Luftwaffe's ideal night fighter: you are in charge

I disagree.

Most Luftwaffe engine problems date back to October 1935 when RLM chose to blacklist Daimler-Benz, favoring Junkers and BMW instead. Consequently the DB601 engine program didn't receive priority until 1940 and the DB603 engine program didn't receive priority until 1942. Otherwise there could have been plenty of DB601 engines by 1940 and plenty of DB603 engines by 1942. And WWII Germany would have no engine problems worth mentioning.

davebender said:

I disagree.

Most Luftwaffe engine problems date back to October 1935 when RLM chose to blacklist Daimler-Benz, favoring Junkers and BMW instead. Consequently the DB601 engine program didn't receive priority until 1940 and the DB603 engine program didn't receive priority until 1942. Otherwise there could have been plenty of DB601 engines by 1940 and plenty of DB603 engines by 1942. And WWII Germany would have no engine problems worth mentioning.

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yet it was Daimler who failed to clear Db605 for 142 ata before autumn 43 and to produce 1 year sooner Db605AM&ASM

Mr Siegfried ,as always, excellent post! At the moment, after the losses of Mr Soren, Mr Crupp and Mr Kurfust , you appear to be the leading Lw experte on this forum!

Perhaps things would have been different if funding for the DB601 engine program hadn't been cut over 50% during October 1935.

Siegfried said:

It's worth considering that the Night fighter Mosquito would have had difficulty intercepting the faster Pathfinder Mosquito and the PRU Mosquito.

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The NF.30 had two-stage superchargers, while many of the 8 Group aircraft, as well as 5 Group's 627 Squadron markers, had single-stage Merlins (less of an issue for 627 as they operated at low level).

The Oboe-equipped aircraft of 109 and 105 Squadrons tended to have two-stage engines, as the improved high-altitude performance increased Oboe's effective range.

with a more powerful engine fitted how would the me108 faired in the nightfighter role,if they could get the equipment into a 109,the 108 body with cannons fitted might work

The Me 108 was sort of a 1930s Beechcraft Bonanza. It is going to take quite an upgrade for it to play night fighter.

just a thought,it had 109 wings and tail with the cabin body so might have been useful if developed for other uses

woljags said:

just a thought,it had 109 wings and tail with the cabin body so might have been useful if developed for other uses

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No, it didn't.

They may have been similar in size and shape but nobody is sticking fighter wings on a 240hp passenger plane or vice versa. The 108 weighed 806KG empty. I doubt it was stressed for fighter maneuvers even at it's light weight and the idea that it's wings would stand up to 500kph flight compared to the 305kph it did do is beyond belief. Using wings for a fighter on a low powered 4 seat transport plane plane means the wings are too heavy for the intended use and seriously affect the payload. Too many authors have "claimed" that Messerschmidt "simply" widened the fuselage of the of 108 to make the 109. He may have used the same configuration but I seriously doubt the actual structure was the same, even if we discount the different leading slat arrangement and the different flap arrangement.

Tante Ju said:

I wondered lot. Often said that magnetron was some "super weapon", but I keep wonder why. I know it can generate greater power for very short wave radar devices, but I do ask, why is very short wave devices give advantage? Becuase AFAIK most search device operate at fairly long waves, so I guess things are more complicated, probably because why short wave is good for one purpose, long wave for another purpose.

Say how does it bend with earth curve? How does it effected by jam? How accurate resolution there is? How sensitive to weather? What is detection range, ranging accuracy with same power source? Weight etc?

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The width of a radar beam is related to the antena size and the wavelength. If you want a tight beam you need either a small antena with a small wavelength or if you can not generate short wavelenghts you must either accept a bigger antena or accept a broader beam that will blur targets.

The tighter beam gives the advange of more resolution: the abillity to distinguish seperate objects eg two ships or aircraft close together, a ground map.

More importantly the broader beam means it is less likely to intercept jamming from the side or reflections from 'windows' and even if it does the opperator can often seperate a cloud of 'chaff' from another cloud od chaff or a real target because of the tighter beam.

You can fit a small tight team into the nose of a fighter or make a ppi distplay that fits into the belly of a bomber for ground mappiing or sub hunting aircraft.

Rudolf Kunhold of the NVKn (German Naval signals), the physicist who litterally invented radar in Germany and pushed GEMA to develope radar also pushed microwaves from 1932. However by 1936 the Germans had great success with generating sufficient power at wavelenghts down to 50cm and this was good enough at a time that radar in Britain was still opperating at 15m or 7.5m that they were less concerned at producing 10cm wavelenths.

Hence early success produced quite adaquete radars, Wurzburg was the most accurate FLAK radar till 1942 when the US SCR-584 took over that claim.

The next generation of german radars was to go from 50cm or so down to 25cm ("Mannheim K") and demonstration models were made by 1942 though they could have gone to 9cm at reduced power however the investment wasn't made due to resource issues.

The 9cm work caught them of guard. Also another let down was the failure to move from low powered radars of 8kW pulse to ones producing 160kW or so for greater range and jam resistance. They did produce such radars but too little too late (Wurzburg-Riesse-Gigant could pulse out 160kW to help overcome jamming)



The Wurzburg 53cm radar with a

i simply said if developed,if you are saying that the 108 structure was too weak that maybe the case but the design was still there,they could have taken the design/drawings and developed a usable aircraft from the design to comply with what they needed,having been around 108 and 109[spanish built] during my ground crew days in the late 80's they are very similar

davebender said:

Perhaps things would have been different if funding for the DB601 engine program hadn't been cut over 50% during October 1935.

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For the Luftwaffe's pilots to have any chance the whole Me 109G program and its engines needs to be brought forward 6-9 months, I'm inclined to think 9 months.

The 1.42 ata rating needs to be securely released by January 1943 rather than the repeated equivocation till October 43.

The introduction of the Me 109G5AS, Me 109G6AM and Me 109G6ASM with their 1.7 ata ratings and high altitude superchargers needs to brought forward from March/April 1944 to about June 1943 so that there is some parity against the latest P-47 and P-38 above 20,000ft.

The Me 109K4 and Me 109G10 need to be coming into service in December 43/Jan 1944 instead of
October/November 1944 at latest since the P-51B are coming into service in numbers.

An ordinary Me 109G6 should never have to see a P-51B if the Luftwaffe wants to save its pilots.

The FW 190 series also needs improvements.

I'm not sure what the hold up was on the 1.42 ata rating
1 Spark plugs
2 Lubrication deaerator?
3 Lack of C3 fuel
4 Piston strength?

It cost the Me 109 10 vital MPH along with almost as much from lack of fairing over the gun bulges and retracting the tail wheel.

As far as release of the MW-50 I don't understand what prevented an earlier deployment of the technology.

It is possible to imagine that the outsize superchargers variants were held back from mass production in order to keep production rates up of stadard DB605A so a lack of capacity due to decisions in the 1930s may be relevant there. The lack of DB603 production could have impacted decisions to not produce Me 309, Me 209-II and limited He 219 and Do 217M and most importantly delayed a decision to exploit it via a FW 190D9-DB603 variant. Lack of DB605 production meant the He 177A5 engine fix in the form of the DB610 didn't show up in production till December 1943 and the lack of this engine also finally killed the Ju 288. A bigger factory also supports a smoother well resourced R+D program.

Yes they used GM-1 in the Bf 109E so why not continue its used with the Me 109G-10/K-4? I know they used both the MW-50 GM-1 in the TA 152, but too little too late. Anyways, I read sparkplugs were the big problem.

lack of DB603 production could have impacted decisions to not produce Me 309, Me 209-II, He 219 and most importantly delayed a decision to exploit it via a FW 190D9-DB603 variant

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If RLM had not pulled the plug on DB603 funding during 1937 the engine would probably have entered mass production during 1941. That changes a bunch of things.

Dr. Tank would have his preferred engine for the Fw-190 right from the beginning. If the DB603 powered Fw-190C enters mass production during 1941 the Me-209 becomes pointless.

Siegfried said:

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The 1.42 ata rating needs to be securely released by January 1943 rather than the repeated equivocation till October 43.

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Many thanks for that info.
Do you know, by any chance, when the BMW 801D was cleared for 1,42 ata (IIRC it was cleared for 1,35 ata from March 1942)?

tomo pauk said:

Many thanks for that info.
Do you know, by any chance, when the BMW 801D was cleared for 1,42 ata (IIRC it was cleared for 1,35 ata from March 1942)?

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I have seen that information in great detail but I can't recollect where: I believe it came in with the FW 190A3 and the BMW801D engine in the spring of 1942 (March?).
The BMW802D2 used C3 fuel with that variant then soon moving up.

If you have a look at the Allied Fuel intelligence files at fischertropsch.org you will note C3 is initially only rated (by allied tests) around 93/115 or so. By the end of the war it was around 96/130 or more. At least some of the advances in 801 power levels are associated with improvements in C3. The big improvement comes in 1943 or so.

davebender said:

If RLM had not pulled the plug on DB603 funding during 1937 the engine would probably have entered mass production during 1941. That changes a bunch of things.

Dr. Tank would have his preferred engine for the Fw-190 right from the beginning. If the DB603 powered Fw-190C enters mass production during 1941 the Me-209 becomes pointless.

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The engine definetly changes things. Had the engine been available sooner aircraft would have been developed to use it.

The ideal night fighter may have been the Hs 127: a Ju 88 rival with 3 crew it reputedly manged 348mph on a pair of DB600 engines of 850hp. Even with enormous weight growth with DB601E or DB605A in the 1300hp range a speed of at least 370mph (same as Me 110G2) should be possible at 1.3 ata. Of course the luftwaffe would need to elect to keep this as a pure schnellbomber not a multi-role dive bomber so its structure stayed lean.

Moreover it had 3 crew from the start and the width to accomodate a variety of equipment.

The light bomber role was already covered by Ju-87 and Ju-88 dive bombers.

I would develop the Hs127 as a purpose built bomber interceptor and long range recon aircraft. That way the Hs127 remains light, fast and maneuverable. Four nose mounted 20mm cannon to provide firepower for this mission. Recon versions would replace two of the cannon with cameras. Since the Hs-127 has the long range recon mission Ju-88 and Me-110 variants would not be built for that role.

Siegfried said:

I have seen that information in great detail but I can't recollect where: I believe it came in with the FW 190A3 and the BMW801D engine in the spring of 1942 (March?).
The BMW802D2 used C3 fuel with that variant then soon moving up.

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Here is a table from the BMW 801 manual, stating the engine can't be pushed more than the values in the brackets allow, applying from March 1942. All due to the danger of overheating the engine.