Fw 187 for 1939-45

Shortround6 said:

The 187 wasn't going to hold that much but it seems there was some room to rearrange things.

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There is whole outer wing to take advantage of.

Shortround6 said:

He did but they were rather small. Depending on version or drawings 210 or 260 liters in each wing root which is ridiculous compared the fuel in a P-38 wing root.

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When we compare the fuel the P-38 carried in the fuselage, things indeed get ridiculous

Ok, because I like small twins, and because I always found the Fw 187 interesting.

I want the aircraft to be able to function as an escort and as an interceptor, fighter bomber capability in a pinch if that won't make things too complicated. By all means try to put a camera instead of guns in a few. Honestly I don't know how good a climber it was, but let's help it what we can. Keep it down to one crew member, meaning forget all about defensive armament. after all we're not calling out for defensive armament on the P-38 or the mosquito. If it's speed can,t protect it, it's not worth the bother anyway. and a low drag single light gun is not going to cut it, a proper position or turret will weigh too much and be too draggy.

You demand 1939 to 1945, but I suspect that by the end of the war my version will be long in the tooth. Possibly it can take even more than DB 605, but building in stretch from the start would cost performance early on, which is the period we want it for. Who can avoid thinking battle of britain? Not that this tweak will change that a lot, it will only be marginally better than the Bf 110 when that was used correctly. That is, independently and offensively, energy fighting. No matter how small and light we make the thing, it will never be more nimble than Hurricanes and spitfires.

The biggest problem is what die luftwaffe will do against night bombers from around 1941, I can't see other aircraft than the Bf 110 being canselled to make DB 601's available. A couple of years later I see a family of He-219's doing what the bf 110 and (possibly) Me 410 was doing in the later stages of the war. But how to bridge the gap? of course we could speculate in making an alternative fuselage for night fighting and fast bomber, but maybe willy gets desperate and makes a slightly better upengined Bf-110 instead of messing round with a cunning plan that cannot possibly fail, for the slightly later future? After all it must have been replaced by the Fw 187, which the RLM is discovering cannot do all the things they would like it to do? but I'm not entirely sure about the time line here.

Sorry if you meant the tank beefed up proposal there's been some talk about, but I don't think that will have much on the Bf-110. The historical Fw was wery slim, which is what I like about it.

Just Schmidt said:

Not that this tweak will change that a lot, it will only be marginally better than the Bf 110 when that was used correctly. That is, independently and offensively, energy fighting. No matter how small and light we make the thing, it will never be more nimble than Hurricanes and spitfires.

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I'm perfectly fine with energy fighting.
Being better than Hurricane by 1940 was pretty low bar.

Just Schmidt said:

The biggest problem is what die luftwaffe will do against night bombers from around 1941, I can't see other aircraft than the Bf 110 being canselled to make DB 601's available.

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Night bombing - or fighing against it - has no bearing on Fw 187.
Or, in other words, I'm more than okay with a scenario where Fw 187 does not fly a single night mission from 1939 to 1945.

I agree, keep the Fw187 as a day fighter and leave the nachtjag to the He219 and Ta154.

tomo pauk said:

I'm perfectly fine with energy fighting.
Being better than Hurricane by 1940 was pretty low bar.

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Well, it is a higher bar than the Ms 406 or Potez 630

You also have the circumstances that there were 3 different Hurricanes in 1940.
The 2 pitch Hurricane Is
The constant speed Hurricane Is (with 12lb boost)
The Hurricane IIs showing up in small numbers in Sept/Oct.
The allowing of 12lbs in low supercharger for climb in emergency and the allowing of 3000rpm for climb instead of 2850rpm by the end of the year.
Granted the engines on the Fw 187 would not have stayed constant either.

and again, If you take the rear seater out in 1940 you can kiss off being an escort fighter.

Guy in the back of the 110.
1. Operated the radio/s
2. Reloaded the cannon.
3. Played with the rear gun.

In that order of importance.
He was not a rear gunner that they gave a radio to so he would have something to do on long flights so he wouldn't get bored.
You want your long range escort fighters to make it back from England on a regular basis, they need their own radios that will reach the bases (or at least German territory).

The Fw 187 needs not just the Luftwaffe to accept it and give it DB 601 engines, it needs new different radios that the Luftwaffe didn't have. It also needs drum magazines that the Luftwaffe didn't have at the time. Probably easier than the radios

Sure the second crewmember was usefull in many ways, but flying a little longer escort missions than the Bf 109 should be possible. We're not invading the Orkneys just yet.

As for the Hurricane, maybe nimble dosn't mean exactly what I think it does, I'll grant that it's a real possibility.

Shortround6 said:

You also have the circumstances that there were 3 different Hurricanes in 1940.
The 2 pitch Hurricane Is
The constant speed Hurricane Is (with 12lb boost)
The Hurricane IIs showing up in small numbers in Sept/Oct.
The allowing of 12lbs in low supercharger for climb in emergency and the allowing of 3000rpm for climb instead of 2850rpm by the end of the year.

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Vast majority of Hurricanes were the MkI, that were good for about 315 mph at altitudes where LW bombers were operating.

Shortround6 said:

and again, If you take the rear seater out in 1940 you can kiss off being an escort fighter.

Guy in the back of the 110.
1. Operated the radio/s
2. Reloaded the cannon.
3. Played with the rear gun.

In that order of importance.
He was not a rear gunner that they gave a radio to so he would have something to do on long flights so he wouldn't get bored.
You want your long range escort fighters to make it back from England on a regular basis, they need their own radios that will reach the bases (or at least German territory).

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The short range radios should do for the fighter-to-fighter and fighter-to-bomber communication. We're escorting the bombers, not the air bases
But I don't have anything against the backseater on the 187. The influence of the second cockpit on the šerformance of Fw 187 is blown out of proportions anyway IMO.

Shortround6 said:

The Fw 187 needs not just the Luftwaffe to accept it and give it DB 601 engines, it needs new different radios that the Luftwaffe didn't have. It also needs drum magazines that the Luftwaffe didn't have at the time. Probably easier than the radios

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Go with two MG 30C/L and their 100 rd drums (boxes? - the jury is still out on the shape of these).

tomo pauk said:

Vast majority of Hurricanes were the MkI, that were good for about 315 mph at altitudes where LW bombers were operating.

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In the Aug to Sept BoB yes, But then the FW 187 get the DB 601As of what ever varity ( they should still do 360-370mph?)

tomo pauk said:

The short range radios should do for the fighter-to-fighter and fighter-to-bomber communication. We're escorting the bombers, not the air bases

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The problem for the escorts is finding their way back to the Bases. If they get lost (bad weather, navigational error, Group of fighters loose contact with bomber formation, etc) you stand a bigger chance of the fighters not making it back to base. Again, radios got better with time, for both sides, so basing what one nation could do in a different year doesn't mean the Germans could do it in 1940. And since you had to design the plane in 1938, very early 1939 to get it into production you are kind of stuck with it.

tomo pauk said:

Go with the MG 30C/L and their 100 rd drums (boxes? - the jury is still out on the shape of these).

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MG 30C/L is solution to a problem nobody was asking.
You have a 64kg gun with a 37.5kg drum that fires at 300-350rpm. It uses the same ammo as the Flak-30 and Flack 38 AA guns, which really wasn't anymore powerful than the Hispano.
Just stick in four MG/FFs and fire them in pairs

Tony Williams does have picture of the 'drum' in his new book. It is a drum that hangs under the gun but the feed goes up the left hand side of the gun and into near 90 degree bend to go into the feedway.

Think drum underneath, feed comes off the left side of the drum, comes up, does about an 80 degree turn into the opening where the magazine goes.

Shortround6 said:

In the Aug to Sept BoB yes, But then the FW 187 get the DB 601As of what ever varity ( they should still do 360-370mph?)

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I certainly don't expect more than 370 mph with DB 601As.

Shortround6 said:

The problem for the escorts is finding their way back to the Bases. If they get lost (bad weather, navigational error, Group of fighters loose contact with bomber formation, etc) you stand a bigger chance of the fighters not making it back to base. Again, radios got better with time, for both sides, so basing what one nation could do in a different year doesn't mean the Germans could do it in 1940. And since you had to design the plane in 1938, very early 1939 to get it into production you are kind of stuck with it.

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Pilots were trained for navigation, that is why they have had compasses after all. If you are escorting the LW bombers bombing Toulouse, you know that Germany is at ~45 deg course.

Shortround6 said:

MG 30C/L is solution to a problem nobody was asking.
You have a 64kg gun with a 37.5kg drum that fires at 300-350rpm. It uses the same ammo as the Flak-30 and Flack 38 AA guns, which really wasn't anymore powerful than the Hispano.
Just stick in four MG/FFs and fire them in pairs

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You were asking for solutions to the short firing duration of the MG FF. MG 30C/L can be one of solutions. 100 rd drum for 300 rd/min = 20 sec worth of firing time, that is 3 times as much as the MG FF. It also fires at a much greater MV, so the chances to hit will be better than for the FF.
There is no Hispano for the Germans.
Four MG FFs is actually a good idea - when in defense, fire all of them, and when in offense, fire the second pair after the 1st pair has no more rounds.

Shortround6 said:

Tony Williams does have picture of the 'drum' in his new book. It is a drum that hangs under the gun but the feed goes up the left hand side of the gun and into near 90 degree bend to go into the feedway.

Think drum underneath, feed comes off the left side of the drum, comes up, does about an 80 degree turn into the opening where the magazine goes.

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Thank you for that.

tomo pauk said:

Pilots were trained for navigation, that is why they have had compasses after all. If you are escorting the LW bombers bombing Toulouse, you know that Germany is at ~45 deg course.

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Ok, now you have around a 30mph cross wind, and you can't see the ground over 1/2 the time to judge the amount of drift. You could be overflying Switzerland for 100 miles before you get to Germany. Wind going the the other way and you might not cross the German Border for another 50 miles past your intended crossing point. But maybe you are within radio range at that point.

One good thing about a single seat Fw 187, It might tempt the British into keeping the Whirlwind. "If they have one then we need one too!!"

Off topic, but would that mean that it would've been smarter for the British to look at a twin engine fighter powered by two Merlins? If the Fw 187 got DB 601s, why not give the RAF in that situation a Merlin powered twin? Remember that the Whirlwind couldn't use Merlins without a major redesign, which basically became the genesis of the Welkin (though it had its own problems).

On topic, I'd also have to believe obviously the same would apply for the Fw 187, which was powered by engines of the same size and power class as the Rolls-Royce Kestrel with the Jumo 210. Even the Peregrines from the Whirlwind made significantly more power than the 210.

Thinking about how small the Fw 187 was as far as the actual versions of it, I wonder how much it'd have to "grow" to use DB 601s or heavier armament.

BarnOwlLover said:

On topic, I'd also have to believe obviously the same would apply for the Fw 187, which was powered by engines of the same size and power class as the Rolls-Royce Kestrel with the Jumo 210. Even the Peregrines from the Whirlwind made significantly more power than the 210.

Thinking about how small the Fw 187 was as far as the actual versions of it, I wonder how much it'd have to "grow" to use DB 601s or heavier armament.

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Kurt Tank may have been intending to use DB 601s from the start. A number of planes used Jumo 210s because DB was chronically late/slow with DB 601 deliveries
Professor Willy and the boys didn't build production Bf 110s with Jumo 210s after building 2 prototypes with DB 600 engines because they thought lower powered engines would make a better airplane.
They (Kurt Tank and his boys) did build and fly one prototype Fw 187 with DB 601 engines of the same type fitted to He 100's.
There is little doubt they would fit.

What is glossed over is that while the Jumo 210 versions were noted for good handling (low wing loading) there is no mention of how the heavier version handled and no mention of anticipated problems with a 30-50% increase in wing loading.

BarnOwlLover said:

Thinking about how small the Fw 187 was as far as the actual versions of it, I wonder how much it'd have to "grow" to use DB 601s or heavier armament.

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Fw 187 was size of the P-38, so it was not that small.
P-47 have had smaller wing than the Fw 187.
For really small twins with powerful engines, see Whirlwind (Peregrine on 100 oct was probably above 1000 HP) and the Ro.58 (DB 601A - so 1100+ HP; Fw 187's wing area was greater by +-20% ).

The XP-50's wingspan was three feet shorter than the Whirlind's.

But like the F7F, the Fw187 had a very compact fuselage, so it appears small.

Isn't the "Fw 187 for 1939-1945" exactly what the Fw 187 was in real life?

So this thread is more about how to get the Luftwaffe to order them

GrauGeist said:

The XP-50's wingspan was three feet shorter than the Whirlind's.

But like the F7F, the Fw187 had a very compact fuselage, so it appears small.

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Fw 187 A-0
Wingspan: 15.3 m (50 ft 2 in)
Wing Area: 30.4 m² (327 sq ft)
Empty weight: 3,600 kg (7,937 lb)
Gross weight: 5,000 kg (11,023 lb)

Grumman XP-50
Wingspan: 42 ft 0 in (12.80 m)
Wing area: 304 sq ft (28.24 m²)
Empty weight: 8,310 lb (3,770 kg)
Gross weight: 10,500 lb (5,250 kg)

Westland Whirlwind
Wingspan: 45 ft 0 in (13.72 m)
Wing area: 250 sq ft (23 m²)
Empty weight: 8,310 lb (3,769 kg)
Gross weight: 10,356 lb (4,697 kg)

P-38L
Wingspan: 52 ft 0 in (15.85 m)
Wing area: 327.5 sq ft (30.43 m²)
Empty weight: 12,800 lb (5,806 kg)
Gross weight: 17,500 lb (7,938 kg)

The proposed Supermarine Type 327 (twin Merlins) had the following dimensions
Wingspan: 40 ft 0 in (12.80 m)
Wing area: 304 sq ft (28.2 m²)
Gross weight: 11,312 lb (5,131 kg)

The Type 327 would have been close to the XP-50 in terms of wing area and weight, and slightly less wing span.

It was to be powered by the (at the time projected) Merlin XX with 1,265/1,145hp.

For some reason Supermarine specified 6 x 20mm cannon, their arrangement drawing some criticism. 4 x 20mm would have been plenty, in any case.

wuzak said:

For some reason Supermarine specified 6 x 20mm cannon, their arrangement drawing some criticism.

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Did Supermarine specify the armament or did the Air Ministry or did the Air Ministry 'suggest' that a 6 cannon armament would be considered more favorably than a 4 gun armament?

Shortround6 said:

Did Supermarine specify the armament or did the Air Ministry or did the Air Ministry 'suggest' that a 6 cannon armament would be considered more favorably than a 4 gun armament?

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Good question.

The winner of that specification, the Beaufighter, had 4 cannon, but also had lmgs in the wings.

Maybe 6 was Supermarine's solution to not needing a drum reloader.

wuzak said:

Isn't the "Fw 187 for 1939-1945" exactly what the Fw 187 was in real life?

So this thread is more about how to get the Luftwaffe to order them

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The thread was skewed in that direction, despite the premise being that LW is actually agreeing with FW's suggestion and buy the aircraft.
Discussion about the Fw 187 for 1939-45 should include the aircraft as-is, as well as the plausible improvements as the war drags on.