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Hmm - a Jumo 213A with turbocharger, and plenty of exhaust thrust, with GM-1 added for a good measure?? The writer of Wiki article smokes something bad
At any rate - tailoring a 420 mph bomber + Jumo 213 in 1935? Give it jet engines, I say
Thanks. I was thinking of making the wing slimmer, eliminating the flat sheet windows and nose in lieu of streamlined units, and making it as light as possible while increasing power. That would get you part way there, but then you'd need to make a slimmer overall fuselage.
We could work at it and maybe arrive at a solution ... maybe not. Doing it in wartime Germany should have been a top priority, but somehow it wasn't. The Do.335 didn't really fly until the end was a foregone conclusion. Germany never really HAD a stragetic bomber, and that was a big mistake.
If you are going to base your attack on quality instead of quantity, you'd better have the quality in-service when it is needed, and it wasn't. It as in work, and that's not the same thing. Also, it's tough to prevent the enemy from inventing the things you are working on all by himself, and there's no guarantee they won't invent something you haven't thought of.
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Couldn't the existing wing configuration still have allowed for the ability to carry some larger bombs (even if not using the space as efficiently), or at least allow for that if it was planned for from the start? (that and adopting a bulged bomb bay for special heavy bomb runs like the Mossie did would make more sense than using external racks)
And embedded radiators might work, but also take up wing space and increase vulnerability. (the compact annular configuration limited vulnerable engine area considerably on top of being relatively efficient weight/bulk/drag wise) Granted, the lack of pressurized cooling systems on the early Jumo engines means larger radiators for similar cooling capacity. (optimized annular radiators on contemporary DB-601s should be less)
There's a reason most late-war adaptations of DB-603s and Jumo-213s used similar arrangements.
The new location of spar attachment points would not interfere with crew placement, since those points would still be at Fuselage Rib 9 and 12. The spar attachment points are numbered 11 here:
View attachment 287693
With high wing location, the unrestricted bomb bay would be spanning between ribs 9 and 15.
snip
Burdening the aircraft with additions, like Bola weapon station, external payload with racks, ever bigger wing and sometimes fuselage certainly cuts the performance; not just speed but also range/radius. Hence my proposal to keep the wing at 50 sq m, internal bomb bay etc. Such a clean and not too big an aircraft would be a better performer than historical Ju-88.
When it's about the engines, the BMW 801 would make a lot sense here, at least for a part of Ju-88 production.
Germany did not have High octane fuel,.....
The 217 does seem a better overall aircraft than the attempted Ju-88 successors. The Ju-88 itself had the advantage of being somewhat smaller and more adaptable to non-bombing roles.Frankly the Do 217 impresses me more as a bomber: the Do 217M with only 1750hp DB603A had a speed of 347mph compared to the Ju 188A with 1750hpJumo 213A managing only 322mph. It had a decent bomb bay long enough to carry torpedos internally. It was considered underpowered but then the DB603 has such great scope for improvement. The Ju 88 series was probably only popular because such a large production system was already available and it could function well as a night fighter.
Yes 4-engine and drop the dive bombing requirement. Being more conservative in engine target would be smarter though. Something able to make do with 4 Jumo-211 or 601/605 engines but able to accept the heavier more powerful 801, 603, and 213 would have been ideal in terms of practical utility and growth potential.The He 177 should have been easiest save as the Heinkel firms owner, Earnest Heinkel had begged to develop a 4 separate engine version early enough but was at that time denied. Not much could be done about the DB606/610 engine problems or those of the Jumo 222. Both were essentially solved by 1944 but then it was too late.
What about the Fw-187 and Ar-240? Earlier designs than most of those, and generally better than the Me-210/410 given the engine power available to it. The handling issues may not have been solved for the existing development period, but supporting the Me-210 over the 240 prevented that sort of development.When one considers the effort put into the He 219, Me 410, Ta 154, Do 335 these seems much effort for little result. Most of these aircraft only had a chance to be mature in late 1944 or early 1945 as engines improved.
That also fits in with the Ju-88 being a better, faster replacement to the Do-17 ... high wing configuration employed there too, and also the intention of having a lighter defensive armament than the Do-17 (or none). No need for the bulged rear canopy or space for added gunners/observers.Good work, with the wing now mounted higher, the undercarriage a little longer and heavier but we can now efficiently carry bombs internally. With a higher penetration speed fewer Ju 88 are intercepted and even if intercepted are exposed for shorter periods to hostile fire. Fuel capacity is down but partially compensated by the greater practical speed. There are two broad remedies move more fuel to the wing stations or make drop tanks a standard feature.
Yes, a Whirlwind or mosquito-like configuration might have been worthwhile there too, though using wing root extensions like the Mossie did might have been difficult combined with the high wing placement. (either way, the DB-601 should have favored smaller radators than the contemporary early Jumo 211)If we loose, say, 10 km/h due to installation of bomb tray, and another 10 km/h without going to wing radiators than we're getting away from a Ju 88 optimized for speed. The radiators don't have to be fully buried, they can be arranged in Mosquito-style in front of the spar. Even the fully buried radiators on the Pe-2 and predecessor of the Tu-2 don't look like to great a waste of internal space.
Mark - maybe you would upload it to mediafire or the like?
Re. Do-215: max bomb caliber for the Do 17/215 was 2 x SD-250 for internal carriage (one behind another). Max weight seem to be 8 x SC-100 bombs, though there are some sources that list max bomb weight of 1000 kg.
The greatest speed figure for the Do-215 (with DB-601A) I was able to find is 465 km/h at 4800 m.
edit: seems it was 4 x 250 kg in 'main' versions of the Do-17 (the He-111 carried 8 x 250 kg internally, for example):