Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Fencer51 on April 23, 2012, 10:56:13 PM
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http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/message/1335215748/Raising+a+He+219
Hope it gets restored like the one at NASM
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It's been a crazy couple weeks for warbird discovery. Amazing what is still out there.
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He219 with only 20mm guns in belly position installed? Possibly an A6 Mossie interceptor.
Been consuming 3 books about night fighting over Germany, France and England recently. Incredible stuff and very much ignored in mainstream history.
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He219 with only 20mm guns in belly position installed?
Standard equipment for a He 219, those with Schräge Musik had only two of them in the belly station. The 4x 3cm cannon equipment is a myth, was never used operationally.
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Said they might pull out a 109 and a 110. :x
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"Standard equipment for a He 219, those with Schräge Musik had only two of them in the belly station. The 4x 3cm cannon equipment is a myth, was never used operationally."
Indeed, 2 30mms for Schräge, 20mms for any other positions , belly (2 or 4) or wing root (2).
Not sure how common the wing root guns where due to possible muzzle flash issue. Not a problem for pilot but for radar officer who was facing them.
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The 400+mph speed is also, so far as I have read, a myth. There is a claim out there that when it entered service it racked up some huge number of kills on the previously untouchable Mosquito. The problem with that claim is that there are no corresponding loss records for the Mosquito.
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Indeed, 2 30mms for Schräge, 20mms for any other positions , belly (2 or 4) or wing root (2).
Not sure how common the wing root guns where due to possible muzzle flash issue. Not a problem for pilot but for radar officer who was facing them.
No, Schräge Musik installed = the belly guns in the rear position had to be removed due to space limitations. I can't really comment on a possible muzzle flash issue with wingroot guns but they may have been removed to save weight.
The 400mph might have been possible.......but only without radar antenna and with 2000+PS engines
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"The 400+mph speed is also, so far as I have read, a myth. There is a claim out there that when it entered service it racked up some huge number of kills on the previously untouchable Mosquito. The problem with that claim is that there are no corresponding loss records for the Mosquito."
You can consider He219's 400mph as much myth as Mossies flying in German airspace 400mph while carrying bombs. Mossies were shot down even by 110s so there was nothing magical in Mossies speed in practice. However, Mossie was much faster than any other of the British bombers and they were also much fewer, so even finding one in darkness was a fluke as they were not flying in bomber streams were most British losses occurred anyway.
The ridiculous claim of several Mossies shot down in short time could have been a way to convince the German brass that He219 was much needed, as it was, but still was never suppiled in adequate numbers to make a difference. Bf110 and Ju88 were enough to inflict massive losses to British bombers so that is where the Nachtjagd focused saving resources and leaving the scattered solo Mossies, whether they were pathfinders or plain bombers, to their own devices, or to be chased around by single engined Wild Boars which were more up to task anyway.
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"The 400mph might have been possible.......but only without radar antenna and with 2000+PS engines"
The modified A2s for Mossie hunting were equipped with GM-1 and FuG2205-N26 radar.
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There is no myth about Mossies flying at 400mph with bombs over Germany, that simply isn't how they worked. I think you pulled that out of your rear because you're feeling defensive over my claim that the He219's advertised 420mph speed is fake.
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Never seen such claim. Only 400mph. In normal configuration not even that much.
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In standard configuration the A-2 was in the speedrange of the Ju 88 G-1. The A-7 was faster and should have come close to the Ju 88 G-6.
I don't know how fast the D-1 with Jumo 213E or 213F was, the Jumo 222 engined versions had a projected speed of 400mph+.
The radar antennae was responsible for a speed loss of 30-50 km/h so withouth them and with engines of 2000+ PS + decent altitude performance 400mph should have indeed been possible.
What's a FuG2205-N26 radar? Maybe FuG 220 SN-2?
Streib shot down four-engined bombers in his first operational sortie with V9, not Mossies.
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More pics from the salvage at http://www.danas-have.dk/He219.htm
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It's been a crazy couple weeks for warbird discovery. Amazing what is still out there.
You have no idea..... :t
There are a tremendous number of wrecks and abandoned aircraft that are still available. Cost of recovery and dealing with local governments is usually what holds the recoveries up.
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More:
A rare World War II German night-fighter has been recovered in Denmark
Danish divers and the Aviation History Society (DFS) of Denmark have recovered a rare World War II German night-fighter off the northern Jutland peninsula and are to restore the aircraft.
The only known other full example of the aircraft is said to be in the United States, where it was taken following the war after it and two other of the aircraft were confiscated by US Army Intelligence Service from the Grove Air Force Base in Jutland, Denmark.
One of the more advanced aircraft to be built during WWII, it was the first military aircraft in the world to be equipped with ejection seats and was equipped with an effective VHF intercept radar designed to seek out and attack allied bombers. It is also said to be one of the first operational aircraft with cockpit pressurisation.
Found in the Tannis Bay between Hirtshals and Skagen in Denmark, the plane’s tricycle landing gear gave it away.
“Landing gear is just like a fingerprint on humans, but I found it difficult to believe that we had such a rare aircraft in Denmark,” says DFS Chairman and aircraft archaeologist Ib Lødsen adding the recovery was like waiting for a Christmas present.
“It was so exciting. You never know whether you’re going to get what you want. I was a little disappointed,” he adds, saying that wires to the aircraft’s instruments had been cut, suggesting that someone had tampered with the aircraft previously.
The only parts of the aircraft that remain to be found are one of its two engines and part of the tail, which probably included the aircraft number, which in turn would help determine why the aircraft ended up in Tannis Bay.
The aircraft is now to be transported to the Garrison Museum in Aalborg where it is to be restored and exhibited.
“People interested in aircraft will come from all over to see it. It’s something of a sensation,” Lødsen says.
Only some 294 of the aircraft, which was nicknamed Eagle-Owl, were ever built for the Luftwaffe. The Heinkel HE-219 in the United States, which until now was said to be the last existing aircraft of its type, was flown from Denmark to Cherbourg in France in 1945 where it was packed aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Reaper and taken to America as part of the Lusty intelligence operation to glean technical information from German aircraft.
The exhibit is currently at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum annex at Washington Dulles Airport.
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"What's a FuG2205-N26 radar? Maybe FuG 220 SN-2?"
Didn't find any more info of it with Google but I presume that it could be one of the frequency variants found in SN-2 radars. If it was a higher frequency device the problem is that its search cone was probably narrower and shorter than that of standard SN-2 which was an improvement to earlier radar sets due to lower frequency. What is better with a high frequency set is that it works with shorter antennas so the speed penalty would have been smaller.
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There was only a FuG 220 SN-2 or the very late (and probably never operationally used) FuG 228 SN-3. The only other more widely used late-war radar was the FuG 218 Neptun (no use in the He 219 known).
Later/improved versions of the FuG 220 were usually marked with a-d, probably an e existed as well. AFAIR these letters were unofficial signs marked on the aircraft fuselage and required, at least from c on, the antennae to be mounted in ~45 degree angle.
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I recall reading that there was a possibility to reduce the amount of antennas to reduce drag but that causes the detection cones to be different too as well as overall radar performance. All in all e.g. SN2 had variants with different antenna arrangements and these could have caused exotic naming as well. E.g. there was a SN2 in some Ju88s which had antennas pointing in X configuration around the rear fuselage so the aircraft did not detect other aircraft flying in front of it but if the Ju88 flew past them. There is a picture but no other description if the configuration was FuG 220XXX etc. I can't and wouldn't comment what was and what was not as IMO there is just not enough techincal data available.
Highly interesting PDF:
http://aobauer.home.xs4all.nl/Lichtenstein%20radars.pdf
ATM I have three books on the subject which all I can recommend:
Battles with the Nachtjagd: The Night Air War Over Europe, 1939-1945
Theo Boiten (80% British, 20% German experiences, huge book!)
The Other Battle: Luftwaffe Night Aces Versus Bomber Command
Peter Hinchliffe (80% German experiences, lot of technical stuff of equipment and Himmelbett system)
The Night Fighters: A Photographic History of the German Nachtjager 1940-1945 (German Fighters of World War II)
Werner Held, Holger Nauroth (pictorial, not too much data)
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