It reads like the 8x20mm config never existed. Dasso is reported in particular, at a time when the top brass were discussing which gun package could make the 410 more useful. This is at a time when the BK5 had teething troubles with its ammo belt - a few prototype/production iterations were needed before a reliable solution was eventually found, and when the MK103 suffered delay after delay as well (manufacturing quality, industrial sites damaged, hi-alt temperature problems, more mfg quality problems). It's at this time that the quad-20mm field mod is brought up and a standardization team is put on the job. In weighing the attractiveness of the quad-20mm package, Dasso's AAR/anecdotal performance is described: alongside other ZG26 Hornets, he hoses down bombers and lights them on fire where BK5-equipped Hornets either miss or hit for no damage (poke a hole like duds).
There is no clarification in Mankau for these loadouts:
-
MK 108 "R2". Mankau/Petrick themselves say they wonder where the other authors of Me 410 literature found this and other "conversion kits". Nowhere in Mankau is such a 2x108 package mentioned, nor do I recall seeing a single pic of this config. It only shows up in Janusz Ledwoch's book on p.14 described in Czech (?) and in a recap table p.29 as "Me 410A-2/R2". And considering the other nomenclature errors (will explain this one in a separate post), Ledwoch did what everyone except Mankau did: took field mods and gave them official designations. So the question is where he found evidence of MK 108s equipped in the bomb bay.
- The
WG21 revolver. Famously reported to have blown off the test platform's fuselage panels, in Mankau you find it described this way, in a report dated either the same day or one day after the reported test's failure:
In the planning point of attack tactics against bombers it is mentioned that whole salvos can be fired from the launcher into the formation; the seven barrel weapon is now available.
Emph added -- typo or .. ?
Then at the end of this same book you have a table that lists a six barrel revolver as still in development.
- The
external fuselage "WT151" (this designation never used in Mankau) pod that looks like a direct "copy-paste" of the one found e.g. on the 190A (
2nd-last row on this page) - probably ignored by Messerschmitt development teams because it's basically a duplicate of internal WB151A pod (2x151/20) at a major cost in speed... So why was this thing ever used when there was the internal /U2 hardware? Scrounging? Or so they could put bombs in the bay? In this last case, the drawings found in the literature would have to be wrong: they illustrate the WT151 barrels as in the way of opening the bomb bay.... Unless the bomb bay opening action retracted the doors upwards at the same time as it rotated them open (
they don't, see this vid at 1'04"). So this one can probably be ignored, it serves no purpose.
- The
BT400 and LT950 torpedoes are listed in the Messerschmitt table at the end of the Mankau book as available. There's no details given on these two, other than :
In a planning point on toss bombing using the TSA steep-angle bombsight it was established that the 410 is probably capable of making torpedo attacks at wavetop altitudes if we have electronic range-finding eqpt avail. to us. Test with reducing the trajectory have been carried out with very positive results. It depends on using the fins presently found on air dropped torpedoes and finding a way to attach the ["Lufttorpedo"?] body. It seems that this can be accomplished in short order.
This page says the glider part (at least) of the LT950 was first used in '43 and over 300 were produced.
This page (German, no English version) seems to say that no BT torpedoes saw action.
The BT400's own page isn't clear.
The LT950's own page neither. There's one picture of an Me 210 (DI+NF WNr 0194) "near Gdynia (Gotenhafen-Hexengrund), 1942" carrying one, on p.30 of K. Janowicz' Kagero book.
