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The He 100 was designed for dual purpose, record setting and a service fighter. Two sets of wings were designed from the start and even so, the "big" fighter wing was about as small as any service fighter used in WW II. It was almost exactly the same area as the I-16 and the I-16 wasn't trying to house fuel in the wing and use the wing surface as a radiator. They also made the tail more than a little too small to start and it needed serious enlargement after the first few flights. The fans what to take all the good (the high speed and range) and ignore the bad.
A fair amount of work wasput into the 209 to try to turn it into a fighter. an all new longer span wing was designed and then lengthened twice. different leading edges were tried. at least two different radiator set ups were tried (not counting the surface cooling set up). Larger tail surfaces were used than on the record setting plane/s. With each change to make the plane easier to fly (or to stop over heating) the performance dropped till finally it showed little difference forma service 109.
You're correct...the Me209 V1 through V4 were for speed development and propeganda purposes, the Me209 (sometimes Me209 II) V5 through V8 were two entirely different aircraft.I'm somewhat confused, the Me 209 designed to replace the Bf 109 was a completely different a/c than the racing Me 209.
Agreed...the V5 and later offered nothing that the Fw190D series already provided and sooner.You are correct but the V4 used the fuselage of the V1-V3 series married to a new wing to try to develop a service fighter. The wing was modified several times, the radiator/cooling system was modified several times, armament details are sketchy (two mgs in the cowl and some sort of cannon in the prop hub) but performance (speed) plummeted from the V1-V3 (not surprising with around 66-70% of installed power and more drag).
the only worth the V4 had was to show them what NOT to do when they tried again later.
To be somewhat fair the concept for the 209 II was to try to use about 65% of the parts from a 109G and thus make the change over/replacement easier than tooling up for a new fighter or changing to 190 production. Reality was that only 40% or less of the parts would work and performance was below estimates which meant a lot of effort changing over for marginal results.
Agreed, particularly something better than the existing 109 (better in the operational sense not just raw performance) yet retaining production/cost advantages compared to just switching to more 190/derivatives.Well, they should have moved the landing gear outward. It was done in experiments. Thye should have fitted a good bubble canopy. That was also done in experiments. They should have made an effort to make the Bf 109 G series lighter, and that, too, could have been done. I think they should have changeds the wing mount to be a 4-poiont rather than a 3-point. They should have made provision for more internal fuel, at least in a tank that could be used or not used as the mission required.
Willy should have worked on making the controls easier to use at higher speeds, and should have fuitted trim to the rudder at least, if not the aileron, too. None of these were majot changes except the 3-point to 4-point wing mount bolts.
I'd have though seriously about a slightly larger, scaled-up Bf 109 ... maybe 10%. There are other changes, but many could be done with little difficulty.
There are more, but you get the idea. There was nothing that could NOT have been made better or lighter. The real need was to settle on an improved design and BUILD it.
No reason THAT couldn't have been incorporated.
The He 111 seems to be one of the better examples of Heinkel balancing the record setting aspects with a useful civil and military aircraft. Applying a similar balance to the He 100's development should have seen it faring much better. The He 112 seemed a lot more reasonably conservative in a number of areas too, and for a design supposedly aiming at succeeding where the 112 had failed (supposedly including lower cost/complexity/parts count) the He 100 seems to have done a pretty poor job of it.The He 100 seems to be something of a sacred cow among Luftwaffe fans. It just missed being a world class fighter but miss it did and nothing short of a new plane was going to "fix" it. The He 100, like some other Heinkel aircraft, was biased a bit too much to the record breaking side of the balance and not quite enough to the service fighter side. Messerschmitt spent a lot of time and effort trying to turn their 209 record setter into a service fighter. Being even more extreme than the He 100 it went nowhere.
...supposedly including lower cost/complexity/parts count...
In comparison, the 112 had 2,885 parts and 26,864 rivets, while the P.1035 was made of 969 unique parts with 11,543 rivets.