and that, but it never really told the whole picture.

DonL said:

Please can you name other then the He 177, Do 19 and Ju 89 and both the Ju 89 and Do 19 were Ural Bomber requirements and compare to the layout of the He 177 old fashioned.
Also do you realy think, that a significant better single engine fighter was possible with the DB 601,605 and Jumo 211 engines as the Bf 109?
Does it make sense to develop an other single engine fighter a/c with the same engine?
I have written this several times in this forum, the major mistake was 1937/38 with the advertisement of the Bomber B and a 2000PS engine.
There was no natural development from 1938-1941 of the normal DB 601/Jumo 211 engines to the next upgrade DB 603/Jumo 213, instead the LW supported the Jumo 222 and DB 604X.
The Bomber B program and the engine requirements costs 3-4 years development time for the DB 603 and Jumo 213.



With He 187 and think you mean the FW 187 from Focker Wulf?

If so I disagree with your opinion. The FW 187 was a twin engine fighter/light destroyer which had a formidable aerodynamic and promised much more speed then the FW 190 and Bf 109 and much more agility then the FW 190, equal to the Bf 109.
From the data sheets the Fw 187 was to my opinion much more promising then the P 38.
To my opinion she would be lighter, much faster and would had much less wing loading, with ordinary DB 605 engines and the punch of 4 x 151 canons.

I agree about your analyse about the training of the LW pilots, but also here the Bf 109 was not a good a/c for rookies.
The Bf 109 was a bitch to fly, especially at high speeds and since 1943 lacked a lot of level speed against her enemys.
The Bf 109 was a pure energy fighter, but since 1943 with no advantage to escape through speed.
At the hands of experts, she was a deadly weapon, if the pilot had the advantage of the position and could dictate the fight through dive and climb, once the Bf 109 was sqeezed in a fast vertical fight she was dead mead!
Here I see the big advantage of the FW 187 for rookies, through the promised speed, if the position of the fight is bad, she would have had the advantage through a very high level speed to escape against a P 51 and P 47

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Got my Heinkels and Focke- wulfs mixed up again...sorry about the mistake!! As for the Ural bomber thing and the He 177, the He 277 was a far superior aircraft, with none of the inherent flaws of the 177 . In the same league as the B29, it got canned in 1943, along with most other bomber projects.

pattern14 said:

No intention to belittle the P51, it's just that I have always considered them to be given more credit as a fighter plane and less as a tactical weapon. That's not really an opinion, but more of an observation. It would be interesting to see how they would have fared, if the roles had been reversed. i.e, THEY were on the back foot, totally outnumbered with inadequately trained pilots and resources. While thousands of FW190-D's piloted by freshly rotated, well trained crew, were breathing down their necks day in day out. It's just that I have seen and read so much over the years how the P51 was this and that, but it never really told the whole picture.

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British had two squadrons of the Allison powered version still in service in May of 1945, down from six squadrons on D-Day, they were running out of spare parts but they must have liked it for some reason given all the late model Spitfires they had.

The Mustang may not have best at any one thing or even several somethings BUT it was close enough that the difference was very small ( a few percent wins a bar bet but may not win an actual combat). If the Mustang had been grossly inferior in some attributes then it wouldn't have mattered that it showed up over Berlin, it would have been a target.

pattern14 said:

No intention to belittle the P51, it's just that I have always considered them to be given more credit as a fighter plane and less as a tactical weapon. That's not really an opinion, but more of an observation. It would be interesting to see how they would have fared, if the roles had been reversed. i.e, THEY were on the back foot, totally outnumbered with inadequately trained pilots and resources. While thousands of FW190-D's piloted by freshly rotated, well trained crew, were breathing down their necks day in day out. It's just that I have seen and read so much over the years how the P51 was this and that, but it never really told the whole picture.

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Quite true, in fact the Mustang wouldn't have been ideal for that situation because of climb speed, except as a combination team with Spits. With the Spits taking on the escorts and the Mustangs (suitably upgunned) going for the bombers (ie the FW-190 role). Its fast speed and long loiter time would have helped greatly of course, being able to disengage , loiter around and attack at most tactically favourable times. As always, good tactics, planning and training would have been the key to success. Even with heavy cannons or even rockets the Mustang should have had the speed to stay clear (or disengage) against the escorts and pick the best times to attack, ideally when they are being disrupted by Spit attacks.

Think of it as a superior 109/190 combination. BoB round 2 in essence, with the Mustangs in the Hurricane role, doing the heavy lifting of the bomber attacks.

Naturally numbers count, if they are outnumbered 10:1, then it doesn't matter what the performance is like.

Reversing it around wouldn't work so well, the Spit's (except the XIV) don't have the 'spare' performance to really load them up, what they do have is the climb speed and altitude performance to get up (even over) the escorts to disrupt and break them up ('peeling them off' in Park's terminology, creating openings for the heavily armed Mustangs to get in and hammer them.

Good tactics would be to use squadron sized Spit attacks as early as possible to get the escorts to drop their tanks and ideally get them to lose altitude.

pattern14 said:

No intention to belittle the P51, it's just that I have always considered them to be given more credit as a fighter plane and less as a tactical weapon. That's not really an opinion, but more of an observation. It would be interesting to see how they would have fared, if the roles had been reversed. i.e, THEY were on the back foot, totally outnumbered with inadequately trained pilots and resources. While thousands of FW190-D's piloted by freshly rotated, well trained crew, were breathing down their necks day in day out. It's just that I have seen and read so much over the years how the P51 was this and that, but it never really told the whole picture.

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Think you have it another way around - in the time Merlin Mustang started to seriously hurt LW (Feb-May 1944) it did have the considerable performance advantage where it mattered (20-35000 ft), and it did not have the numerical advantage. Thousands of Merlin Mustangs were never flying against Germany, more like hundreds, from second half of 1944 on.
As for the Fw-190D - fine aircraft, but almost a full year late to matter. It needed several thigs to 'get into Mustang's shoes' - performance advantage vs. perspective adversaries (from April 1945? when two-stage engines were installed in D-11/12/13) and combat radius (the wing tanks were never installed in a production D-12/D-13?). The D-9 as-is cannot do anything like it, in addition of being too late for 1944.

tomo pauk said:

Think you have it another way around - in the time Merlin Mustang started to seriously hurt LW (Feb-May 1944) it did have the considerable performance advantage where it mattered (20-35000 ft), and it did not have the numerical advantage. Thousands of Merlin Mustangs were never flying against Germany, more like hundreds, from second half of 1944 on.
As for the Fw-190D - fine aircraft, but almost a full year late to matter. It needed several thigs to 'get into Mustang's shoes' - performance advantage vs. perspective adversaries (from April 1945? when two-stage engines were installed in D-11/12/13) and combat radius (the wing tanks were never installed in a production D-12/D-13?). The D-9 as-is cannot do anything like it, in addition of being too late for 1944.

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It was only a hypothetical suggestion of role reversal. How could I have it the other way around?? The Luftwaffe was seriously numerically disadvantaged by late 44, and the allies had total air superiority. The Luftwaffe in conception was never meant to be anything more than advanced ground support ( as in Blitzkreig ) with all objectives met by 1941. Goering himself decreed in 1940 that there was to be only one fighter ( the bf 109), and only existing types were to be developed. It was the aircraft manufacturers that wanted their planes produced, and given lip service by those in charge at the time. In short, the Luftwaffe had to persevere with ever increasing obsolete planes. The total change in circumstances had them on the back foot from then on, with no effective pilot rotation system, and resources squandered on rivalries and too many projects in the pipeline at one time. The Luftwaffe was a total failure in the long term.

The situation in winter of 1944/45 was very different than in winter of 1943/44. For example: on Feb 19th 1944, the 8th AF (ie. main USAF air force tasked for strategic campaign against Germany proper) has only 2 groups of P-51Bs, 2 groups of P-38, and 10 groups of P-47. A fighter group of the 1944 USAF was under 50 aircraft.
You can read more about the Big Week (started on Feb 20th 1944)here, for example. Any kills beyond Ruhr were due to either to P-38 or P-51, since the P-47 of the era has smaller range than P-38 or P-51. The LW in the ETO lost, between Jan and May 1944 (5 months) some 4800 fighters, compared with 2100 lost from Sept to Dec 1943 (4 moths). That is despite relocating of plenty of fighters from MTO and Eastern front into Reich defense.
Bill (drgondog) should know much more about the strengths, kills and losses of the P-51 in 1944-45.

In second half of 1944 the P-47 was both rangier, and USAF was able to base it in France, plus there was far more P-51s available, so really USAF was able to provide more escorts at greater deep of Germany proper.

edit: doh, I was replying to your original post

pattern14 said:

The Luftwaffe in conception was never meant to be anything more than advanced ground support ( as in Blitzkreig ) with all objectives met by 1941.

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This is a common misconception. He 111s are lousy "advanced ground support" aircraft, but they were among the better strategic bombers of the day ( the day being 1939/40/41, nobody having 4 engine bombers in any quantity).

That is what most people simply didn't understand!

The difference between Wever and Wimmer and Göring and Udet, and they also didn't understand the meaning of Wever's death and the return of Göring to do decissions, but he had not a single clue what he decided, from any technical issue!

Shortround6 said:

This is a common misconception. He 111s are lousy "advanced ground support" aircraft, but they were among the better strategic bombers of the day ( the day being 1939/40/41, nobody having 4 engine bombers in any quantity).

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I don't think it was or is a misconception. Everything that I have ever read about the objectives of the third reich places the Luftwaffe as part of the Blitzkreig strategy. That does not mean it could not have a strategic bombing arm as well, apart from the fighters neccesary to protect them. A long range bombing capability basically died with Wever.

pattern14 said:

Everything that I have ever read about the objectives of the third reich places the Luftwaffe as part of the Blitzkreig strategy. That does not mean it could not have a strategic bombing arm as well, apart from the fighters neccesary to protect them.

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Assuming unlimited resources and facilities. Building a strategic bomber force is a very expensive undertaking and diverts vast resources from other projects. No nation, particularly Germany in the mid/late 1930s could afford to build a complete suite of ideal weapons for every conceivable future scenario. The planners have to make decisions, sometimes we, with seventy years of hindsight might think they got it wrong, but you can't have everything.

It is well known that towards the end of the war Germany's single engine fighter production increased dramatically, but this was at the expense of just about everything else. There was, in 1944/5, just as in 1935/8, only so much pie to go around.

The expense (cost effectiveness if you like) of the western allies strategic bombing campaign, particularly the RAF's, is something which still provokes debate today.

Cheers

Steve

pattern14 said:

I don't think it was or is a misconception. Everything that I have ever read about the objectives of the third reich places the Luftwaffe as part of the Blitzkreig strategy. That does not mean it could not have a strategic bombing arm as well, apart from the fighters neccesary to protect them. A long range bombing capability basically died with Wever.

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This is with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Who else really had "long range bombing capability" in 1939-40?
The aircraft were just not up to it. It was no more possible to build a "Ural" bomber in 1939-40 than it was to build an "Amerika" bomber in 1944.
It is about 1000 miles from Berlin to Moscow and around 1500 miles from Eastern Poland to the Urals. For comparison it is about 900 miles from London to Warsaw.

You can't build bombers with that kind of range with four 900-1100hp engines. The Americans cheated, their 1200hp engines used in the B-17 and B-24 used turbochargers and acted like other peoples 1400-1600 take-off power engines at cruising altitudes. And they didn't come into service in any numbers until late 1941.
The best "strategic" bomber in the world in the fall of 1939 was the British Whitley and it would have had trouble surviving in daylight against He 51 Biplanes.
Another example of the Luftwaffe "tactical" thinking (not) was the beam navigation/bombing systems that came into service in the summer of 1940. They did NOT spring into being in a few weeks. They are hardly the type of thing a "tactical" air force would use.

A part of the He 177 fiasco was the desire for speed/range and payload using the 'existing' low powered engines. the coupled engines offered less drag than 4 separate engines. Less drag = more speed/range for the same power.

As Stona has said, there was only so much "pie" to go around. Building 4 (or 6) engine bombers in 1939/40/41 with 1000-1500 mile radius would have meant small numbers of such bombers and less of everything else to boot.

Also what sort of bomb load is this UralBomber going to be able to carry to say Chelyabinsk (Tankograd). 4 x 250kg bombs isnt going to do much damage, the RAF was dropping 5,000kg of bombs and incendaries and still struggling to knock out factories in 1945.

The Germans seem to have emphasised range over bomb load from the outset. In the original specification for the "Fernbomber" issued to five aircraft manufacturers in June 1936, including Heinkel, and which was the origin of the He 177 a range of 5,000 Km but a bomb load of a mere 500 Kg is stipulated.

Interestingly Ernst Heinkel gave an account of a conversation he had with Udet in 1937 which goes a long way to explaining why a strategic bomber was not developed for the Luftwaffe. Heinkel didn't want to continue development of a four engine bomber if it was going to be of no interest to the Luftwaffe. According to Heinkel, Udet replied.

"Jeschonnek and the General Staff cannot see a way in which we can use it. Nobody is thinking about a war against England. Goering has had full discussions with the Fuhrer before taking the decision to concentrate all our resources on the twin engine dive bomber............If anything happens it will be a war with Czechoslovakia or Poland. For the conflicts in which we are likely to be involved we only need a medium bomber with a small range and bomb load. We'll go on developing the He 177 for research purposes."

That is self explanatory. Resources were to be used for developing the medium bombers and nobody saw any need for a strategic bomber fleet. Whether they were right or wrong is a moot point. Even with seventy years of hindsight it is difficult to argue that resources should have been diverted to developing a four engine bomber at this time, at a cost to the medium bombers and other aircraft that were produced and which enjoyed considerable success.

Cheers

Steve

i agree the original preception for planning did not include a war with the uk or the us....i dont think they were bargaining for a war with france at that time either. hitler was thinking more eastward and everything he had probably would have worked in a war against the ussr at that stage of the game. once the game changed and the western allies became foes...the die was pretty much cast as to the direction of the LW. they did not have the ability to revamp the whole works nor do i think they fully comprehended what was about to come at them in either scope or material. I dont know if it even mattered if they did with hitler being so stubborn.

Stumbled on this thread when looking for a few things related to some off-topic tangents in recent discussions including the Fw 187 among other designs. And, political issues aside, there's a few technical points that no one seemed to touch on in this discussion, or at least manage to gloss over to the point it missed actual discussion.

stona said:

Look at the cooler intake on V5.



Compare that with the radiator intake on an A-0, the only version to sort of enter some kind of service. These radiators did not have to deal with the heat from the more powerful DB 601.



This is just one of many differences between a prototype aircraft and something which could actually fight. You are completely ignoring this. You don't have to be an aerodynamicist or undertake sophisticated calculations to work out that these kind of differences will degrade the performance figures that you keep quoting.

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The image of the V5 nacelles looks very much like a retractable radiator in the fully retracted position. Several of the Fw 187 prototypes (including the V1) used similar arrangements on the Jumo 210. (and somewhat reminiscent of Heinkel retractable radiators)

The A0 preproduction aircraft switched to bulkier fixed chin radiators as also shown in the above pictures. (I'm not sure why the change was made, but I suspect at least partially to save on weight and to simplify the design of those aircraft -it was also done on the prototypes targeting the later 2-seater 'destroyer' modifications that led to the A0)

There may be some other oddities with the V5's cooling system, but that does at least look like a retractable radiator.

Additionally it was the V6 prototype that (at least according to Wiki's sources) employed an evaporative surface cooling system (described in a manner akin to the surface cooled He 100), not the V5. It also used a DB-600 opposed to the 601 apparently employed on the V5.

The V5, from what I can gather from all the resources already pooled into this thread, seems to be the closest to a speculative single-seat 'proper' DB-601 powered aircraft, albeit not operationally equipped. And even if it did use an exotic radiator design there's still one other area that hadn't been even suggested in this thread: adapting low-drag embedded radiators in the wings. (more like the Mosquito, Bf 109, Spitfire, and I believe Bf 110) That's something that was never tested on the aircraft and could have significantly reduced drag. (the retractable radiator arrangement may have worked well too if developed to operational status, and that was, after all, the practical solution the He 100 finally settled on)

DonL said:

the steam seperator in german called Dampfabschneider, was part of the engine, and it's main duty was to hold the water liquid circle of the engine bubble free, so that no steam bubbles could get at the water circle of the engne.
It was also used for normal high pressure water cooling at the DB 605, Jumo 213 and DB 603.
The first german engines as the Jumo 211A-H (Jumo F was the first with high pressure water cooling) and the DB 601A-N (DB 601E as the first with high pressure water cooling)were not high pressure water cooling engines and the part of the glycol was very smal and at the jumo engine only part of the water cycle at winter month. The engine highest temperature of the non high pressure water cooling engine was 90 C, for the high pressure water cooling engines 110-120 C. It was higher at the second generation engines with steam seperator.

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This seems to point to the V5 not using the surface cooling of the likes of the He 100 and Fw 187 V6, but an adaptation of the existing open-loop unpressurized water cooling system of the DB 600 to allow for temperatures exceeding the boiling point of water without having steam bubbles appearing in the cooling jacket. Technically this would be a form of evaporative cooling, but only as a side effect (main intent was increased water temperature) so SOME sort of condenser would be needed but only a small one (to return the collected steam to the main water circuit or reservoir). DB made this mechanism obsolete by adopting a pressurized cooling system with the DB 601E, so it's no wonder further development was abandoned. (admittedly, I'd been under the impression the 601A had already introduced this feature)

However, it appears Jumo 211 (and apparently early 601 models) did indeed adopt such a system to allow some improvement in cooling area efficiency over conventional unpressurized systems. (this too became obsolete with the introduction of pressurized cooling on the 211-F and later models)




And on the Fw 187 in general: yes the really useful/exciting potential of the airframe is mostly hypothetical since those variants were never built or at least not configured in a combat ready manner, and the entire high performance single seat twin engine fighter concept was continually at conflict with RLM doctrine and other politics as well. That said, I still think there's a reasonable indication that it could have developed in a similar manner to the P-38, perhaps with fewer problems (no turbo issues, better roll rate, no obvious compressibility issues) and similarly adaptable as a long range fighter, interceptor, and fighter-bomber/attack aircraft. (and possibly limited use as a late-war night fighter once more compact AI radar becomes available, similar to the P-38M)

I also find it odd that the Jumo 211 was never tested on the aircraft and rarely if ever comes up in literature relating to it. It's not as good as the 601, but still a reasonably capable design that should have fit well enough (and far better than the 210).


Edit: additionally, while the 2 (let alone 3) seater configurations were cramped and left little room for further expansion, a single seat version should have been more flexible. This could include moving the cockpit back to make room for more guns in the nose. (and adjust for COG with the added guns making things more nose-heavy -especially for the likes of MK-108; 2x 108s in the nose and 4 151/20s in the cheeks seems realistic)