Originally posted by AVRO1
It was too heavy because it was reinforced for dive bombing.
Which wasnt the designers' idea.
It was a political decision that was bad for a plane of that size.
The engineers were prevented by politicians from making it with 4 seperate engines which would have fixed most of its problems.
Heinkel kept with it because he could not do what he wanted and the plane needed improvements.
He had no choice.
The plane did not work properly so he tried to fix it.
Make sense to me.
The He177 never had a chance in a country that did not want 4 engine bombers.
Well, kind of.
See, the problem is that Heinkel and his engineers had to build a plane to the military's specifications. That is to say, the military doesn't have to have an He-177 with 2 engines, they simply need an airplane with certain characteristics. At some point, the engineers should have said "we can't get there from here".
They never did. The 4 engine plane was called the 277 as I recall.
See the problem with that whole "it is all politicians deciding" thing is that the Military, not Heinkel, identifies the plane's needs. Germany's military felt the air arm should support the troops more than engage in strategic bombing. Clearly they should have developed both capabilities. But Heinkel hanging onto that design for that many years simply because he could was as silly as saying this design should do things it was never designed to. At some point, the engineers have to say "no" and move on. They kept trying to make it into a different specification.
Bottom line is the plane sucked as built and has no place in this game because for all intents and purposes it never flew effectively. For all its flaws the Italian P108 had a better record albeit in smaller numbers. Geez, the Petlyakov 8 was a more successful plane on many levels, shouldn't we have it instead? I mean it served into the 1950s in the Soviet Union.
Model the Do217, it was Germany's most effective heavy bomber. Also the excellent He-111, Il-4 and the SM-79 and Cantz1007. We also need the Wellington and the Pe-2. But I digress.
Sakai