Do335

[Naudet]

Sry to say but DO335 never saw action, even the few prototypes were not flown (like i.e. the FW190D11-13 prototypes) in combat missions.

The DO335 had an special feature to protect the pilot in case of emergency bail out, the aft prop and the top vertikal fin were ejected by explosive bolts. That ensured that the pilot fell away from the plane in one piece and not many small red ones.

Didnt know if the front gear was weak, but landing was a bit difficult due to the lower vertikal fin, the pilot had to approach and touch down in a very low angle, if i remember right nose not higher than 10-15 degree above horizon.

[Flitze]

The Do335 was never flown by regular units, only by the Erprobungsgruppe. I wonder where and when they did their test flights in '44 and later (not only in this plane), not to be engaged by any allied fighters. Maybe they even did engage some by themselves, but never reported these incidents, because I can imagine it was forbidden to engage any allied craft with "secret" prototypes. Does anyone know about this ?

But 665 kph sustained (!!!) speed and a topspeed of 740+ kph is definitely not slow.

[niklas]

This page has some technical info about the Do335 A: http://people.freenet.de/luftwaffeln/do335_1.html

Pls. note that the tested aircrafts in the chart were in bad condition. The theoretical curves which are included in the chart are corrected a little bit to  show the performance of a real Do335. The tests were done with climb and combat power, not with emergency power and, of course, without special emergency power (mw50).

niklas