Me-309: how good was it?

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it would probably have taken a number of crashes and dead pilots to get the thing combat ready, Messerchmitt had a bad habit of making weak structures despite criticism, he didnt seem to learn!
 
No direspect to Hartmann or anyone else in the LW flying during WW2, but the large number of kills does sometime reflect the large numbers of targets that they would come up against and a fair number of these would be novices and flying in some cases bombers that were not very well armed or aircraft that were obsolete.
The advantage that the LW had on the Eastern front was that they were normally "up-sun" at a higher altitude and "bouncing" enemy aircraft.
Hartmann learned his trade from vastly experienced LW pilots and put their knowledge / guidance to good use, becomming a superb fighter pilot in his own right.
Would he have had more success in a ME309 - who knows? He learned to make the most of wht he had available, and no doubt would have adapted to a new aircraft had that been necessary. I accept the point that for a novice pilot, a better aircraft may improve their chances of survival. But it does not make them experienced and that is what usually kept people alive.
 
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Thats an interesting point that I was unaware of!
Maybe it was due to the Hurricanes attacking the bombers and taking losses from their fire and also then being bounced by their escort?
The Spitfires were supposedly tasked with engaging the LW fighters, would often end up in a one v one dogfight as the melee split up with aircraft that were being bounced taking evasive action?
 

Which is all great in theory and was certainly the intention.There are,however several factors mitigating against this.
First Dowding had supposed that the Luftwaffe's bombers would arrive over the English coast unescorted by single engined fighters. Noone,but noone,had foreseen the rapid fall of France and the consequent acquisition by the Luftwaffe of bases that brought these types within range of southern England. There was no plan for seperating the bombers from their escorts.
Secondly radar could not distinguish the make up of a raid,whether it was escorted or not,and the RAF's fighters were tasked to a raid before its composition was determined,assuming it was deemed to be genuine and not a feint by the officers doing the "filtering" at Fighter Command HQ.
Thirdly they were tasked according to their state of readiness and geographic position relative to the incoming raid and not according to the type of aeroplane that they were operating.
Cheers
Steve
 
Thanks Steve, what you said makes perfect sense. The concept may have been to have the Spitfires take on the escort and Hurricanes take on the bombers, but that would not always be practical - the situation would dictate whatever resources were in the area would have to intercept no matter what.
 
The Basket said:
The 309 offered nothing new and so was not followed.

He 100? Hee hee. But the Me 309 I like the canopy and trike undercarriage but war is no time to play with new fighters. The 109 was adequate and jets were the money so lets go there instead.
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You have hit the bullseye there. Have just done a profile for it and nothing I researched suggested it would be, at the very best, marginally better overall than the 109 yet with all the cost, manpower and re tooling to consider to replace it. It had the wrong engine in the 603 with only at the last minute being fitted with the 605. Fact is the more it was developed towards production specs the worse it got, so there is little reason to believe that without a massive redesign it could ever become a respectable fighter, if even then. There is nothing that I came across that anything feasible at the time would have fundamentally improved it in the time available and with no sign that it would be as good as the FW190 it just seemed logical to cancel it and spend the time producing that aircraft while Messerschmitt concentrated on the 109 and jets. Unlike some other aircraft mentioned it wasn't simply about developing out clear faults it was simply a design that did not perform as expected overall. Was a real looker mind even if it destroys the myth that if it looks good it is good.
 
This design had some really major issues. Tricycle gear, retractable radiator, pressurized cockpit, reversible prop. ejection seat.

Originally earmarked for first flight of the prototype in 41, issues withe the engine delayed prototype construction until oct of 41. Pretty ironically the first flight of the V1, in July of 42, occurred the same day as the first flight of the 262 under purely jet power.

The front gear leg was mounted to the engine reduction gear. This is really nice from a weight reduction standpoint, but it put a significant amount of stress on the engine. Especially when the reversible pitch prop was used for breaking on landing. There were lots of problems with overheating, loss of oil pressure and hydraulics during testing, which is fairly normal for a prototype aircraft. However in flight testing against a 109 is was noted that the 109 had an advantage in turn and roll, with the speed advantage of the 309 being marginal.

Manufacture of the V4-10 was held up by issues with the engine, which was also needed for the 410 program. To this end many of the proposed production variants of the 309 could be fitted with the Jumo 213 instead.

Ultimately the type was cancelled in 26 Jan '43, since the 209 then proposed offered similar performance with far less disruption to manufacturing output.

Additionally the radiator installation seems very bad to me. Messerschmitt seemed to abandon the retractable aspect of it in the later proposals, ie 609.

Oh, and I should mention that the design was sold to the Japanese and the US captured a sub with a bunch of documents about it. Hopefully that cache still exists in some government archive.
 
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I think the first really combat-capable P-38 was the P-38G. Could be mistaken.

They put the B-29 right into production and it had severe engine faults, along with a few others. The faults were worked out, but the first versions weren't even really "flight-capable," as much as they were "fire-capable." Eddie Allen, chief Boeing test pilot, was killed in a prototype of the B-29.

The Fw 190 was not anywhere CLOSE to ready in prototype form, and nether were most fighter prototypes capable of anything but flight testing. Many didn't even have armament.
 
davebender said:
Mustang Mk.1 went into mass production after 1 prototype. It wasn't exactly a world beater. About 1,500 Mustang variants were produced prior to P-51B, which is generally considered the first really good Mustang.
Click to expand...

The Mustang Mk.II with about 300 produced actually WAS a pretty hot fighter. It could outrun any other Mustang variant before the P-51H below 10,000 feet and did some pretty good work as armed recon in Europe and as a fighter in Asia. It just wasn't a high altitude fighter.

I believe the major advantages of the Messerschmitt 309 over the 109 were heavier armament and improved ground handling.
Ground handling was important when you consider how many 109s were damaged in take-off and landing accidents.
It probably had some pretty good potential, but Germany didn't have the time or resources so it became one of the victims of fighter rationalization program.

- Ivan.
 

Bulgarians and Finns used their Bf 109G-2s in 1945. Ex-Yu got some ex-Bulgarian G-2s (and some other Gustavs) as war reparations, used until 1950 IIRC.
 
GregP said:
The Fw 190 was not anywhere CLOSE to ready in prototype form, and nether were most fighter prototypes capable of anything but flight testing. Many didn't even have armament.
Click to expand...

Hello GregP,

As much as we have been praising the FW 190 in other threads, it had a pretty bumpy start.
New Engine, Cowl, and Spinner,
New Wing,
Relocated Cockpit,
Derated Engines.
All kinds of overheating and engine reliability issues.
The aeroplane may have been operational, but sorting that business out took a while.

It is a pity that the Me 309 didn't have the chance to prove itself as other victims of rationalization did.
(I am thinking of the Dornier 335.)

- Ivan.
 
Not being a fan boy for any particular type, this post could apply to almost any aircraft once war was declared. In peace time all the low hanging fruit had been picked around 1000HP designs, kicking on from that towards 2000HP at all altitudes was a problem for all sides. If there wasn't a war going on and jets didn't exist the 309 would probably have been a great plane.
 

It is probably that, without a war, the Me-309 would've been cancelled even faster.
Designers tried to install one ton engine (dry) and 7 guns (3 of them being automatic cannons) on a wing half size of what Tempest or Corsair had. Talk about excessive wing loading to get pilots killed - no enemy action needed.
Have spare DB 603s? Install them on Fw 190s.
 
That is also a possibility, in practice the war was not just in the air and its conclusion was obvious by the summer of 1944, an improvement to the 109 was not worth losing production of proven 109s for.
 
Then there was the Firebrand........................................
 
Without a war, I suspect the 309 would have never existed at all. The Luftwaffe would be flying 109C's or D/E's into the late 40's
 
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