Horton HO 229 Vs Vampire...

[Shortround6]

So where were the fighter bombers when in 1940/41 the European combatants suddenly discovered that they needed them?

hiding in disguise

Why did they have to press their established fighter aircraft and in the German case Zerstorer, into service to fulfil that role?

Because that is what a fighter-bomber is, it is a fighter with bomb racks/mounts underneath, it is NOT a special type of aircraft. The bomb racks cause drag and a loss of performance if fitted at all times. Germans were able to fit bomb racks to 109Es and make a creditable fighter bomber for 1940 even if not ideal.
British, if they hadn't had their thumbs stuck up their bums about constant speed props for so long might have been able to experiment with the fighter bomber concept a bit sooner. Fixed pitch props and throttled back engines for take-off aren't the best recipe for taking off with heavy loads. It is a fair bet that even those 1934 biplane Hawks had at least a variable pitch prop.

A little later the Americans also discovered that they needed such aircraft themselves. If the need had been foreseen I would suggest that suitable aircraft would have been available. Instead, once again, fighters were adapted to the role. Both the P-47 and P-51 had been designed for a very different role at a very different altitude.

Americans had had such planes right up until 1939/40. The P-26 Peashooter could carry 200lbs and the P-35 could carry 350lbs. The question is why this capability went away with the P-39 and P-40, especially since we KNOW that in the P-40s case the drawing and tooling existed for the racks/bomb mounts, the control runs and the panels/boxes for the cockpit.
The Army had, during the 1930s bought about 100 fixed landing gear Northrop A-17 attack aircraft and about 100 retractable landing gear A17As, By the start of WW II (1939) it was planed to replace the remnants of these aircraft with twin engine attack bombers (A-20s). The Army had also decided they wanted air cooled engines for ground attack planes. This may explain the deletion of bomb racks from the V-12 powered P-38-P-39-P-40. Once the shooting started the Army, like the British and many other countries, was forced to use what they could get (what was in production) rather than what was on their wish list.

The Hawk, Lysander etc fall into a broad category, maybe not the literal British one, of Army Cooperation aircraft. They were not viable as fighters in 1939

.

I am not surprised that the Hawk III Biplane was not a viable fighter in 1939. The Hawk 75 certainly was as shown by it's performance in France in 1940 and by it's use in Finland. The fitting of the bomb racks/controls would have done little to change that.

I don't know enough about Japanese aircraft, doctrine or tactics to have an opinion about them

The light bomb loads may not have been very effective (but with 700hp engines heavy loads were out of the question) but the point is that fighters carrying bombs to drop on targets close to bases were certainly not a new or unusual concept in 1939-40-41. Various air forces might argue about doctrine or resource allocation but few professional air forces could claim ignorance of the practice and it it was over 20 years since it was throw a few bombs over the side of the cockpit. Germans had hundreds of Arado 68s and He 51s with their six 10kg bomb installations. in the mid 1930s. Why there was no rack on the 109 I don't know.

 

[Koopernic]

If Hitler can get blamed for seeing the Me 262 as a bomber who gets carries the can for seeing the P-51 as an A-36?

 

[GrauGeist]

If Hitler can get blamed for seeing the Me 262 as a bomber who gets carries the can for seeing the P-51 as an A-36?

The USAAF wanted an attack aircraft and saw the Mustang as a solution based on it's combat performance.

The A-36 was far more successful in it's role as a ground attack/dive bomber platform than the Me262 was as a bomber.

As far as who was responsible, it can be said that General Echols was the one who envisioned the Mustang as a dive bomber.

 

[stona]

I give up
I still maintain that whereas today most if not all fighter aircraft are designed to have a fighter bomber capability from the first time a CAD programme is opened on the designers computer this was not the case in the 1930s when a draughtsman first put pen to paper. The fighter bomber was not a special type of aircraft in 1940 because none existed in the inventories of the Luftwaffe or RAF, they were made by converting fighters which had not had that capability intentionally designed in. Luckily many could be adapted to the role, though some needed considerable modification, again, not the case for the post war equivalents built as fighter bombers from the get go.
To come back to the original premise, Focke-Wulf could not have sold the Fw 187 to the RLM as a fighter bomber because the RLM didn't want such an aircraft. Close air support would be provided by dive bombers and eventually, after a change of role, by Zerstorer. Secondly I doubt such a role would have occurred to Focke-Wulf. As you yourself say, WW2 fighter bombers were fighters with bomb slips attached. In this we agree, but it also means that my original response, that the Fw 187 could only have been developed as a fighter bomber if it had been adopted as a fighter or Zerstorer, is also true. You can't have the chicken before the egg
Cheers
Steve

 

[buffnut453]

No bomber could become a fighter bomber

Errr... Mosquito?

Sorry. Just yanking your chain. I know the Mossie wasn't around in the period you're discussing. But it was a bomber that became a successful fighter-bomber.

 

[Shortround6]

As for your last part, I agree.

I have also found references to a 5 bomb rack for 10kg bombs that was fitted to the 109A model internally behind the pilot and fuel tank. It was electrically operated (?) and somehow could set the fuses electrically (in theory). The Elvemag 5 C X. Since the electric fuses weren't ready the 109As sent to Spain didn't use the rack and no other 109s were fitted. 109As had a 235 liter fuel tank. 109Cs had a 337 liter fuel tank (expanded into space for the bomb rack?).

Fighter bomber in 1934-36 may NOT have been a special type because at that time many fighters were expected to carry at least a few light bombs. Bristol Bulldogs, Gloster Gauntlets and Hawker Fury's being among them. Again, what you can carry using 600hp engines vs what you can carry using 1200hp engines are not the same thing but it doesn't change the basic concept. I doubt that the passing of 4-6 years really imposed near universal amnesia on air staffs around the world, but rather some people tended to get carried away with specialized aircraft. Interceptors instead of fighters, light day bombers, medium night bombers, heavy night bombers, land based torpedo bombers, heavy fighters, cannon armed fighters as a class unto themselves as opposed to just being a different armament for fighters.

 

[tomo pauk]

If Hitler can get blamed for seeing the Me 262 as a bomber who gets carries the can for seeing the P-51 as an A-36?

The A-36 was born in order to keep the currently-P-51 production line open. Served the purpose, the line begun again producing the P-51A/Mustang II in early 1943. Credit for A-36 goes to the NAA managers and USAF brass.

Granted, contracting Curtiss to build 500 of 'A-40s' instead of 500 P-40s, while keeping P-51s on the production line in late 1942 should mean stronger Allied AFs in 1943.

 

[Shortround6]

Problem was money and budgets. The money for fighters was already spent and there was money left in the account for attack aircraft. while it sounds simple transferring the money would have meant going back to Congress and trying to explain to a bunch of failed shirt salesmen and unsuccessful ex-lawyers what you were trying to do and have them argue about it for weeks

 

[GregP]

What does all this have to do with Ho 229 vs. Vampire?

It deserves its own thread. You'll never FIND these data in 2 months because you won't know where to look for it.

Yes, I've been guilty of this same thing many times, too ... before anyone brings it up. So I'm not picking on anyone specific ... general observation.

 

[Seawitch]

Errr... Mosquito?

Sorry. Just yanking your chain. I know the Mossie wasn't around in the period you're discussing. But it was a bomber that became a successful fighter-bomber.

Like the Horton....mostly made of wood, but I gather it had seriously better glue, the truth about it's strength, and one of the Horton's weaknesses?

 

[GrauGeist]

Like the Horton....mostly made of wood, but I gather it had seriously better glue, the truth about it's strength, and one of the Horton's weaknesses?

A number of German aircraft had wood construction: He162, Ta154, Me163 for example.
However, the bonding film used after 1943 was acidic because the primary factory that produced the reliable Tego film was bombed and the Germans tried (and failed to a certain degree) to create a comparable replacement.

 

[kool kitty89]

Only the bomber version could use the rearmost tank as this had to be counterbalanced by the external stores. A downside of this is that jettisoning the stores before said tank was exhausted made the aircraft impossible for the average pilot to control.

I'd failed to consider this before, but wouldn't it make sense to plumb the external racks for drop tanks and use those to counter-balance the rear tank? (rear tanks on a number of aircraft seriously impacted stability and were often best exhausted first -often before drop tanks, or at least partially exhausted before external tanks were used)

 

[stona]

I'd failed to consider this before, but wouldn't it make sense to plumb the external racks for drop tanks and use those to counter-balance the rear tank? (rear tanks on a number of aircraft seriously impacted stability and were often best exhausted first -often before drop tanks, or at least partially exhausted before external tanks were used)

The problem doing this on the Me 262, which after all had been designed as a fighter, was that drop tanks occupied the same hard points as bombs. There were no hard points out on the wings, either tanks or bombs could be carried on racks under the fuselage.

This crosses over with the fighter bomber debate in another thread. As SR pointed out, a WW2 era fighter bomber was just a fighter with bomb racks attached. Where these were and the loads they could bear were subject to the original design constraints of the fighter. Of course some modifications could be made, many fighter bombers had at the very least upgraded wheels or landing gear, but the intention to carry such loads was never explicit in the design, unlike most modern aircraft of the type.

The Me 262 did manage to carry the R4M rockets and associated racks out on the wings outboard of the engines, but about 40Kg of rockets and a wooden rack on each wing do not add up to a useful bomb load. I don't think re-stressing and redesigning the wing on the Me 262 to carry a useful load was an option for the Germans in mid 1944.

Cheers

Steve

 

[kool kitty89]

If the RLM had seized on the He280 and backed it AND the jet engine development by Junkers, BMW, Porsche and Hirth.

Wouldn't happen with the historical He 280 ... stronger support or not, it would needed the ability to carry much more fuel and still would have had engine teething problems. (a different development philosophy following on from the less troublesome HeS 6 might have pushed things along sooner, and an aircraft designed to mount the bulkier engines along with enough fuel to manage well enough in the worst case of not improving on the mediocre 1.6 lb/lbf/hr fuel consumption) Further scaling up of the basic HeS 3/6 configuration may have also been worthwhile, at least in the short-term.

Heinkel already had support from the RLM through Udet on the condition the He 280 fly by 1941. (and facilitated the merger with Hirth -prior to which, Heinkel's engine project was on its own) Working with the earlier engine designs likely would have accelerated the He 280's first flight as well.

Encouraging Jumo to retain the independent Junkers gas turbine project (rather than having the teams merged and much of the Junkers staff leave for Heinkel -and take over a year to re-start development) and have the wonderful HeS 006 as a Junkers Jumo project alongside the much larger and heavier conservative 004. (having BMW or Jumo continue centrifugal jet development may have been wise too ... using similar combustion chamber and turbine configuration to their axial counterparts -unlike Ohain's radial turbine)

If they had followed through with the Fw187 and the Ar240 and allowed the designs to go to production as intended.

The 240 had a lot more problems in development and came much later than the 187, so it's a bit iffier. Derivatives of the Ju 88 itself may have been more practical in leu of either the 240 or Me 210/410. (with heavy fighters like the 187 filling in the higher-speed/performance roles the Ju 88 was ill suited for -and potential late-war Night Fighter)


Beyond that I've moved the fighter-bomber discussion here:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/fighter-bombers-late-1930s-fw-187-a-43162.html

The problem doing this on the Me 262, which after all had been designed as a fighter, was that drop tanks occupied the same hard points as bombs. There were no hard points out on the wings, either tanks or bombs could be carried on racks under the fuselage.

I'd meant it would have been useful if the fighter variants of the Me 262 had included racks primarily intended for drop tanks, thus extending range with both those tanks and the potential to now fill the rear tank as well.

 

[Juha]

The Project Proposal IV "Me 262 Jäger und Jabo" ("Me 262 fighter and fighter bomber") of Messerchmitt A.G. dated 8 May 1943, according to which the armament would have four or six 30 mm Mk 108 machine guns and larger wheeled landing gear, the possibility of drop tanks, bomb racks for a maximum of 700 kg load and the better the armour and radio equipment. In the first time the fighter-bomber option was mentioned in a Messerschmitt A.G. project proposal dated on 25 March 1943.

 

[stona]

The date of Project Proposal IV is before the Fuhrer Befehl (30th May) but about a month after Hitler had discovered that Ekdo 262s aircraft were not being modified as fighter bombers. At that time, in mid April, he had berated Milch and Goering about this 'failure'. It is reasonable to suppose that Milch or one of his minions at the RLM went to Messerschmitt and asked that the company draw up plans for a Jabo asap.

The earlier 25th March (44) proposal may have come as a result of Hitler's comments on seeing the V6 demonstration at Insterburg on November 26th 1943. Prof. Messerschmitt was one of those present and was always eager to please his Fuhrer, particularly if he reckoned that there was some money to be made or contracts to be won.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Juha]

The year for the proposals I mentioned was 1943 not 1944

 

[stona]

The year for the proposals I mentioned was 1943 not 1944

Yes, my bad. They must both have been part of a series of Messerschmitt proposals then. There are Messerschmitt drawings for the 'Jager u. Jabo', various reconnaissance versions, a dual fuel rocket/jet interceptor, and various 'Schnellbomber' versions, some with an internal bomb bay, all from July 1943. It was all pie in the sky stuff, or should that be 'blue sky thinking'

All the manufacturers made paper proposals for all sorts of aircraft. They were not necessarily in response to an RLM requirement.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Juha]

Yes, but the Project Proposal IV was that which became the production version of the Me 262 not one of those paper proposals

 

[Koopernic]

Wouldn't happen with the historical He 280 ... stronger support or not, it would needed the ability to carry much more fuel and still would have had engine teething problems. (a different development philosophy following on from the less troublesome HeS 6 might have pushed things along sooner, and an aircraft designed to mount the bulkier engines along with enough fuel to manage well enough in the worst case of not improving on the mediocre 1.6 lb/lbf/hr fuel consumption) Further scaling up of the basic HeS 3/6 configuration may have also been worthwhile, at least in the short-term.

Heinkel already had support from the RLM through Udet on the condition the He 280 fly by 1941. (and facilitated the merger with Hirth -prior to which, Heinkel's engine project was on its own) Working with the earlier engine designs likely would have accelerated the He 280's first flight as well.

Encouraging Jumo to retain the independent Junkers gas turbine project (rather than having the teams merged and much of the Junkers staff leave for Heinkel -and take over a year to re-start development) and have the wonderful HeS 006 as a Junkers Jumo project alongside the much larger and heavier conservative 004. (having BMW or Jumo continue centrifugal jet development may have been wise too ... using similar combustion chamber and turbine configuration to their axial counterparts -unlike Ohain's radial turbine)


The 240 had a lot more problems in development and came much later than the 187, so it's a bit iffier. Derivatives of the Ju 88 itself may have been more practical in leu of either the 240 or Me 210/410. (with heavy fighters like the 187 filling in the higher-speed/performance roles the Ju 88 was ill suited for -and potential late-war Night Fighter)


Beyond that I've moved the fighter-bomber discussion here:
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/fighter-bombers-late-1930s-fw-187-a-43162.html

I'd meant it would have been useful if the fighter variants of the Me 262 had included racks primarily intended for drop tanks, thus extending range with both those tanks and the potential to now fill the rear tank as well.

The Me 262 drop tanks came in as useful in the temporary night fighter versions which sacrificed much of the rear fuel tank to allow a second crew member to be carried. The drop tanks compensated.

The original small He 280, with engines in the 1200lb thurst class was judged to small and short ranged. Heinkel was compelled to use the larger jumo 004 which couldn't fit in the airframe and so the airframe had to be enlarged.

The Heinkel Hirth HeS 006 was based on the Jumo 002 designed by Adolf Müller of the Airframe division of Junkers. The engine division JUnkers MOtoren or jumo had nothing to do with developing jet engines, it was the RLM that decided that airframe manufacturers shouldn't develop jet engines so Adolf Müller moved to Heinkel and the Austrian Turbo charger espert Franz Anselm started to develop the Jumo 004. Heinkel, an airframe manufacturer, faced been sidelined as well so he brought the company Hirth Motoren at 50% above market value so that he could claim to be an engine manufacturer and continue to develop the jet engine that had in fact been invented by his companies patronage of von Ohain.

Adolf Müller's Jumo 002 that became the Heinkel Hirth HeS 006 was far more capable than the Jumo 004. It used a 50% reaction compressor that was 10%-15% more efficient and required only 5 stages to achieve the same compression ratio as the jumo 004.

As a result it had 50% of the weight for the same thrust. In fact it wasn't beaten in terms of frontal area vs thrust and weight versus thrust by any engine till 1947 and weighed only 390kg versus the 740kg of the jumo.

It would have been possible to derate the HeS 006 to only 70% and so reduce turbine temperature drastically and still have enough power for the He 280(small). The temperature reduction would have greatly increased turbine life. Sure the fighter had only the range of an Me 109 or He 162 and 3 x 20mm canon but it might have been available earlier despite the more expensive compressor.

Thus type of compressor was developed further by ABB Cie for the BMW 003C and increased thrust from 800 to 900kg with no changes in turbine conditions. The BMW003D even was expected to reach 1100kg thurst but required a new 2 stage turbine.