Fw-190 A Series - Hypothetical Senario Question

Me-210, now renamed the Me-410, should be up-engined from the DB-605 to the DB-603 series.

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That is not the problem per se as the Me-410 was an excellent light bomber and the Ju-188 was a good long range recon aircraft. The problem is that RLM placed a low priority on DB603 engine development and production. Consequently there were nowhere near enough of this excellent engine for all the aircraft types that would have benefited from it.

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Aircraft Division Industry Report
By January 1942 Germany was producing about 650 x DB605 engines per month in 4 different factory complexes. About half of that production should have been converted to the larger DB603 engine. It should be a relatively easy conversion as the DB603 was essentially a larger version of the DB601.

Alternately RLM needs to decide early on that the Jumo222 engine will be cancelled. If so then the massive new Ostmark engine plant should be built to produce DB603 engines right from the beginning, during the spring of 1942. This plant was designed to produce 500 engines per month.

davebender said:

the DB603 was cancelled because

a) it was deemed to take too long to finish for the short war Germany planned
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What war was Germany planning to fight during 1937, a time period when they had practically no armed forces worthy of the name?

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Spanish civil war

1936 Germany didn't plan to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The Marxist "Popular Front" government and anti-Marxist revolt by Nationalist forces took them by surprise. So did the huge Soviet arms shipments to the Marxist government during the fall of 1936.

Germany had to improvise a reaction to these events just like Britain, Italy and Portugal did.

davebender said:

the DB603 was cancelled because

a) it was deemed to take too long to finish for the short war Germany planned
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What war was Germany planning to fight during 1937, a time period when they had practically no armed forces worthy of the name?

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Sorry for the late post but can we dispense with this myth once and for all?

While the German Army may have been small in 1937 and the Navy even smaller the German Air Force was one of the Worlds largest in 1937.

That may be true if you include flak units, which constituted about 2/3rds of total Luftwaffe personnel strength during the late 1930s. There were also hundreds of training aircraft as the Luftwaffe struggled to created pilots, aircrew and ground support personnel from scratch.

However if we count only modern fighter and bomber units capable of being deployed on combat operations then the pre-WWII Luftwaffe was tiny. For instance the Soviet Union sent about 475 modern I-16 monoplane fighter aircraft to Marxist Spain and some of them were in combat by November 1936. Germany had nothing similiar to offer the Nationalist side as the comparable Me-109 was not yet in mass production.

I've read that Goring's idea to create infantry units - units that were decimated on the Eastern front - very much hurt the Luftwaffe's effort to keep aircraft operational in 1943, and it was much worse in 1944-45.

When you look at the Luftwaffe's numbers, a huge percentage of aircraft were present, but not operational for one reason or another.

Is there any truth to this?

Moss

I don't see how infantry units would have an effect the actual air arm at all. The Luftwaffe infantry units were airborne units, and they were no longer used on a large scale after Battle of Crete in 1941 when they took very large casualties (over 4000 were killed on Crete).

If you are talking about the Luftwaffe Field Divisions that were started in 1942. These were made up by surplus personnel that were not needed from various branches of the Luftwaffe.

I guess this could have had an impact on the servicibility of the Luftwaffe aircraft, but I doubt it was a very large factor. Things such as lack of fuel, engines, and spare parts were probably the most leading factor.

How do you make the Fw-190 more competetive in the ETO? One thing: PILOTS! The Fw 190 was at least a match for anything the Allies could muster and possibly at times superior against some aircraft but numbers, numbers , numbers is the game. A/C production ramped way up in late '44 but there was a glut of pilots for them.

Imagine the 8th AF 1,000 bomber raids being met by 800 Luftwaffe fighters!

davebender said:

That may be true if you include flak units, which constituted about 2/3rds of total Luftwaffe personnel strength during the late 1930s. There were also hundreds of training aircraft as the Luftwaffe struggled to created pilots, aircrew and ground support personnel from scratch.

However if we count only modern fighter and bomber units capable of being deployed on combat operations then the pre-WWII Luftwaffe was tiny. For instance the Soviet Union sent about 475 modern I-16 monoplane fighter aircraft to Marxist Spain and some of them were in combat by November 1936. Germany had nothing similiar to offer the Nationalist side as the comparable Me-109 was not yet in mass production.

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What each "sponsor" nation was willing to send to the Spanish civil War doesn't mean that they were sending forces in proportion to what was kept at home.
Every other nation was also struggling to create pilots, aircrew and ground support personnel.
Some of the British planes ordered and built in thirties were known at the time to be obsolete but were needed to give the newly raised squadrons something to use/ practice on while better designs were developed.
Why do you want to give only the Germans a pass on this?

See this web site. Aircraft production - Parts 12

Please look at fig. 3.The Germans were making more aircraft in 1935, 1936 and in 1937 than another single country.
Please name other countries that had more modern fighter and bomber units Than Germany did in theses years? And the numbers of modern fighters and bombers that they had?

Why don't you look up the British Fairey Hendon, Handley Page Heyford, Boulton and Paul Overstrand, Handley Page Harrow, and the Vickers Wellesley and tell us how modern and up to date the were compared to the German bombers of 1935-39.
Or check out the Gloster Gauntlet, fastest plane IN SERVICE with the RAF in 1935-37 and equipping 14 fighter squadrons at it's peak. Or the Hawker Fury II which was still in front line service in 1939.
For France try looking at the Dewoitine D 500-510 series many of which were still in service in 1939 and replaced by the Morane-Saulnier M.S.406.

The Idea the Germany was "coming from behind" in the mid 1930s or had a "tiny" air force in the mid thirties is just not true.