Time Machine Consultant : Maximizing the Bf-109 in January 1943

[drgondog]

In early 1943, the German leaders had zero idea regarding the upcoming disaster the Mustang would bring to the defense of Germany. They rightly concluded that they could meet the daylight threat from the 8th AF with the inventory on hand and felt no sense of urgency in building a much better high altitude interceptor.

The Fw 190A was a superb bomber killer, better than the 109 and it was doing a very good job on unescorted B-17/B-24's where the drop off in performance was not critical as a bomber attacker.

So the question arises, "what in early 1943" drives the LW to upgrade either the 190 or 109 when they believed no high performance fighter would ever have the range to challenge the LW over Germany?

I submit - Nothing.

[Shortround6]

Originally Posted by davebender

I agree. I consider the Me-109 overall superior to the He-100. I'm just pointing out that if Germany wants a second fighter type during 1940 the He-100 is available whereas the Fw-190 is still two years in the future. In fact as of 1940 RLM does not know whether the BMW801 engine will ever work properly.

Without a time traveler the RLM does not know that the BMW 139 will be a complete turkey.
What they do know at the time is that they are at least two years away from getting a substantial increase in power from the liquid cooled V-12s leaving BMW as the only game in town for a 1500+ class engine in the near future.
BMW then changes to the 801 and FW scrambles to adapt. The resulting "easy" conversion (after all it is radial to radial, right) entailed restressing the entire airframe, moving the cockpit back 6 in for CG reasons even though an armour plate was installed behind the pilots seat. After all was said and done the plane had grown 25% in weight from the BMW 139 version and required a new wing of over 21% more area to restore flying qualities.

Creating factories out of thin air doesn't really work in real life.

Even in the US in 1940-41 Allison was short over 800 machine tools to fit into existing factory space and was listed about 500 in priority out of all american companies.

P&W was more than a little miffed when 6 Sidestrand centerless grinders destined for their Kansas city plant would up on an Ocean liner for priority delivery to Napier for Saber production

It can take a year from ground breaking until first symbolic "production" engine makes it out the door and a number of months after that until anywhere near full production is reached.
Less risky than a totally new engine but then the BMW 801 was little more than a rather tightly cowled 14cylinder radial. No trick superchargers or sleeve valves or 42 cylinders or any other real weirdness.

[Glider]

Re Drgondog's posting, A fair point I admit.
The only reply I could give was that they knew that the USAAF Bombers were going to come in at altitude and that they had had inflicted heavy losses on the bombers during deep penetration raids. Whilst they may not have appreciated the danger to Germany there was a clear danger of high altitude raids on occupied Europe escorted by shorter range fighters.
Some form of contingency planning should have been in place.

The RAF had aircraft developed to the point of production, had a high level threat developed. In somce cases they were not actually built or they were built in small numbers but plans were in place.

[tomo pauk]

I see the issue from another angle, Bill.

When doing it's business, Luftwaffe always had an edge in performance against the opposition. 109E was fastest in 1939, 1940 (okay, Spit II comes close, but 95% of others are distinctively slower), in 1941 109F is in a class of its own (honorable mention for Mig-1/3), with FW-190 and 109G taking over in 1942. The tactics and quality of pilots is mostly in German hands.

Now, with 1943 starting, Spitfire VIII/IX/XII, Typhoon, P-38, P-47 arose. Japs talk about US fighter that has bent wings and it's faster then anything they have. Russian fighters are still slightly slower, but the advantage shrinks when flying low. Shortly, Germans do not poses edge in performance anymore.
Further, the allies begin to field tough multi-engined and/or armoured planes that require good punch to ensure a kill. The quality & doctrine of Allied air forces becomes close to what Germans have to offer. The overall quality of new pilots for LW declines. The German armies have been soundly defeated in Russia and N. Africa, with Southern front wide opened by Torch landings.
In top of that, Germans are outproduced by each of 3 major opponents.

If I was the chief of Luftwaffe, I'd feel driven to come with something both good & easy to produce, ASAP.

[davebender]

So the question arises, "what in early 1943" drives the LW to upgrade either the 190 or 109 when they believed no high performance fighter would ever have the range to challenge the LW over Germany?

By 1943 both Britain and the USA have made a huge committment to heavy bomber production. It stands to reason they will not allow Germany to keep slaughtering these very expensive aircraft. Germany cannot predict the P-51D but they can predict that U.S. 8th Air Force will come up with some sort of very long range escort fighter.

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

AFAIK Willy and co. didn't screw up on the 210. They knew the aircraft had bugs to be ironed out (which were, eventually), but the RLM pressed hard for the production, before it could be fully developed. In any case, it was the biggest fiasco for Willy M, the businessman.

I always wondered why the Hungarian Airforce were more than happy with the Me 210 while the Luftwaffe thought that they were very dangerous. As I understand it, they all came from the same production line with the Luftwaffe getting a share of the production. So both airforces would have had the same problem.

[Shortround6]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

AFAIK Willy and co. didn't screw up on the 210. They knew the aircraft had bugs to be ironed out (which were, eventually), but the RLM pressed hard for the production, before it could be fully developed. In any case, it was the biggest fiasco for Willy M, the businessman.

One of the "bugs" was solved by lengthing the fuselage by over 3 ft (about 1 meter?) which by the standards of the time really wasn't that bad. Plenty of other companies had to do some rather major "tweaks" to get their airframes to handle properly under all conditions also.

Point is that even expericed teams could not predict flight behavior beforehand even with the wind tunnels of the time. Sometimes they got lucky and a design required very little tweaking and sometimes not so lucky and months were spent trying everything they could think of.

Sometimes they got lucky and were able to graft large changes onto an existing airframe for a change in role with little trouble and sometimes they weren't so lucky. And luck did have something to do with it

Even Ed Heinemann when working on the A-4 Skyhawk was baffled by rudder oscillations until they tried constructing the rudder inside out. No rudder skin. The rudder was a flat plate with the ribs on the outside.

[Shortround6]

Originally Posted by Glider

I always wondered why the Hungarian Airforce were more than happy with the Me 210 while the Luftwaffe thought that they were very dangerous. As I understand it, they all came from the same production line with the Luftwaffe getting a share of the production. So both airforces would have had the same problem.

as I understand it the Hungarian 210s had the stretched fuselage.

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Shortround6

as I understand it the Hungarian 210s had the stretched fuselage.

I had heard that, but if they all came from the same production line presumably the ones for the Luftwaffe had the same stretch.

[tomo pauk]

Hungarian were produced in Hungary (1/3 for Hungary, rest for LW).

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by Glider

I always wondered why the Hungarian Airforce were more than happy with the Me 210 while the Luftwaffe thought that they were very dangerous. As I understand it, they all came from the same production line with the Luftwaffe getting a share of the production. So both airforces would have had the same problem.

We had the 210Ca, basically the licensed version of the 210C (a=auslandisch=foreign). The 210C had the lenghtened fuselage (and was powered by 605s instead of 601s), as did the late batch 210A (lang), as well as other fixes (slats were also added, vertical fin enlarged IIRC).

It was the short fuselaged initial 210A-1 that was earned to poor rep, and it stuck. But that AFAIK pretty much came down to rushing a semi-finished aircraft into production.

[Civettone]

Originally Posted by drgondog

In early 1943, the German leaders had zero idea regarding the upcoming disaster the Mustang would bring to the defense of Germany.

This is simply not true. They had heard about the American plans for a new superbomber and they noticed that the B-17 operated at altitudes which were too high for the Fw 190.
Also by 1943 they had experience with the P-38 which could escort bombers at least to the west of Germany. The writing was on the wall !

Also, Galland told Goering in 1943 that American fighter planes had reached Cologne. Goering told him to stop this nonsense as this was simply impossible. After which Galland told him "I have seen the wrecks with my own eyes, and what's more, soon they will fly even deeper inland" after which Goering went into a rage and gave him a direct order to stop talking about it
So yeah, when talking about German leaders, you are in fact right!

The Fw 190A was a superb bomber killer, better than the 109 and it was doing a very good job on unescorted B-17/B-24's where the drop off in performance was not critical as a bomber attacker.

I would like to see a source proving that the Fw 190 was more succesful against bombers than the Bf 109. I have seen kill figures and what I recall from them is that one cannot prove from these figures that the Fw 190 was more effective. (Not including the Hoehengruppen.)


Other than that, I am repeating two things what I said before.
1. The BMW 801 had to continue development and production for the simple reason that it is a bad idea to bet on just one horse. Going with one fighter aircraft can lead to serious problems when that design suddenly becomes obsolete and no further development is possible. But the same can be said about the DB 600 series. So you need a backup for both. So not just another fighter with a DB 601.
Yet for production logic one needs to become the main fighter (and engine) in production.
2. When Tank had to design a high altitude fighter, his first reaction was to take on the Fw 187 design as he thought no single engined fighter could achieve the climb rate and ceiling needed. Of course this would have been quite different from the Fw 187. Yet, it means that if the Fw 187 had reached production back in 1939 it could have served as a basis for a new fighter. Just like the P-43 lead to the P-47, the Ju 88 to the Ju 388 or the Manchester to the Lancaster. In other words, it would have saved in development time.

Kris

[davebender]

The BMW 801 had to continue development and production for the simple reason that it is a bad idea to bet on just one horse.

What about the DB603, Jumo213 and Jumo222? There were other engines in the pipeline as well which might have worked out after sufficent research and development.

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by Civettone

This is simply not true. They had heard about the American plans for a new superbomber and they noticed that the B-17 operated at altitudes which were too high for the Fw 190.
Also by 1943 they had experience with the P-38 which could escort bombers at least to the west of Germany. The writing was on the wall !

Kris - IMO 'Too High' is relative - the B-17 operated at altitudes in which the 190 performance was declining but nevertheless more than enough to climb, form and attack B-17's and certainly B-24's. The first P-38s performing escort missions in the ETO were the 55th FG P-38F's in mid Oct 1943. Had the 78th FG retained the first P-38s in Dec 1942 instead of having them taken away in Dec 1942 for North Africa - the 'warning' may have been more noticable, and the development of the P-38 may have been more accelerated.

The P-38Fs in the MTO were performing escort for both mediums and heavies and the LW may heve been lulled by not having that many high altitude enagements and the 109 was clearly equal to it at B-24 altitudes. IIRC there weren't that many 190s in the MTO, proportionately, to the Kanalfront.

Also, Galland told Goering in 1943 that American fighter planes had reached Cologne. Goering told him to stop this nonsense as this was simply impossible. After which Galland told him "I have seen the wrecks with my own eyes, and what's more, soon they will fly even deeper inland" after which Goering went into a rage and gave him a direct order to stop talking about it
So yeah, when talking about German leaders, you are in fact right!

I was, but also important is the imbedded notion that we (the Allies) did not have an airframe with both fuel capacity and performance to be a deep threat. They were quite right for the P-51A and P-47C and Spitfire and Typhoon. In addition, Koln and Coblenz were not exactly harbingers of Berlin, Merseburg and Munich.

Perhaps both the LW high command and the primary fighter manufacturers were blinded to the danger by virtue that ONLY the P-38 (and P-51A) had internal wing tanks and they could rightly deduce that neither had demonstrated superiority to either the 190 or th109 to date - at high altitudes.


I would like to see a source proving that the Fw 190 was more succesful against bombers than the Bf 109. I have seen kill figures and what I recall from them is that one cannot prove from these figures that the Fw 190 was more effective. (Not including the Hoehengruppen.)

I don't know what source you could look into. Perhaps Tony Woods lists can be broken down and units to a/c could then be matched to speculate. I do know the Fw 190 was more feared by 8th AF bomber crews, both from an armor and armament perspective.

The possible reason could be that LuftF 3 with JG2, JG 26 and ii./JG54 were dominantly Fw 190 and always met the 8th before the bombers ever got to Germany.. ditto LuftF 5 and JG5 before transitioning to Me 109s in late 1943 to 1944..Remember we are only discussing 1943?

2. When Tank had to design a high altitude fighter, his first reaction was to take on the Fw 187 design as he thought no single engined fighter could achieve the climb rate and ceiling needed. Of course this would have been quite different from the Fw 187. Yet, it means that if the Fw 187 had reached production back in 1939 it could have served as a basis for a new fighter. Just like the P-43 lead to the P-47, the Ju 88 to the Ju 388 or the Manchester to the Lancaster. In other words, it would have saved in development time.

Kris

I would speculate that Tank knew that both a climb rate and ceiling could be achieved with a single engine fighter as both a Spit IX and 109G had more than adequate climb rates to be an effective interceptor - particularly for a B-17/B-24 level technology. He was, I presume, aware of the speculation on the B-29 performance which is why the development of the Ta 152 and Fw 190D series began - was it not? Certainly the Mossie gave first hand evidence of requirements for a high performance interceptor.

[Bronc]

Even with 60+ years of hindsight, thinking about / finding a way to successfully attack
(and beat back) the 8th Air Force's bombers is really hard. Galland said if he would have
had even 100 Me-262's (in the air) it could have been done. And I'm thinking that was
the only way.

Let's face it, even without fighter escort attacking the bomber formations was
pretty tough (and down right terrifying.) The link below takes you to an extended
Galland interview, and much, much rarer, there is (3) three minutes of Johannes Steinhoff.

Watch Steinhoff's awesome character, the incredible presence of the man, when he talks
about attacking American bombers. And Galland when he talks about having 100 Me-262's.)

Click below:

YouTube - How Hitler Lost The War part 6/7

There are two seperate issues here: the B-17 / B- 24 issue and the fighter escort issue.

P-38, P-47D and P-51 fighter escort is going to make getting more 30mm on target
that much harder.

Shortround6 has identified 4 issues to work on:

1) Better training for pilots
2) A better gun sight
3) Developing a flatter trajectory round to get less time of flight for a higher percentage of hits
4) Putting more lead in the air -- firing more rounds

Are there any others?

Bronc