Ta-152H at low altitudes

The aircarft could opperate at 470mph and at altitudes of nearly
45,000 ft and had a pressursied cabin. It was designed to take on
B29s.

Hard to believe. The RLM didn't field aircraft for non-existant threats;
quite the opposite, they rarely reacted in a timely fashion to actual,
present
threats. The Ta 152 series was not intended specifically to counter the
B-29 - the great speed of the Tank fighter was intended to be used against
Mustangs and Mosquitos, and other fast targets that could not adequately
be countered by more conventional fighters, such as the tired old "Me".
The Ta would have made a fine bomber destroyer, but its not likely it was
designed and fielded with the B-29 in mind.

The B29 wasn't a non existant threat since it was in use against
Japan.

Well, then the RLM would have needed to send a Geschwader or two to Hokkaido in
order to face that threat. By the time reports of B-29s filtered back to
Germany, Tank had been working on improving the FW 190 for years. I've never
seen anything from a German wartime source that mentions a B-29, and nothing in
the Tank file that suggests he needed it to provide motivation for creating
additional improvements to his signature prop fighter.

The B29 was almost impune against interception by most
japanese aircaft types but it would have fared less well against the
Luftwaffe, nevertheless it still would have been much more difficult
to intercept becuase of its speed.

I've never met a LW pilot, or read a report by a wartime German source that
knew anything about the B-29 until long after the war. The "boogie man" to the
Germans, from the bordfunkers in the 110s, the train engineers, all the way up
to Göring, Goebbels, and DF all point to the Mosquito. I have minutes to
meetings of the Jägerstab from 1945 and the men present are grim, determined,
and not interested in addressing threats faced by the Asian friends - they want
to know what industry is doing to stop those verdammt Mosquitos. No mention,
anywhere, of a B-29 threat that needs to be addressed.

There is a story that the Night Fighter version of the Ju 388 were
built to counter a spoof RAF plan to bomb from the stratosphere at
night thus wasting Luftwaffe resources. Certainly the Ju388 would
also have been capable of a night time interception of a B29 class
aircraft but it was never needed.

I have huge doubts that anyone in the RLM , the LW, or Junkers gave any
credence to the whimsical notion that a super-bomber from the USA was coming in
1945, to bomb the Reich *at night*.

By the time the 8-388 was coming off the drawing boards, Harris had announced
that "...the RAF was out of targets", and at about the same time, Bomber
Command began switching over to daylight bombing. I really have to wonder about
the source of your info as I haven't seen anything from BAMA that agrees with
it. B-29s at night? Really?? I know the RLM made some idiotic mistakes, but
I can't imagine they would entertain this notion, to the point that they
directed a version of the Ju 388 be prepared to counter it.

Most of the RLMs (I don't blame the Luftwaffe so much) bad procurment
options seem to have come out of a directives built around an
assumption of victory within 2 years.
Plenty of blame to go around - with the exceptio of Udet, most of the RLM
strikes me as incompetent.

Understandable but risky
reasoning as a war extending beyond that would exhaust the resource
poorer and outnumbered Reich so they poured their energies into a
sucker punch with the technology that they had. It failed.

My wife constantly corrects me, when I insist on "putting it all on black".
She has taught me over the years that 'if you ain't got a backup plan, you
ain't got a plan', and it seems that Hitler and crew never even considered a
backup plan. Thankfully, they hadn't married my wife...

That combined with delays in the Jumo 004B and the Jumo 222 piston
engine meant that they were at a qualitative disadvantage. By 1943
the Me262 should have been in service and the Ju288 bomber with a
speed of 408mph, 8800lb internal bombload and powerfull remote
controlled armament should also have been in service. The Jumo 004B
was the main delay in Me262 availability and the Jumo 222 only entered
production right at the end of the war for whatever reason.

Plus, too many projects were left waiting for these two, and the BMW 003. I
guess we should be thankfull.

With an Armament of 4 x 20mm and 1 x 30mm cannon it had the
power to do so.

Few carried that armament,

Some I beleive carried the higher velocity Mk 151/15 15mm cannon
instead of the Mk151/20mm cannon. The low velocity Mk108 30mm cannon
was carried but some version may have reached the front with the much
heavier Mk103 long barrelled 30mm cannon. I can only assumed some
versions carried the old FW190D armament.

From photos in my collection (and Nowarra's), it looks like there was little
standardization by this period - if they had cannons, they were fitted. Then
the pilots and warts removed what wasn't wanted. I interview JG 300 pilots
periodically and by that late in the war, pilots were opting for light armament
and stripped down a/c, whether they were nachtjäger or day fighters -- speed
was life and little else mattered. The day of loading armor and hanging extra
cannons on airframes was over and all that remained was a desire to get the
most performance out of each machine, to give the pilot a tiny momentary edge.
So, the lighter the better, including armament. Some of NJG 11 and JG 300, 301
and 302 birds carried as little as a single pair of 20mm cannons - one of my JG
301 photos shows exactly this setup with an FW 190 D; the cowl guns are removed
and there is only one gun per wing. My guess is that the pilot was not worried
about not having enough firepower, he just wanted the lightest ship he could
find.

and the Ta 152 program was cancelled before the war
ended,

I think a very large number of programs were cancelled in the last 2
months of the war.

That's obvious, but others, including the Dornier and a small assortment of
jets, were ordered to stay in production.

while the Do 335 remained on the construction orders right to the end.
I believe if the B-29 ever arrived over Europe during the war, it would
have
been met by the Dornier and the Me 262, which were the fighters that were
still intended to be built as of late April 45.

It certainly was a heavily armed aricraft wich could carry high
velocity weapons. (4 x Mk151/15 or 20/ and 1 x Mk103)

The problem this aircraft had was its nose prop which required a
pairing of two aircraft in a zwilling (double mustan arrangement) for
the radardome or antenna built into the leading edge of the wing. (By
this time the FuG 244 microwave radars were intended for
nightfighters)

The Zwilling 335 never made it off paper - the NF 335 would have remained more
traditional (if that can be said of any 335), with a humped spine for the
bordfunker and a leading-edge radar array. German pilots were odd when it came
to radar: while RAF nightfighter crews considered it an indespensible tool,
most LW crews thought of it as an extra weapon, to enhance their primary night
detection device, their eyes. As strange as that may sound, its a common
comment among vets. Since they had watched every single innovation of theirs
used against them by the British and their hunter-killer Mosquitos, flying
around broadcasting a radar was not seen as a terribly bright idea by
1944-1945.

Unlike other projects that led no-where, the NF 335 had already had its
prototype built and test flown -- were the war to continue, there is no doubt
that within weeks, it would have been in full production, as the Jägerstab
ordered. At that point, the RAF had already started to shut down the night
raids, so it was all moot.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

"Got anything on your radar, SENSO?"
"Nothing but my forehead, sir."