The F series is a speciallized ground attack varient. Internally if carries a lot more armour and speciallized ground attack systems. It also has extra drag from external hardpoints
Only later production F-8s had the extra armor removed. We had this discussion before Crumpp. I posted diagrams with weight break of FW 190F-8 armor.
Early production F-8s had additional armor (same as the F-3). To reduce weight the additional armor was dropped from production.
On the underside of the engine starting from the oil cooler armored ring moving aft to under the engine, pilot seat and ending under the aft fuel tank ran either 5 or 6mm plate. Along the engine area it "wrapped" up a bit on the sides. Other then that it had the same armor as the non-Sturmbock FW 190A-8.
The FW 190F-8 is my most favorite plane of World War 2 flew it quite a bit in AH over the Antons.
Here's an account a FW 190 pilot, Hauptmann Erhard Jähnert Staffelkapitän of 2./Schlachtgeschwader 3, recounting his 599th mission flying a FW 190F-8 over of the Kurland Bridgehead:
On 16 February 1945, I attacked enemy armor in my Focke Wolf 190. It had already gotten quite close to our main line of resistance in foggy weather about 10 kilometers southeast of Tukkum.
Three of my comrades closed up with me when I designated the target. We dove on the group of armor and fired our rockets. I was fortunate enough to knock out three enemy tanks in three passes. Three more were crippled by my comrades. Since I expended my rockets, I tried to destroy the remaining tanks, which had already turned back, with my on-board weapons. In the process my aircraft took one or two hits in the lubrication system and also in the compass connections.
Orientation was no longer possible. Vision forward was prevented by the oil film that built up on the front windshield. The cockpit canopy was also stuck, so I sat in my aircraft as if I were in a coffin.
When the engine oil ran out and the engine temperature rose, I had to make an emergency landing. I could only see to the rear, so, with a “look back” I landed on an open field near an abandoned artillery position about 30 meters from a farmstead and 80 meters from a high-tension electric line.
I am certain that my landing rates as a most extraordinary piece of good luck in aviation.
I had neither pistol nor identification with me. When I saw several soldiers in camouflage parkas draw near I grabbed the flare pistol from the cockpit and waited.
Again my luck held. They were Latvians from one of the two Latvian Waffen-SS divisions. They took me to their battalion command post.
I was well received in the grenadiers’ bunker and fed. Soon I was driven back to my airfield.
Incidentally, Erhard Jähnert received the knights cross on 18 May 1943 as a Leutnant flying Stukas while attached to Stukageschwader 4.
Later as Staffelkapitän of 9./Stukageschwader 2, he took part in that squadrons greatest success when it sank 3 soviet destroyers in the Black Sea south of the Crimea.
He was later removed from combat duty and assigned as an instructor. In the fall of 1944 at his own personal request he was transferred to the Kurland Bridgehead and made Staffelkapitän of 2./Schlachtgeschwader 3.
He destroyed 25 Soviet tanks while flying the FW 190F-8 over Kurland. On the day of surrender he took what passengers he could and flew out of Kurland and landed at Flensburg. He was put up for the oak leaves but in the hectic days just prior to German capitulation the award never went through.
While the load out chart that Crumpp posted shows the load outs for the entire 190A / F and G series not all those load out saw operational service. PB rockets were rare and never part of a 'standard load out option'.
The load out for the F-8 is same load out as carried by the F-8 in FB/AEP/PF and is the standard load out for the F8 variant we have in AH. I would love to see rockets (be they PB or others) modeled for the F-8, and along time ago Pyro indicated he would was considering modelling them as well. However, let's not pretend that PB's or rockets were a standard or even an 'important' load out that is missing for the F-8. They maybe more important in terms of an internet game like AH but not in the context of history.
If anything a larger array of bomb types would be more 'appropriate' or 'common' then the more rare PB rockets.
Performance wise the A-8 and the F-8 are indentical in AH and should be.
They are basiaclly the same plane:
AH Normal loaded weight:
F8 weight 9849 lbs.
A8 weight 9682 lbs.
In FB/PF/AEP (according to the object viewer:
FB take off weight:
F8 4,150 kg, 4270 (9414 lbs) with the 115-liter interanl tank
A8 4,250 kg, 4,360 kg (9612 lbs) with the 115-liter internal tank
