He 177 Specifications?

Hey thanx Wurger. Muchly appreciated!

Use of He-177 on th eastern front 1944:
KG1 (new) was formed in early june 1944 at Königsberg/eastern prussia and subsequently commssioned with 3 Gruppen (estimate strength: 100 He-177A5).
Despite several strategical targets were in range, they barely were active due to severe fuel shortage. Training flights were mostly disbanded. Usually fuel was delivered the day before a major attack was planned.
From eastern Prussia they flew several attacks against soviet supply depots and transport centres in late summer 1944. Usual attack altitude was 6000m (~20.000ft) and formation was close in order to get most of the defensive potential. Few attampts to intercept were made and those cases usually ended with fighter beeing frustrated by He-177 formation defense (they copied the US combat box). Losses are credited to AAA more than fighter causes and remained on a very low level (below 5%).
One of the major attacks was flown under supervision of Kommodore Horst v. Riesen and targeted the railway centre Velikiye Luki (approx. 300 Km west of Moscow) with 87 He-177.
At june, 23th, a soviet major assault targeted for Army group centre and eventually destroyed the bulk of the german forces. The success of soviet tanks forced all german planes to be involved in anti tank purposes. V. Riesen was ordered to attack soviet tanks along the frontline (personal order from Göring) in low level flying. As You may know, sending such a huge airplane, as the He-177 was, in low level anti tank duties isn´t a wise idea and thus those sorties ended with a loss ratio of nearly 25%, mostly by fighters, which found the low and slow He-177 an easy target, altough they prooved to receive a huge amount of battledamage (some planes are reported to return to bases with several 3.7cm hits in the fuselage and wings). It is not known if any soviet tank was destroyed.
At jule, 20th, KG 1 again flew succesful high level attacks on various targets.
This also was the last major operational sortie of KG 1 as fuel shortage did not allowed to keep KG 1 operational. KG 1 was ordered to move to central Germany and the unit was disbanded shortly afterwards. This directly may be credited to the high grade fuel shortage.

Kurfürst said:

Interesting and good info, which Schiffer book is that exactly ?

A sidenote on power settings, of course the max speeds are understood for Start u. Notleistung, or as it was earlier called on the DB 601/606 engines, erhöhte Notleistung. These power settings were of course, only allowed for a couple of minutes, by Allied terminology this is WEP power setting.


Continous maximum and economic cruise speeds are far more interesting IMHO.

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Compare:
J. Dressel/M. Griehl, Heinkel He 177 - 277 - 274. Eine luftfahrtgeschichtliche Dokumentation, 2. Aufl. (1989). Griehl earlier published the performance datas in his article "Gesch. der dt. Bomberflotte".

I agree that economic cruise speed is the more relevant figure for bombers. So far, I have no such datas at hand.

bryce said:

...I have been doing some surfing on the net and looking though some books and have found some big discrepancies?

Its max bomb load seems to vary between 1000kg to 6000kg?

While it's top speed seems to vary from 295mph to 350mph?

If anybody could help me out that would be great!!

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Maybe this can help?

Chief of General Staff General Walther Wever declared a strategic vision in 1934 & wanted an aircraft capable of reaching the Urals, with 1,000kg (2,204 lb) of bombs to fly 5,000km (3,107 mi) at a speed not less than 500 km/h (311 mph) at altitude. This was the Ural bomber specification and the He-177 was developed to meet that requirement.

In fact over shorter distances it could carry greater bomb loads.

Please can anyone advise me the fuel capacity of the He-177 A-5 please, either in Litres/US Gals or in weight?

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

Like I said the design had great potential but overall it was a failure due to the engine problems of the earlier aircraft it never got to prove itself. I know the later variants were getting better, but it was too late.

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The real problem was oil pumps causing oil foaming in the DB606 engines. This engine issue was eventually solved and then with the A-3 version in November 1942 the fuselage was lengthened 1.6m solving aerodynamic issues. A-O & A-1 airframes became surplus in 1943 and from late 1943 were used for rebuild conversion at Vienna Schwechat to the He277.

From December 1943 the A-5 used the same lengthened fuselage of the A-3 with a new DB610 engine. By 1944 with Steinbock raids over England the He-177 had the lowest casualty rate of all Luftwaffe bombers. By 1944 however the He-177 lacked the combination of speed & altitude performance required for true strategic bombing.

The He277 was intended to regain the initiative with the capability of bombing from 49,210ft altitudes, but in April 1944 all production was halted.