On Oct 3, 7:41 am, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:
"Eunometic" wrote in message

ps.com...



Essential and Dispensible WW2 aircraft.
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I've created a list of aircraft of WW2 that were essential to that
side and also others that were dispensible in the sense that their
place could easily have been taken by other aircraft or that were so
ineffective that they were not needed at all.

A great deal of effort was spent on aircraft that did not perform and
were 'war loosers' while there was also a great deal of duplication of
effort on aircraft that added nothing special and detracted from gains
in production.

United Kingdom

Essential:
Hurricane; had to be avialable in numbers for battle of britain
Spitfire; had to provide quality fighter throughout the war an
amenable to all rolls.
Mosquito; night bomber, night fighter, fast day bomber and most
importanty reconaisance aircraft par excellance.
Lancaster; easy to fly, devastating war load.
Wellington: Britains Medium bomber and an important coastal command
aircraft.

Non Essential:
Beaufighter; not a useless aircraft as it could take damage but its
roll could have been taken by others. It kept bristol busy.

I strongly disagree. It played an essential role both as a nightfighter and
in the shipping strike role in the ETO and their long range made
them extremely valuable ground attack aircraft in the far east

It's contemporary the the Mosquito could also do that job, and much
better at that.
What I don't like about it was that if confronted by german airforce
day fighters it was
in deep trouble. It needed an escort; whereas the mosquito coastal
command aircraft actualy took on Fw 190.
If given a choice of choosing between 1000 extra Mosquito vs 1000 less
beaufighter?




Hampden;
Halifax; a good aircraft but Lancaster was better.
Stirling; a waste of time although a saluatory lesson.
Tempest and Typhoon: These aicraft had very poor high altitude
performance and the typhoon had handling difficulties, was not
particularly fast due to its thick wing and its airframe tended to
snap of at the tail

It could and did however make an excellent ground attack aircraft
and played a vital role in the western campaign attacking the
Wehrmacht

I don't deny it. It was kind of successful, napier and tail breakages
aside but as far as I can see the Mk XII Griffon spit could do a
better job and was available at the right time.

Immagine putting the engineers who were working on the the Typhoon/
Tempest and the Sabre to work on things more essential
such as a B-29 class bomber using the centaurus or a fast medium
bomber.


Generally the British (air ministry, raf etc) had the knack of
abandoning loosing designs and making pragmatic choices.





By 1942 Supermarine was producing the Spitifre Mk XII which had a
single stage Griffon engine and could outrun the Tempest. Although
the mk XII also had poor altitude performance its handling was better.
It would be early 1944 before the Mk XIX entered service which had a
two stage Griffon.

Germany:

Since Germany lost the war I found it hard to determine what to put in
non essential so I've added the column 'might have'

Essential:
Me 109: Hurricane vintage aircraft but remained competitive untill
1945 when Me 109K-4's were capable of 455mph and 48000ft service
ceiling and even then there were versions such as the Me 109K-14 with
a two stage supercharged DB603L engine starting production but not
delivered as well as the DB603DSCM engine touching on 2000hp at 1.98
atm boost there were test of 2.3 and 2.4 atm going on at DB which
suggests a power of 2400hp and speed of 470-480mph.
The aircraft should have been replaced far earlier with something that
had lighter contol forces and better speed. It would have performed
better with superior fuel.

Fw 190: this aircraft filled in many of the Me 109's weaknesses.

ju 88: night fighter, high speed bomber, dive or slant bomber,
maritime patrol etc.

Ju 87: Devastating in combined arms breakthrough warfare and deadly
accurate. When its days were over it lived on as a night bomber and
ground attack aircraft with one of the lowest per mission loss rates
of any Luftwaffe aircraft.

He 111: early bombing workhorse
Do 217 Only 1200 produced but still effective as a night bomber and
guided missile carrier.
Arado 234: the jet aircraft provided essential reconaisance: it was
the first and only aircraft to survey the Normandy beach-head. Two
prototypes flew about 36 missions with their engines being reliable
during this process. They were both shot down by their own German
FLAK.
Fi 103 or V1. Extremely cheap to produce consumed massive allied
resources.

Non essential:
Do 17
Me 110: its role as a night fighter could have been taken by the Ju
88, I am aware of its success in the Early Polish and Soviet Campaigns
but I don't think these were decisive.

Might Have
Me 210/410 Quite a good aircraft that was to replace the Ju 88 and

The Me-210 suffered from oscillation making it a poor gun platform and had
nasty stall
characteristics. The pilots HATED them and only a month after entering
service production was halted

The tragedy of the Me 210 was that the problem were known even before
the moment the test pilot stepped out of the aircraft on its maiden
flight. He said that the tail needed to be lengthened by 1 meter or
so. To do that over 5million reich marks of jigs would need to be
scrapped. So instead slats were tried, these didn't work and actually
made things worse, a single large as opposed to two fins was tried;
that didn't work. When the Me 210C was ordered by the Hungarian air
force they bypassed the managerial and political problems and
incorporated the lengthened tail and slats which worked brilliantly
together.

The solution to handling problems; lengthened tail, slats and contra-
rotating propellor were well known. It was said that Willy
Messerschmitt personally intervened in the design process to shorten
the tail and remove the slats. Year were wasted in avoiding these
simple modifications. Willy Messerschmitt was stripped of the assets
or his company, barely avoided jail while I think Ernest Udet probably
committed suicide over the issue.

Heinkel had been told to stop He 111 production and tool up for Me 210
and when this failed it had to produce Ju 88's instead. There was
such a loss in productivity (since tooling wasn't right) that
production suffered thousands of aircraft and forced labour ended up
being used. The rest of the industry suffered as well.

The Me 410 was simply the fixed Me 210 with bigger 44L DD603 engine
instead of 33L DB605 engines.



Me 110. Fast, advanced armament, bomb bay, efficient etc but simply
too late due to programm mismanagment to survive in allied skies.

Say What !

I meant to type Me 410. It was a good aircraft with better
performance than allied equivalents. Had it been on time or a year
late it would have had a significant impact.



The Me-110 entered service before the war started in 1939. While inadequate
against first line fighters in the West it played a valuable role as a NF
and
ground attack craft. It survived in service long after the Me-210's were
withdrawn.

I think a few modified Me 210 opperated succesfully before being
renamed Me 410 when they got the new engines to get away from the bad
name.



Keith