German fighter Dornier 335

[kano]

scrap that german 'what if' junk and give us the meteor, end of story!

+1

[Zacherof]

He117 would be awesome to have

[Karnak]

What is an He117?   

[Lusche]

What is an He117?   

A failure 

[33Vortex]

He 177 however, would be interesting. The only bomber that could operate in the skies over the Kursk area in '43 unmolested. Speed made it difficult to intercept, the defensive armament discouraged VVS fighters to the point it was largely ignored. The He177 was no failure, but problems with the engines plagued the type until it was finally corrected just before the end of the war.

[Lusche]

The He177 was no failure,

The basic problem of the He 177 project was the concept. The plagued engines were just a result of that, the requirement that a heavy bomber should be capable of dive bombing. The British learned fast from their Manchester "twin engine" debacle and created the Lancaster. The Germans tried to fix the plane, instead of giving in and fix their concept. Which resulted in low production numbers, countless mishaps and losses due to technical problems for most of it's service time.
When the plane was finally getting acceptable reliability, their was neither fuel, production capacity nor experienced crews left.

So yes, the whole HE 177 project was an utter failure and a huge waste of resources. Especially if you consider that Heinkel had as early as 1940 proposed a 4 mot version (He 277) to fix the engine problem. But of course, this bomber would not have been dive bombing capable (which in the end the huge 177 didn't really practice either...)

[33Vortex]

Yep, just another faceplant for the RLM, a splendid display of bureaucratic ineptitude.

[jeffdn]

Yep, just another faceplant for the RLM, a splendid display of bureaucratic ineptitude.

I wonder why the Germans seemed so obsessed with having "jack of all trades" type airplanes. If the Me-262 had been a bomber interceptor and only that from the beginning, if the He-177 had just been a level bomber, etc., etc., the war would've been different. But instead they designed all these planes that never flew, or only flew at the very end of the war, while the core of their fighter units remained one plane that first flew in 1936 and another that first flew in 1939.

[Lusche]

I wonder why the Germans seemed so obsessed with having "jack of all trades" type airplanes.

Mostly economy.

[Karnak]

I wonder why the Germans seemed so obsessed with having "jack of all trades" type airplanes.

The Mosquito must have made them turn green and yellow with envy.....

Oh. 

[Krusty]

Per Hitech, Pyro, and various posts over the years from HTC people that make such statements with authority, the requirements are (and YES, they have their own internal requirements for justifying including a new plane in the game -- WE may not have any standards, but thankfully HTC does):

Must be a plane that was in PRODUCTION (not prototype models, actual production variants sent to units).
Must have served at least in the unit level (not 1 plane, the minimum level of participation is a solid unit of planes)
Must have seen action in WW2 (self explanatory -- no stateside trainers, no noncombat variants, etc).

Those aren't made up. They're only DENIED by folks that go "I want this!!" to something that falls outside these criteria.


Oh... kind of like this thread. I see.

[Karnak]

Krusty,

As much as I preferred that list of requirements, HiTech kinda shot it down.  I'll see if I can find his quote.

[Krusty]

If he shot it down, that's a reversal from his own comments from before.

I went around pulling together quotes of the criteria a couple of times before, but it was many years ago and I don't have them anymore.

[Karnak]

I can't find it.

What I remembered was a post saying simply that they prefer for it to have seen combat in WWII.

[EagleDNY]

I've always been a fan of the Do-335, and have read a lot of the history of the development and testing.   As much as I wish it had been deployed in squadron strength and seen combat, it just was not to be.  The Do-335 had teething problems, and there was the inevitable interference of the German military bureaucracy.   By the time they were ready to go into production and deployment, the Luftwaffe had already decided that they were going full bore into Jets as quickly as they could.   The first A1s as well as some of the prototypes of what would have been the B models were sent to Oberpfaffenhoffen in 1945, but by then the Luftwaffe was pretty much done.  I can only find a couple of examples where the test pilots had to run from the overwhelming allied air cover, and nothing to indicate they ever shot anything down.   

There probably would have been a limited production run of 335s if the war had continued, but the Germans wanted the Do-335 B models more than the As.  There was also some development on hybrid designs using 1 prop and 1 jet engine, and some variants planned with turboprops and counter-rotating aft propellers.     

The German rides are at a bit of a disadvantage in AH because the war for them ends in April of 45, and pretty much nothing new for them could be deployed in 45 with the lack of trained pilots, fuel, the destroyed transportation system, etc. etc. etc.   I think there are a few things that they would have deployed if they could - things that I wouldn't mind seeing AH add, and the Do-335 is one of them.