GregP
Major
Wiki is not a very reliable source ... anyone can write almost anything and get it into Wiki.
But a review on the Ta-152 book would be nice.
The thing is, hoiw do you know if anything in it is true? There are people who claim to have unearthed completely new and unpublished information about the Ta-152, but they're mum on the data AND the source.
The Ta-152 seems to show rather ordinary speed at military power but is fast when running at WER with WM-50 or GM-1, but that power level was very short lived and it was mostly right in the same ballpark as most late-war aircraft. The Bf 109K might have been as fast or faster if the Ta-152 wasn't at WER power.
I'll give the Ta-152 very highmarks for a high-altitude fighter, but it really didn't get to fulfill that role in the war and, in fact, didn't fulfill much of any role, being in combat for only about a month without spare parts. But as a technical achievement, it was impressive and had undoubted development potential ... if anyone had been interested.
If the Allies had stayed with piston fighters for any length of time after WWII, they probably should have looked long and hard at it ... but we were all agog over jets and really let the pistons in development when the war ended become the last piston fighter generation except for the Hispano Ha.112, the Doflug 3802/3, and the really impressive FMA I.Ae.30 Namcu. We even let the formibable Boeing F8B die and only kept piston attack planes like the Douglas Skyraider, whose roots were firmly in WWII.
All the front-line fighters turned into jets. More than anything else, the fascination with jets is what spelled the doom of the great piston fighters. It took them awhile to discover that high speeds weren't friendly to ground attack munition accuracy.
Wonder how the turboprop attack planes of the last 50 years would have fared in WWII?
But a review on the Ta-152 book would be nice.
The thing is, hoiw do you know if anything in it is true? There are people who claim to have unearthed completely new and unpublished information about the Ta-152, but they're mum on the data AND the source.
The Ta-152 seems to show rather ordinary speed at military power but is fast when running at WER with WM-50 or GM-1, but that power level was very short lived and it was mostly right in the same ballpark as most late-war aircraft. The Bf 109K might have been as fast or faster if the Ta-152 wasn't at WER power.
I'll give the Ta-152 very highmarks for a high-altitude fighter, but it really didn't get to fulfill that role in the war and, in fact, didn't fulfill much of any role, being in combat for only about a month without spare parts. But as a technical achievement, it was impressive and had undoubted development potential ... if anyone had been interested.
If the Allies had stayed with piston fighters for any length of time after WWII, they probably should have looked long and hard at it ... but we were all agog over jets and really let the pistons in development when the war ended become the last piston fighter generation except for the Hispano Ha.112, the Doflug 3802/3, and the really impressive FMA I.Ae.30 Namcu. We even let the formibable Boeing F8B die and only kept piston attack planes like the Douglas Skyraider, whose roots were firmly in WWII.
All the front-line fighters turned into jets. More than anything else, the fascination with jets is what spelled the doom of the great piston fighters. It took them awhile to discover that high speeds weren't friendly to ground attack munition accuracy.
Wonder how the turboprop attack planes of the last 50 years would have fared in WWII?
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