FW-190 - How Good Was It, Really?

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Heretic!!!


What was an average fighter in 'mid 42-mid 43'? One to two cannons + LMGs, or perhaps 4 to 6 heavy MGs (nod for Fw 190). Rate of roll - nod Fw 190. Outright speed at 2, 5, 7 km - again nod Fw 190. Ability to shrug to too heavy enemy fire - again Fw 190 was good there. Airfoil choice - not the cutting edge, but not that obsolete either. The average fighter in that time frame was perhaps Spitfire V, Lagg-5, Yak-1 and -9, P-40F, M and N, P-39L and N, P-51 (no letter). There is no Merlin Mustang, no Tempest, the P-47C is better above 7km but it still needs plenty of improvement on fuel system and powerplant to be really better all-arounder. P-38 offers range and hi-alt climb & perhaps speed but has it's host of serious problems, Japanese can't compete unless for CV duties. Italians - no chance.
The drag of the powerpant was favorable, the armored oil cooler was a trade off - lets recall that late US radial fighter/bombers (FM-2, AU-1, F8F, F7F) went to hide and armor the oil coolers, a step that acknowledged the real danger of oil system being a weak spot on their earlier designs.

So the Fw 190 is right there as a top dog, together with new Spitfire marks as all-altitude adversary.

From mid 1943, yes, the situation gets worse. That RLM though it would've been a good idea not to improve the powerplant of the Fw 190 in a timely manner helped for things to go downhill. It certainly was no fault of design that the big firepower and armor suite was installed without much of problems.
 
Interesting points, dedalos. I will have to consider them. While I disagree it was a target in 1944 and later, you do make some points.

The Ta 152 series showed very good performance, despite any extra armor or armament, but there were never very many of them. Most Allied pilots considered the Fw 190D to be the best German fighter of the war. Tough to argue with them this many years later, at least with any authority. Maybe most of the good German pilots flew them after they came out, but the Fw 190D DID get the attention of the Allies and we DID tend to skip over the Ta 152 airfield guards for the jet airfields. The combination of the Ta 152s and the flak made hunting jets in the landing pattern a dicey affair, assuming decent Ta 152 pilots and veteran flak gunners.

Cheers.
 
michaelmaltby said:
They could have been issued Mustangs and these young pilot would have suffered the same casualty rate,
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Most exactly so, and this is exactly what I posted initially. As the war wore on the German ability to wage war declined as they suffered from the lack of just about everything. Look at post #19 and consider all its implications. Increasingly poor fuel in short supply, an ever decreasing supply of well-trained pilots, an ever decreasing supply of nre aircraft and replacement parts, 8 or more sorties flown per day - it placed a severe toll on both men and machines,
On the allies side it was the exact reverse situation...fleets of bombers escorted by 500 or more fighters. One simply cannot defend against such numbers no matter how superior your machines are to your opponents.
 
Tip and run raids started in March 1942. Initially very successful against shipping and seaside towns. It required standing patrols of Typhoons and Spitfire Mk IX and XII (first griffon variant). In October 1942 Approximately 70 Fw 190s hit Canterbury dropping 30 bombs with the loss of one aircraft to AA fire and possibly 1 more to a Spitfire, 36 civilians were killed. While this was a successful raid in some respects it was using 70 pilots engines/airframes and fuel loads to damage houses with a bomb load that could be carried by two Lancasters. Mounting losses resulted in switching to night raids on the 16 April 1943 4 FW190s raided London but got lost 3 attempted landing at West Malling while the other crashed.
 

A little unfair to blame the aircraft for outside failings, it may have needed C3 fuel but how would any allied fighter have performed on 85 octane? The armament later was not overkill it was needed to take down bombers. Build quality was not really the designers fault, I doubt he thought they would end up being built by slave labour. Fitting armour is a choice based on losses, if you don't fit it you suffer more losses, by the end of the war more P51s had been lost to ground fire than enemy aircraft.

The highlighted point e) sums up the FW190 dilemma, it needed heavy armour and it needed heavy weapons and still needed to be a competitive aircraft at all altitudes, it needed to be a wonder weapon but it wasn't.
 
The FW-190 does have a small wing. Almost too small to be stable I think. That aspect definitely wasn't good for wing loading, which only got higher as they added more and more armor and even heavier weapons. Could this have been it's Achilles heel?
 
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DarrenW said:
Thanks, that looks like a very interesting analysis, I look forward to seeing what it has to say....
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I recommend reading it three times, with a week between each reading.

swampyankee said:
Dave — I used to work with him at Sikorsky — is probably one of the best aerodynamicists in the business. He's published papers on the same topic in the professional journals.
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To me it was well written and written so I could follow most of what it said..
 
DarrenW said:
The FW-190 does have a small wing. Almost too small to be stabile I think. That aspect definitely wasn't good for wing loading, which only got higher as they added more and more armor and even heavier weapons. Could this have been it's Achilles heel?
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Wing indeed was small once the weight went that high up, from initial ~3500 kg to ~4400 kg by 1944 (all for 'clean' configuration). The problem was more present at high altitudes, and as good as non-existent at low altitudes, we know that Fw 190 was capable to carry a torpedo, or a 1800 kg (almost 4000 lb) bomb, or assorted weight of bombs and drop tanks. There was several big wings in the works, probably also tested, however none was never used on the series Fw 190. Area was to be increased from 18.3 m^2 (span 10.5m) to 20.3 (span 12.4m), with the Fw 190B as intended user (remained just a project). Later also 22.5 (span 14.8m) for the proposed Fw 190H, while the Fw 190A-10 was to receive a wing of 20.5^m (as well as another pair of outboard cannons, thus bringing the total to up to 6 cannons + 2 HMGs).
As we know, th Ta-152 got a bigger wing, that made hi-alt flight a more manageable affair, but it decreased both rate of roll and G limit.
 
The long-wing Ta 152H had very good span loading for a fighter. Span loading is a good general indicator of high-altitude maneuverability, and also indicates the amount of vortex generation as the aircraft moves through the air. Lower span loading generates less vortex, losing less energy.

It is somewhat related to wing loading, but wing loading alone does not indicate maneuverability directly. But since the fighter designers were trying to optimize for mostly the same things, it is a very good indicator. Lower span loading indicates generally better high-altitude maneuverability, but not in all cases. There ARE a few where it fails to help as an indicator.

I don't think the long-wing Ta 152 was one of those. It SHOULD have been a VERY good plane way up high, despite not really being used there.
 
The one in the US Museum (National Air and Space Museum) is an Fw 190D-9, Werksnummer 601088.

I have heard otherwise about the Ta 152s, particularly the Ta 152Cs, but have no particular primary source for it. Heard it YEARS ago, unsubstiatiated. I have no issue one way or the other with their last assignments.

I have also read that when the war ended, there were exactly two Ta 152s still operational of 43 or so the delivered aircraft, both Ta 152Cs. That from several sources, including William Green (and others, probably quoting Green). Sounds about like the right number remaining operational for what was essentially an unsupported (logistics-wise) run of brand new models that were not yet released for operational use. I bet there quite a few with little wrong with them, but no spares to fix them with.

Glad some survive and wish one or more were able to fly today. We have an Fw 190 replica flyable at the museum, but it is a radial engine unit, with an R-2800 in it. Very pretty, I must say. And the oil cooling issue was fixed with decidedly non-stock under-wing radiators. Minor, but noticeable to an Fw 190 fan.
 
That was a very informative article. I definitely do need to read it again, but as from what I could gather, the small wing area did in fact cause the airplane to stall harshly at a relative high rate of speed (compared to it's contemporaries), even in a clean condition.

What exactly were the designers looking for when they chose that particular airfoil/wing layout?
 
I see the words "small wing" used in here and want some clarification. The issue is wing loading, or normal gross weight divided by wing area. The ratio of the numbers doesn't change whether metric or English, so:

The Spitfire V had a normal gross weight of 6,784 lbs and a wing area of 242.0 sq ft, for a wing loading of 28.0 lbs/ sq ft.

The Fw 190 A3 had a normal gross weight of 8,530 lbs and a wing area of 197 sq ft, for a wing loading of 43.6 lbs/ sq ft.

While the Fw 190 A might SEEM like it has a high wing loading, the opposite is true; the Spitfire V has a very LOW wing loading. For comparison, the Bf 109E-3 had a wing loading of 31.7 and the Bf 109G-6 has a wing loading of 39.9 lbs/sq ft., so the 109G wasn't very far from the Fw 190. The P-51D had a wing loading of 39.5 lbs.sq ft., and the P-47D has a wing loading of 48.3 lbs/sq ft. The Fw 190 A3 falls right in the middle, and the P-47D did NOT have bad stall characteristics at all. The P-38J had a wing loading of 65.8 lbs/sq ft and turned very well, better than some single-engine fighters, if you believe the reports from combat pilots. It ALSO stalled quite benignly.

I see nothing strange about the wing loading of the Fw 190 series at all.

The stall-without-warning is another story entirely. THAT could easily have been changed. Most of the aerodynamic decisions regarding the Fw 190 were spot-on and correct, and I think that the wing could have been slightly larger, but it would not have materially changed the flight characteristics unless the stall warning were to be addressed. If so, the aircraft would have telegraphed an impending stall, allowing pilots to pull hard more consistently close to the limits in a safer manner.

Can't have everything, I suppose, and will always regard the Fw 190 as a VERY GOOD fighter for the time.
 

I see your points Greg and they are well taken but in general doesn't wing loading have an effect on stall speed? Let's say you normally fly your FW-190A-8 in a "clean" configuration but you suddenly get orders and are tasked to carry a 500KG bomb on your centerline mount. Wouldn't that raise the stall speed of the machine? I'm just thinking basic physics here, but maybe I'm missing something with how the shape of the airfoil and it's loading effects when an aircraft enters a stall. I was also under the assumption that with any given airfoil shape more wing area = more lift = lower stall speed (weight of the machine being unchanged). Am I out in left field on this one too????
 
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Absolutely. The stall speed at any weight is easy to calculate. It varies as a known stall speed times the square root of the new weight divided by the old weight. The same is true for ANY aircraft. Any wing has a coefficient of lift. More area produces more lift, as you say. The Fw 190 A3 has only 10% more wing loading than the P-51D does. In the real world, that isn't much and the "g-available"varies with weight, airspeed, altitude, and temperature. The P-51D driver could pull nearer his stall than the Fw 190 A3 driver could because the P-51D will give a stall warning buffet before departing "most of the time." That assumes coordinated flight.

Now, I'm SURE there were expert and just "good" Fw 190 A3 pilots out there who could turn with a P-51D, or even out-turn one. But there were a lot who weren't expert, especially as the war got into and past mid-1944. I'd say, given good pilots in both airplanes, the Fw 190 would be dangerous right up until war's end. A good pilot in either one with a rookie in the other SHOULD be victorious almost all the time, other things being equal.

The Fw 190 itself is NOT what one would call a "flawed" airplane in WWII combat. It was superb. Read the combat, flight test, and post-war flight reports. EVERYONE who flew it liked it, after the initial faults were ironed out, for the most part. Probably the worst things were that the pilot needed oxygen ALL the time because exhaust leaked into the cockpit, and the cockpit was HOT. If you HAD oxygen and were USING it, no problem. If it was summer or good weather, the thing was a HOT ride.

Saying it has a "small wing" doesn't change those or other faults, and does nothing whatsoever to dim the really good flight reports by combat pilots of the day.

It was a good fighter, fighter-bomber, and attack plane with heavy armament, a decent engine, and great ground handling. Not really a LOT more to ask for, is there?
 
One will never know what happend with Ta 152C prototypes and the 2 or so 0-series aircraft but due to their design they may have been used as top cover. The more numerous Ta 152H were not use in this role.
Paul Allen's Flying Heritage collection should have the sole D-13 survivor, a D-9 on "steroids"
 
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