Milch's reluctance to develop new types might be conditioned by the continual failiure of the German aircraft industry to produce viable ones. The Me210 is probably the biggest **** up but it is one of many.
I don't think Milch's supposed ancestry has anything to do with this. The German aircraft industry and RLM displayed some surprising incompetence throughout the war. Too much power with the companies (initially) and too many egos at work combined with disorganised and fragmented development programmes.
The RLM's complete inability to match airframes with the requisite engines is a good illustration of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.
Cheers
Steve
I think the failures of German procurement have several causes, for some of which there are excuses.
Of course if a type fails to meet expectation an alternative solution should be ready and in this there were managerial failures.
Consider the most damaging
1 Ju 288
2 He 177
3 Me 210
4 Engine performance deficit, especially at high altitudes between late 1942 to early 1944 (a deficit of 1.5 years) during which turbo supercharged P-47, P-38 and duel stage supercharged Merlin spitfires attrition the Luftwaffe.
in regards to the Ju 288 had the Germans succeeded to introduce into service a 400mph (some sources say 416mph) aircraft with 4 crew and an operational radius of over 2000km (1200) miles with 2 tons of bombs powered by a pair of 2500hp engines running of 87 octane fuel on schedule in 1941 or even 1944 they would have pulled of an incredible accomplishment. The aircraft had 4 remotely sighted heavy guns and a pressurized ejectable crew escape capsule.
The engine of course was too ambitious though it seems to have finally been ready in 1944 and in derated form in 1941. Plan B was the DB606 (two paired DB601 engines) whose travails in the He 177 are well known. The DB610 (two paired DB605) was apparently quite reliable in the Ju 288 but the engine produced disappointing performance in range.
It appears that the problems stemmed from two areas:
1 Big weight growth from radical re-engineering from lessons learned from BoB that widened the fuselage, demanded better superchargers, added a 4th crew member and extra armament this made 2500hp instead of 2000hp.
2 The Jumo 222 production was canceled and the engine was put on low priority in December 1941 even though it achieved a successful 100 hour test run in April 41, this killed the Ju 288 since this engine was essential for the Ju 288. It was Milch that killed of the engine in December 1941, thereby also killing the aircraft. He handed over the massive factory built for the Jumo 222 to Daimler Benz to build the DB610 to power the bomber instead but as Daimler Benz was overloaded with work the factory remained empty till the end of the war. This meant no Jumo 222 and no increase in DB610 production so the bomber had no engine.
Development of the engine continued at low priority and it was ready to produce 2500hp as the Jumo 222A3/B3 and the 2700hp Jumo 222E/F at the end of the war. It was expected to achieve 4500hp eventually.
It appears the engine was ready to produce 2000hp in April 1941 having passed 100 hour endurance tests but was not ready for 2500hp even though it could produce 3000hp in short test.
Info from Auto Union und Junkers von Peter Kohl,Peter Bessel
This if you use translation tools is also interesting:
FlugzeugLorenz: Junkers Ju 288
The Jumo 222A/B engine, was in theory capable of propelling the Ju 388 at 410 mph and the Jumo 222E/F at 444 mph so had it been developed at full pace it would still have provided an outstanding bomber anyway. The Ju 188A probably would have had a speed of 345 mph with 2000hp.
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The He 177 started development about 1 year before the B-29. Hence if the B-29 performed its first unreliable missions in June 1944 the He 177 should have been doing so in June 1943, which is more or less what happened. The He 177A5 with new DB 610 engines arrived in November 1943 and cured the fire problems (though a3 was still in production).
Of course the RLM gambled the farm with the He 177 and should have had a 4 seperate engine version developing in the background as a backup or another manufacturer.
Had they allowed for seperate engines, which would have meant dive bombing was impossible, they probably would have had a stunning aircraft entering reliable service sometime in 1942 that was free of the He 177A1 and he 177A3 problems and able to use either Jumo 211J or DB605 engines.
Such and aircraft would easily have upgraded with better engines and by mid 1944 would have been operating with DB605AS, DB603 or Jumo 213
As it was the He 177A5 only solved the problems in early 1944.
In reality the Luftwaffe missed its opportunity when if failed to develop the Ju 89.
The Spanish civil had taught the Luftwaffe that level bombing was completely ineffective and that only dive bombing was of much value. The solution of course was better bomb sights not dive bombing but Goering only rescinded the requirement in late 1942.
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The Me 210 fiasco seems to have been caused by Professor Herr Direktor Willi Messerschmitt over rulling his chief designer and shortening the tail of the Me 210 by 1m and removing the slats (according to Rudiger Kosin). The other problem was that it had been ordered of the plans with Jigs and tooling made before the first test flight and no one was ready to take responsibility for the faulty design and the money spent on producing an unstable aircraft.
In modern terms this is called 'fast tracking' ie design and construct in parrallel. It is seldom cheaper but it can be faster.
What should have happened is
1 Risk analysis
2 Plan B and Plan C backup running in parrallel. This means building long tail versions and slated versions even if they are not going to be needed and even if it means that the jigging and tooling for the short tailed versions is wasted.
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The engine issue is more difficult to understand, part of it gets down to shortages of C3 fuel i think but it looks like high altitude development was confined to research into ultra high altitude interception (50,000ft) rather than just raising ceiling from 37000ft to say 44,000ft.
The fact that MW50 and the bigger superchargers did not come into service till March 1944 for the Me meant inexperienced German pilots were at a disadvantage at a critical time.