Me-110 Underrated

[Snautzer01]

Wrknr 332660 is a k4 from jg53.

Both of you, please keep it nice. It is a fun discussion. No need to let it spin out of control.

 

[Schweik]

Nice picture. I believe I have already noted that the later P-40s got the extended fuselage/tail? and we do know they changed the engine which changed the nose contours.
So that proves..............? for other changes?
I believe I have acknowledged that they beefed up the structure. The wing gained about 300lbs for instance so no you can't take a P-36 wing and stick an P-40 fuselage and engine on it and hang a 500lb (or 1000lb) bomb from each wing.

You can debate it, just use facts and not profile pictures which ignore the 5 changes I listed for the wings,
I listed changes from the E to the F, you posted a drawing of a late G or K?

Pretty much any fighter design which progressed and in some form or another saw combat from the 30's to 1945 had to change a lot. Whether you call that a new aircraft or not is subjective. If they changed 18 things on a P-40 and 21 things on a Bf 109 and 25 things on an La 7, where you do draw the line? Do you evaluate based on construction / tooling, performance, design what? There are many ways to look at it therefore it's easy to entrench hard positions if you really want to.

when facts fail go for personal attacks. Nice.

You are a smart guy but this is a very hard position built over some very soft ground.

 

[tomo pauk]

1000 km maybe pretty good (I would say 'medium' range) for 1940 but it's really not very impressive by 41 or 42

Let me spell this out:
- 1000 km is long range for German needs when Bf 110 was being conceived & 1st used - it can cover all of Poland and big chunk of France. From France/Belgium/Netherlands, it can cover England.
- 1000 km range was achieved at aggressive engine setting - 2400 rpm and as much boost as supercharger can provide at 6 km. Go down to usual cruise settings (engine RPM between 1600 and 2000 rpm) and range is markedly improved.
- 1000 km range is double what Bf 109E will do.
- By 1941/42, the big drop tanks were in use, and you know that.

 

[Schweik]

I understand what you are saying, and I know you know what you are talking about, but I still don't get it. Yes 1,000 km is longer than a Bf 109 - or a Spitfire or a Hurricane or a Yak-1. It's about the same as an LaGG-3. But If you are considering the idea of long range as a world standard, it's not that long, especially once you get into the mid-war. Yes I am aware the Bf 110 got big external fuel tanks, but so did every other aircraft and the 110 never did seem to have sufficient range to reach it's long range targets, at least from the perspective I'm mostly seeing it from in the Med or the Bay of Biscay.

Not to beat a dead horse but the Beaufighter had a 2,800 km range, A6M had 2,600 km range (with a drop tank) P-38 had close to 2,000 km and so on.

I'd call the 110 a "medium ranged aircraft" by the standards of say, 1941. But I can agree to disagree.

 

[tomo pauk]

I understand what you are saying, and I know you know what you are talking about, but I still don't get it. Yes 1,000 km is longer than a Bf 109 - or a Spitfire or a Hurricane or a Yak-1. It's about the same as an LaGG-3. But If you are considering the idea of long range as a world standard, it's not that long, especially once you get into the mid-war. Yes I am aware the Bf 110 got big external fuel tanks, but so did every other aircraft and the 110 never did seem to have sufficient range to reach it's long range targets, at least from the perspective I'm mostly seeing it from in the Med or the Bay of Biscay.

Not to beat a dead horse but the Beaufighter had a 2,800 km range, A6M had 2,600 km range (with a drop tank) P-38 had close to 2,000 km and so on.
I'd call the 110 a "medium ranged aircraft" by the standards of say, 1941. But I can agree to disagree.

So we'd count the drop-tank outfitted P-38 and Zero under long-range fighters, but not the drop-tank outfitted Bf 110? In the same time let's conviniently forget that before late 1940 there was no operative Zero, let alone any operative P-38. No operative Yak-1 or LaGG-3 either.
There was no world classification or standard what is and what is not a long-range fighter.

Soviet fighters were doing 1000+- km on cruise setting, they didn't not have had drop tanks that were standard for Bf 110 by the time the new gen of Soviet fighters were around; no, not every other aircraft received drop tanks.

But again comparing one fighter from 1939 with another that is from 1941 is not a new vogue on this forum.

 

[Schweik]

But isn't there a 1941 and 1942 and 1943 version of the Bf 110? Lets compare like with like, I'm not trying to play any tricks. But I know if the aircraft has say, a 1,000 km range without drop tanks, adding the drop tanks will only improve the range so much, because when the external tanks run out, it still has to make it back to base.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I think we just mean different things by the same terms. If a Bf 110 has the same range as a Beaufighter or a P-38 comparing with or without fuel tanks (so long as it's like with like) that is big news to me. It's not that easy to get precise figures for different flight configurations so I'd be glad to see more data. My perspective is mainly from the operational histories I've read from Russia and the Med, the Bay of Biscay and to a lesser extent the Battle of Britain. That is what I'm basing my comments on. If I'm missing something obvious then I apologize.

 

[Shortround6]

Pretty much any fighter design which progressed and in some form or another saw combat from the 30's to 1945 had to change a lot. Whether you call that a new aircraft or not is subjective. If they changed 18 things on a P-40 and 21 things on a Bf 109 and 25 things on an La 7, where you do draw the line? Do you evaluate based on construction / tooling, performance, design what? There are many ways to look at it therefore it's easy to entrench hard positions if you really want to.



You are a smart guy but this is a very hard position built over some very soft ground.

The XF4U had something like 600 or 800 changes before going into production, The Main visual differences are slightly longer nose and cockpit being moved back to fit in the fuselage fuel tank. After that changes to the F4U's airframe were minor. Changing from six .50 cal guns to four 20mm cannon may have required a slew of engineering drawings but the wing span, cord, airfoil, size of the flaps and ailerons all stayed the same.
Likewise on the P-36/P-40.
By the time you even get to the P-40 the Hawk 75 airframe was on it's 6th or 7th engine/power plant. It had gone from 3760lbs empty to 5,417lbs empty for the XP-40 and from 4843lbs loaded to 6,260lbs normal gross weight.

So are all the Hawk 75 versions separate aircraft or different versions/models of the same aircraft?
Wing is unchanged in size and shape, tail is pretty much unchanged, fuselage from the firewall back (except for the XP-37 and YP-37s) is pretty much unchanged.
Airframe may be beefed up to handle the higher weights.
Export Hawk 75s got four gun wings (2 to a side) well before the P-40B did so the gun and ammo layout and access hatches/doors predate P-40B.

XP-40 is the 10th production P-36A airframe, serial 38-10.
The 4th P-36A was turned into the XP-42

from the firewall back it was a standard P-36A.

SO when does the P-40 become a significantly different plane than the Hawk-75/P-36?

With the XP-40?
With the P-40 though P-40C?
With the P-40 D & E?
With the late P40F and the P-40Ks with the extended fuselage?

 

[Glider]

No, I don't think that's a valid assertion. I brought up the Beaufighter initially because I was told it was impossible to build a long range fighter in 1940. The Beau and the Zero are probably the two best counter examples to disprove that specious claim. But here I'm referring to the Beaufighter specifically because particularly in the maritime war from the Bay of Biscay to the Aegean, the Beaufighter was operating as probably the main competitor to the Bf 110 and frankly by the end of 1942 it was dominating those spaces.

I think you will find that that the Me110 hardly ever, if indeed ever operated over the Bay of Biscay with the exception of an occasional mission. The Beaufighter fought the Ju88c over the Bay and did indeed dominate the Ju88.

And yet, P-40s were still flying front line combat missions, and tangling with Fw 190s as late as Anzio in 1944. Meanwhile, the 1930's vintage Bf 109 was competitive until the end of the war. So was the Spitfire. The Beaufighter and Zero were still dangerous in 1942 or 43 or 44 even though they were 1940 designs.

There is a whole world of difference between 'tangling with Fw190's in a P40 in 1944' and 'Being Dangerous in 1944' compared to being on a roughly equal footing.

To sink a ship like the Ohio a 1,000 bomb load was sufficient.

Normally I would agree with you, but clearly you haven't read up on the damage the Ohio took getting to Malta

But since you bring it up, the Beau had 10 guns to the 110s 6.

The vast majority of Beaufighters had the 4 x 20mm and the LMG's were replaced with various things depending on the version

 

[Schweik]

The XF4U had something like 600 or 800 changes before going into production, The Main visual differences are slightly longer nose and cockpit being moved back to fit in the fuselage fuel tank. After that changes to the F4U's airframe were minor. Changing from six .50 cal guns to four 20mm cannon may have required a slew of engineering drawings but the wing span, cord, airfoil, size of the flaps and ailerons all stayed the same.
Likewise on the P-36/P-40.
By the time you even get to the P-40 the Hawk 75 airframe was on it's 6th or 7th engine/power plant. It had gone from 3760lbs empty to 5,417lbs empty for the XP-40 and from 4843lbs loaded to 6,260lbs normal gross weight.

So are all the Hawk 75 versions separate aircraft or different versions/models of the same aircraft?
Wing is unchanged in size and shape, tail is pretty much unchanged, fuselage from the firewall back (except for the XP-37 and YP-37s) is pretty much unchanged.
Airframe may be beefed up to handle the higher weights.
Export Hawk 75s got four gun wings (2 to a side) well before the P-40B did so the gun and ammo layout and access hatches/doors predate P-40B.

XP-40 is the 10th production P-36A airframe, serial 38-10.
The 4th P-36A was turned into the XP-42
View attachment 588313
from the firewall back it was a standard P-36A.

SO when does the P-40 become a significantly different plane than the Hawk-75/P-36?

With the XP-40?
With the P-40 though P-40C?
With the P-40 D & E?
With the late P40F and the P-40Ks with the extended fuselage?

I think it's a ridiculous question. It's both, and neither - by the time you get to the end of that line it's clearly a different aircraft, but it's also from the same lineage. Same as the Bf 109, the LaGG-3 / La 7, the Spitfire, and a host of other fighters. A lot of small and moderate changes eventually make for a big difference, collectively. I think it's patently ridiculous to simultaneously claim that the P-36 and P-40L or N are the same aircraft, but the Bf 109D and G-14 or K-4 are completely different planes. I am not trying to be rude but I can't take that seriously and I don't believe that you believe it yourself.

And I have 20+ books on the P-40 on my bookshelf some of which get into every detail of the production and development. As you also do I have flight manuals for early and late model P-40s, and I could drag all that out and go through every single systems change from 1936 to 1944, but I really don't want to get into yet another fruitless debate about the P-40 and then be accused of derailing the thread with discussions of that particular plane. If you really, really want to get into this specific debate I would consider wading into it, but only in another thread. I don't want to debate it here.

And let me ask you a question, if I proved you wrong, by some pre-determined metric, would you admit it?

 

[Schweik]

I think you will find that that the Me110 hardly ever, if indeed ever operated over the Bay of Biscay with the exception of an occasional mission. The Beaufighter fought the Ju88c over the Bay and did indeed dominate the Ju88.

I can cite some examples

There is a whole world of difference between 'tangling with Fw190's in a P40 in 1944' and 'Being Dangerous in 1944' compared to being on a roughly equal footing.

Well, again I can cite some examples - some of the units operating over and around Anzio, notably the 79th FG, seems to have shot down a fair number of Fw 190s, more than they lost to them. Most of the latter were flying fighter bomber missions at the time. But I don't think that really matters, you couldn't say the P-40 wasn't competitive there. I can post some combat records from MAW IV in the other thread on combat histories.

Normally I would agree with you, but clearly you haven't read up on the damage the Ohio took getting to Malta

I have, but I also know most of the other ships were sunk by Stukas which don't carry a very heavy bomb load. Ohio was just lucky and had a very brave crew.

The vast majority of Beaufighters had the 4 x 20mm and the LMG's were replaced with various things depending on the version

Some were replaced with .50 HMG

 

[tomo pauk]

But isn't there a 1941 version of the Bf 110? Lets compare like with like, I'm not trying to play any tricks. But I know if the aircraft has say, a 1,000 mile range without drop tanks, adding the drop tanks will only improve the range so much, because when the external tanks run out, it still has to make it back to base.

Bf 110 in 1941 has drop tanks, and can also carry the belly tank. 2x900L tanks = 2x238 US gal tanks.
Drop tanks can increase range by a large margin, even the 50% increase vs. internal fuel brings a major improvement in range. see here

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I think we just mean different things by the same terms. If a Bf 110 has the same range as a Beaufighter or a P-38 comparing with or without fuel tanks (so long as it's like with like) that is big news to me. It's not that easy to get precise figures for different flight configurations so I'd be glad to see more data.

Beaufighter - 550 imp gals for 1500 mile range (later with more fuel - 622, 682, and late in the war even more - 882 imp gals with drop tank included). Bf 110 with extra tanks - 660 gals with two big drop tanks (270 imp gals of that internally - that's about 50% more per engine vs. Bf 108E-K, most of the Spitfires and Hurricanes; a bit more fuel per engine than Japanese 1-engined fighters). Beaufighter with Hercules will be draggier. P-38: 250 imp gals (later more, 341 imp gal); drop tanks of different sizes. Will be most streamlined between the three. Range of P-38 D-H without drop tanks was not that great by standards of the day, even if it would've been okay for LW needs of 1940.

 

[Shortround6]

The Beaufighter rather inherited it's long range, also it's size.
Blenheim I was good for about 1000 miles.
Blenheim IV was good for about 1400 miles. got fuel tanks in the wings outboard of the engines.

Beaufort used somewhat modified Blenheim wings. More in construction than in airfoil or size/shape (minor differences) but much more aluminium fittings and forgins than steel tube and plate. Both lighter and stronger. Despite large fuselage and more powerful engines it managed 1600 mile range.

Beaufighter was the "Sports" Beaufort. The concept was to take the Beaufort wing and tail and stick a skinny fighter fuselage in the mix and use bigger engines. The final details meant you really couldn't use Beaufort wing parts in a Beaufighter but again, the wing was generally the same shape and size and airfoil.

I would note (again) that they estimated this wing would be good for 360mph at altitude using the Hercules engine with two speed supercharger. They were off by about 30 mph. British were using the wrong drag figures for estimating speeds in the high 300 to 400mph range. The wing could sure hold a lot of fuel though. The shortfall in performance meant that the Beaufighter, useful as it was in many roles, could not be used as a day fighter in contested airspace (meaning europe). The wing did provide a lot of lift though and Beaufighters went from around 20,000lbs gross weight to a bit over 25,000lbs gross weight.

the 110 was, at times, playing 2nd fiddle to new improved airplanes and modifications/upgrades were pretty much the minimum to keep it useful. The Me 210 made it's first flight Sept 5th 1939, 4 days after the invasion of Poland. Are Messerschmitt engineers figuring out how to make the 110 better or are they trying to get the 210 to fly without crashing. The Germans tended to ignore useful/usable aircraft while they chased after shiny new toys that all too often broke with very little use.

A comment on the P-38. Until the J it carried 1135 liters in inside protected tanks. Yes it had less drag than 110 but it's reputation for range came from it's early use of drop tanks(early fo the US) It had been designed for just over 1500 liters but the fitting of self sealing tanks forced the reduction.

 

[Schweik]

So is a Beaufighter X a Blenheim ?

 

[Shortround6]

Nope,

You can't actually interchange most or all of the parts, but the form of the wing was inherited for good or bad.


Good was that Blenheim MK I was practically an STOL machine at 12,500lbs and with 725hp take-off engines and two pitch propellers. As the Blenheim gained weight it still allowed the plane to take-off and land using a respectable sized airstrip at increasing weights on the same power. MK IV could carry 468imp gallons in the wing tanks (Blenheim V got more powerful engines for take-off but went over 17,000lbs.)
The Beauforts engines were under 1100hp for take off even with 100/130 fuel and weight went to over 21,000lbs, good thing the wing was high lift
Wing also had lots of volume for fuel. Beaufort at least the Australian ones could carry 554 IMP gallons in the wing.
The JU 88 carried 369 imp gallons in the wing for comparison.

So the Beaufighter "inherited" it's wing and fuel capacity.

The bad part was the rise in drag in the mid 300 to 400mph speed range.

 

[Stig1207]

Well, again I can cite some examples - some of the units operating over and around Anzio, notably the 79th FG, seems to have shot down a fair number of Fw 190s, more than they lost to them. Most of the latter were flying fighter bomber missions at the time. But I don't think that really matters, you couldn't say the P-40 wasn't competitive there. I can post some combat records from MAW IV in the other thread on combat histories.

The USAAF P-40 units overclaimed against Fw 190s over Anzio well above the norm, according to MAW IV. It's difficult to say how many the P-40s did shoot down as most of the losses were attributed to Spitfires, which also overclaimed just not as much as the P-40s. It might only be a couple of Jabos actually shot down by P-40s, but it might be more than Fw 190s shot down P40s, as SG4 didn't make any claims.

 

[Acheron]

Any consensus here if the rear-gunner of the Me 110 was worthy the extra weight?

 

[Shortround6]

Rear gunner was also the radio operator.
The 110 carried a much longer ranged and complicated radio than the 109.
He was also the loader for the 20mm cannon. The 110 carried a 60 round drum on each cannon plus two extra drums. I don't know how often they got to the 3rd drum but without the rear gunner the 110 would have had no more cannon ammo than the 109.

 

[Milosh]

Some 110's had a 3rd crew member.

 

[Vincenzo]

Some 110's had a 3rd crew member.

Afair the F-4 and G-4 the night fighter version

 

[Shortround6]

It was designed for a 3 man crew for certain missions. Most of time it carried only 2 men but this is what helped it be a good night fighter. A large enough cockpit to hold the equipment and let the crew function.