Ok we are starting to get into the flights of fancy here.
3 pre producton aircraft is not really production any more than many of the US ""Y" series aircraft were "production". There being no real investment in jigs/fixtures that enable true mass production.
The Me 110 like the Me 109 lacked the range to have much of any impact except in a tiny South East part of England. The Fw 187 did have the range.
Actually the 110 did have a greater range than the 109, roughly 40-50% more, this would actually mean a slightly better than 40-50% increase in operational radius as the fuel needed to climb to altitude has to be taken out of the "nominal" range.
They also show how critical 100 octane fuel was to the viability of the RAFs defence operations.
This is a non-issue. Doesn't matter what the British had for fuel, they had it. Question is whether the FW 187 would have made any real difference in the BoB, not it would have
IF...................
In actual combat these Fw 187AO were flown with the second seat position loaded with ballast. One can only imagine the fuel that could have been carried 400-500L litres? A massive camera?
Which is it? they needed ballast in the rear seat or you could use it as a fuel tank? Unless the
empty tank weighs whatever the ballast did? (I am not saying the ballast had to weight same as a crewman.) Book says that the ballast was to allow 3 point landings. One also wonders what the radio installation was like. The book claims that initially the radio range was sometimes as short as 3km but with work they achieved the desired range of 60km. Great for a factory defence fighter, absolutely lousy for a fighter intended to roam over most of England, radio won't even reach across most of the English channel. Bf 110 used the same radio as the He 111. Took the extra man to operate it.
Only 100/130 octane fuel made the Spitfire faster.
there was NO 100/130 fuel during the BoB, None, nada, zip, zero.............
There was 100 octane and when tested later if proved to be around 100/115 to 100/120 the 100/130 came later. And once again, this NOTHING to do with whether the Fw 187 would have been a help to the Luftwaffe during the BoB.
Speed at Sea Level
Fw 187 A0 466kmh / 289.5mph with 2 x 700hp Junker Jumo 210G (87 octane)
Speed at 4600m (15,090ft)
Fw 187 A0 545kmh / 338.5mph with 2 x 700hp Junker Jumo 210G
Max Speed
Fw 187 A0 545kmh / 338.5mph at 4600m/15091ft 87 octane
Loaded Weight, Wing Area and Wing Loading
Fw 187 Weight 4900 kg /10802lbs, wing area: 30.2sqm, loading 162.25kg/m2
Still pushing the "estimated" speeds of the Fw187?
At least the British numbers are from
actually tests even if service aircraft might not quite reach them.
The Fw 187A0 carried 1110 Liters of internal fuel which gave a range of 1440km, about 880 miles. If the second cockpit had of been converted to a 400 Litre tank one would expect about 40% more range Stripped of guns & excess armour with engines tuned it probably would have made a difficult to intercept recon. There was plenty of room for a camera in that seat position.
Man, what can of worms we have here. In regards to the bolded part. Is there any evidence what so ever that any of these FW 187 were ever fitted with armor? or self sealing fuel tanks?
the last Fw187A-0 with Jumo engines (work number 1974) made it's first flight in Sept of 1939, at this time few, if any Bf 109s or BF 110s were equipped with armor or self sealing tanks. Strange that aircraft not intended for front line service would be? Please note that teh Bf 110 the British test flew was noted as NOT having the full amount of armor that currant or later versions had and that aircraft was in service in Aug of 1940, not the summer of 1939.
If you put the camera in the back seat you can't use the space for fuel. This is part of what I hate about discussing the FW 187, it seems to be made of rubber and can be stretched, twisted and compresses in any manner to suit the objective at hand without any regard as to how that affects the rest of the plane.
BTW nobody was "tuning" aircraft engines in WW II. Not like car engines were tuned.
Mechanics had about 3 modifications they could make to an aircraft engine in the field. They could change the type of spark plug. They could change the timing of the ignition, This gets tricky as most aircraft engines used fixed timing, unlike cars. What ever timing you used for the spark plugs at idle was what you had at full rpm, there is no advance mechanism. A few had retard system for starting. 3rd, on many (but not all) allied aircraft you could change the jets in carbs or throttle body fuel injectors (and the mechanic had really better know what he was doing) or change a needle. For the Germans there is no easy adjustment for fuel flow. A new set of injector plungers? Change the injector rack setting so more fuel flows at all rpm and altitudes?
For motorcycles and cars the exhaust was often "tuned" in various ways (less restrictive muffler, larger diameter pipe, different length) to be less restrictive or to use resonated pulses. If you are already using short stacks only a few inches long you don't have options to change.
The Me 110 received its first DB601 engine in late 1938. These engines weighed 580kg vs 440kg dry but knock on effects raised the weight of the sluggish Me 110B->Me 110C not by 140kg per engine but 200kg. Thus a 400kg increase or a 10% increase over the Fw 187 empty weight and 8% loaded and fuelled.
Hmm, only 60KG per engine for the "Knock on effects". Like the bigger props, the bigger radiators and coolant, the larger oil coolers and oil supply? Bigger engine mounts?
Something is beginning to smell.
See:
Kurfürst - DB 601, 603, 605 datasheets - DB 601 A-1
I don't read German so perhaps I am in error but there seems to be two weights given for the DB601A-1 on that data sheet.
A dry weight (if google translate is correct) of 610KG and an equipped (with accessories?) of 715kg.
I would note that the numbers on Page 68 of the book for the Bf 110b-0 don't add up well. The difference between the empty weight and gross weight is only 1261kg but the fuel load (1270 liters) is 965kg and after you take out another 200kg for crew (100kg per man including parachute) you have 96kg left for engine oil and ammo. This assumes that the 4440kg "empty weight" is empty equipped (guns, radios and a few other bits included).
If you are comparing "empty" to "empty equipped" you are going to be off by several hundred kg.
