Would'a could'a should'a. The RLM chose the Bf 110 instead of the Fw 187 is for the same reasons I keep bringing it up - there was no versatility in the airframe. The Zerstorer wasn't just a heavy fighter. That was probably, although I have no evidence for it, the reason why the RLM chose to discontinue the Fw 187C in August 1942. That the RLM went for the Me 410 is evidence of this.
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Would'a could'a should'a. The RLM chose the Bf 110 instead of the Fw 187 is for the same reasons I keep bringing it up - there was no versatility in the airframe. The Zerstorer wasn't just a heavy fighter. That was probably, although I have no evidence for it, the reason why the RLM chose to discontinue the Fw 187C in August 1942. That the RLM went for the Me 410 is evidence of this.
They made a mistake never the less. It was not their lat mistake, and the RLM didn't had a monopoly on making mistakes (faulty torpedoes anyone, or turret fighters perhaps; how about 40 ton tanks firing a 1kg shell, or floatplanes galore, or the bomber will always get through, ot to mention startegic choices Germany did, etc). Zerstorer was a heavy fighter in anything but in name. Bf 110 became versatile once people started hanging bombs on it.
So yes, the RLM should've procured Fw 187 and cancel the Bf 110/Me-210/-410 lot.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Let's go back to the late 30's, when the Fw187 was conceived:
a single-seat, long range fighter.
This is what Germany needed. As I mentioned already, they already had dedicated types for dive-bombing, recon, fighter/bomber and so on.
What they did NOT have, was a pure fighter with any range.
With it's first flight in '37, being left alone by the RLM and going into production shortly after, it would have been available for when Germany really needed it.
a single-seat, long range fighter.
This is what Germany needed. As I mentioned already, they already had dedicated types for dive-bombing, recon, fighter/bomber and so on.
What they did NOT have, was a pure fighter with any range.
With it's first flight in '37, being left alone by the RLM and going into production shortly after, it would have been available for when Germany really needed it.
Again with stacks of hindsight, see below.
But not what it wanted. The RLM, like the British Air Ministry didn't have a crystal ball and couldn't foresee that they needed a long range fighter in 1937. The entire Zerstorer concept was flawed, like the turret fighter, but both respective Air departments went with those decisions because they thought they were right, despite evidence to the contrary in some cases.
You are both right, the Fw 187 would have made a terrific twin-engined fighter, but rightly or wrongly, the RLM didn't want it. Also, the Bf 110 was a versatile airframe, far more versatile than the Fw 187, so in hindsight the RLM did the Luftwaffe a favour, because, the Bf 110 saw service right to the end of the war, in a role that the Fw 187 couldn't have fulfilled, that of specialised night fighter. Or, perhaps it could have, but it would have had to have undergone redesign from the basic design of 1937, that's for sure...
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special ed
1st Sergeant
- 5,142
- May 13, 2018
The stuff of the aviation pulp magazines of the 30s & 40s. Fw 187s twisting and diving against P-38s high over Europe.
Turret fighter concept was flawed.
Zerstrorer - probably not flawed, but certainly badly executed with Bf 110 being chosen, at least for the BoB and on. Bf 110 was a long range fighter already with Jumo 210 powered 110B version from late 1938, carrying 1100+ L of fuel - obvoiusly 550+L of fuel per engine. That is almost twice the fuel per engine that the Jumo-powered Bf 109B/C/D carried. The Bf 110C carried 1270L of fuel for the DB 601A engines, and it could do 1040 km range at max continuous power at 6 km, vs. Bf 109E making exactly half of that on same altitude and power setting.
The RLM certainly foresaw the need for a long range fighter well before ww2 started, thankfully the aircraft chosen wasn't stellar on other things that separate good fighters from great fighters.
BoB predates the effective RAF BC night attacks, thus BoB is more important by the order of magnitude. LW didn't needed versatile airframes for the BoB, they needed a long range performer to protect their bombers.
Luftwaffe night fighters carried no radar until late 1941 on regular basis? The Do 215 and Ju 88 can do the night fighting job anyway.
RLM preference of Bf 110 was the self-inflicted wound.
Well mid 30s peace time designs for the RAF sometimes were required to fulfil a few roles and didn't do any particularly well, the Stirlings need to carry people badly affected its performance as a bomber. The obsession with putting turrets on everything maybe made sense with bombers but not the float plane version of the Blackburn Roc. Sometimes it was inadvertent or accidental. The RAF sometimes specified that a bomber should be able to carry a certain size of bomb or torpedo but this mean some were designed in such a way they couldn't carry anything much bigger, like a cookie or Tallboy. The Lancaster was just designed with a huge bay with two curved doors, others had compartments and complicated folding doors that meant a Wellington or Stirling needed more mods to carry a cookie than the Mosquito did.
In my opinion the Mosquito and P-51 benefitted from not following or having much of a design brief. Conventional wisdom in the RAF demanded at least a 3 man crew for a bomber, the Hampden had 4. The Mosquito forced a higher level of training, all roles had to be done by two people, it also forced "tech" like radar and navigation systems to be smaller and easier to use.
Actually, not really - out of those competing, the Bf 110 fits the bill the best. The Zerstorer concept was definitely flawed - the technical requirements for the Aircraft Destroyer called for a three seat multi-purpose fighter bomber with an internal bay for stores. The very nature of a three seat fighter bomber means that it was going to be a terrible bomber escort. This is yet another means of getting as much as possible out of a single airframe. On paper it looks great, but in reality, not so.
And yes, the Turret fighter was a flawed concept, but so was a three seat escort fighter, fighter-bomber, recon aircraft in one airframe, in the early to mid-1930s.
Perhaps Fw could have proposed an entirely different specification and requirement for the Fw 187 that could have it being put into production, but the Zerstorer concept was very much the domain of a multi-role type, which the Fw 187 in its first incarnation definitely wasn't.
Shortround6
Major General
Apparently we have several different FW 187s
The original ones single and two seat with Jumo engines substituting for the DB 600 series in engines in 1937-39,
Yes performance with DB 601s would have been much enhanced but these were in no way in competition with the Me 210 Me 410 series of aircraft.
Then we have the 1942 and later(?) Fw 187s with DB 605 engines and/or BMW 801 radials.
The Fw 187 with two DB 605 engines is listed at a 5660kg empty equipped weight and a gross weight of 8200kg while carrying 1000kg of bombs.
The FW 187V4 only weighed 4900kg when loaded and 3402kg empty (but not equipped?) a 66% increase in empty weight? or bit less?
Some of the ammo loadouts for the later paper versions are rather incredible.
Like the single seat dive bomber design with BMW 801 engines (which added 6 sq meters of wing area, almost 65 sq fr) the 1200 rpg for the MG 17s isn't too bad but 600rpg for the MG 151s
The original ones single and two seat with Jumo engines substituting for the DB 600 series in engines in 1937-39,
Yes performance with DB 601s would have been much enhanced but these were in no way in competition with the Me 210 Me 410 series of aircraft.
Then we have the 1942 and later(?) Fw 187s with DB 605 engines and/or BMW 801 radials.
The Fw 187 with two DB 605 engines is listed at a 5660kg empty equipped weight and a gross weight of 8200kg while carrying 1000kg of bombs.
The FW 187V4 only weighed 4900kg when loaded and 3402kg empty (but not equipped?) a 66% increase in empty weight? or bit less?
Some of the ammo loadouts for the later paper versions are rather incredible.
Like the single seat dive bomber design with BMW 801 engines (which added 6 sq meters of wing area, almost 65 sq fr) the 1200 rpg for the MG 17s isn't too bad but 600rpg for the MG 151s
We do. Try telling that to others. The first incarnation was not suitable for anything except a single-seat fighter powered by Junkers Jumos, but it was cancelled. The next incarnation, which was essentially a redesigned early one hardware wise, the V4, and was to be a two-seat fighter powered by the Jumos. One prototype was fitted with DB 601s. This two-seater was to be the basis of the Fw 187C, a two-seat fighter bomber powered by the DB 605, which was awaiting confirmation for production, but was cancelled in August 1942. Anything else mentioned were paper projects that never got past the drawing stage. No Fw 187 was actually fitted with BMW 801s, although it was planned for different variants.
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wuzak
Captain
The Luftwaffe did not know that there would be a BoB when decisions about the Fw 187 were being made.
The Luftwaffe was designed as a tactical air force, rather than a strategic one. Long range bombing attacks, except, maybe, against the Soviets, were not expected.
If the LW was really a tactical air force, then some companies didn't get the memo. The 1939's He 111 being good for 2800 km range. Ditto for Dornier, the Do-17Z with 1680-2680 km range, or the aforementioned Bf 110C with 1000+ km range fighter. Ju-88A-1 with 3580L (946 us gals) of possible internal fuel + drop tanks in 1940 also does not lend credit to the stipulation that Luftwaffe was a tactical airforce, either.
LW inventory counted more than 1000 of He 111s + Do 17s + Ju 86s combined by the end of 1938.
That Luftwaffe dared to actually have a tactical branch, and that tactical branch was actually working, certainly painted them as 'tactical airforce only' in the eyes of the RAF brass, that scoffed at the idea that a 'proper' airforce is supposed to do the tactical job until well into ww2.
Shortround6
Major General
A wee bit harsh?
The Fw 187 might have always been designed for the DB 600/1). The Bf 110 was designed for the DB 600 engines but due to reliability problems in the early BF 110 prototypes the engine choice was switched to the DB 601 engine but late deliveries forced about 45 (or more?) Bf 110s to be built with the Jumo 210 engines. A number of other prototypes were flown with Jumo 210s due to the unavailability of standard DB 600/601 engines at this time.
It would fit in that the FW 187 didn't enjoy the priority for the DB 601 engines for even semi production versions.
The single FW 187 fitted with the DB 601 got the 'evaporative' cooling experimental version and was a much of a test bed for the engine as it was a serious proposal for a combat aircraft.
It is the test flights of this plane that bring the glow to the eyes of the FW 187 fans. However if fitted with the standard production 601s of the time and conventional radiators/cooling systems speed (and range) would have been somewhat less than the estimates.
Yep, at least it had about the same wing area and not a 20% increase
FWIW; I don't think that a Fw 187powered by two DB 601A with 'normal' cooling would've been doing anything beyond 600 km/h. At least when looking at the Ro.58, that was probably the closest equivalent.
Yes and no. Yes, I'm pretty blunt because of the misunderstanding that comes with the very mention of this aircraft. No, that there is a lot of evidence of exaggeration of the aircraft's potential without understanding what Tank had actually done or intended. Examining the drawings demonstrates a preclusion of the whole multi-role capabilities that are commonly bestowed on the type.
Most of that is found without looking too hard into the type's history and development. That the aircraft only went through a prolonged experimentation makes it difficult to cement actual intent beyond estimation based on evidence. As far as performance is concerned, it is inevitable that prototype and pre-production aircraft perform much better than production variants - that's a given, as you know. The difficulty is establishing by how much, but since we know that aircraft definitely gain weight on entry into production and service, and that the aircraft lacks in space, and therefore adaptability and the ability to house further increases of equipment, we have to take estimates of its in-service performance with a grain of salt. Given that however, it's fair to say it would have been quite a performer.
And a change of fuselage, which characterises virtually every other incarnation Tank had drawn up of the type. Had the Fw 187 gone into production in its two-seat Zerstorer guise as it was about to, pretty much all the activity we see regarding the aircraft would have been regarded as pre-production and research and development prior to a cementing of the design for production and service, yet we tend to examine this evidence and bestow upon it as evidence of how much of a multi-role wunderkind the type was going to be.
"Tactical" describes how the weapons the force has are used and their general sphere of operation within the context of the conflict, not specifically what the individual weapons are capable of.
This can be applied to the Fw 187 versus the Bf 110. The 1937 and even 1939/40 Luftwaffe didn't need a long range escort fighter. It had Bf 109s for bomber escorting duties and up until the attack on Norway and Britain, these sufficed in every theatre the Luftwaffe engaged, from Poland, through France, Denmark and Benelux. The Bf 110 was designed as a multi role aircraft that could undertake traditional single roles carried out by other types in one airframe - fighter, light attack, reconnaissance - was "long range bomber escort" even written into the Aircraft Destroyer specification? It made sense that it be used as such, as that became part of the role of a fighter, of course, possibly by consequence.
The Fw 187 in its first incarnation as Tank built it couldn't have carried out any of those roles apart from the fighter one and when the two-seater was developed, that would have expanded on the type's repertoire, but not by very much, there was still no internal storage bay, space for a third crewmember and its camera carrying abilities were effectively nil.
There haven't been that many cases where aircraft have been built that are outside of official requirements that get accepted for an extraneous role because of their capabilities. It does happen, but not often. The Fw 187 was an aircraft that could have done so, but the RLM didn't take that risk with it. Had the RLM had the foresight to have predicted the course the war actually took (a virtual impossibility in 1937 through early 1940), it might have stood a chance at a production order, but it didn't, and so the Fw 187 is relegated to the Also Ran pile because of its very limited appeal within that time period.
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If it runs like a dog, and it barks like a dog, it is probably a dog.
He 111 was a strategic bomber in the vein of Wellington. Tactical bombers were Ju 87 and Hs 123.
In 1940, Luftwaffe certainly needed a long range escort fighter.
It's not that simple. You are presuming a use based on its capabilities and what you know about how it was used from history, which is exactly the opposite to what was said above.