soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Apr 11, 3:08 pm, Bill Shatzer wrote:
> Tiger wrote:
> > Considering the Clear advantage in quality in the Luftwaffe's aircraft;
> > Why stick with the home grown production? Why not licence build Fw-190's
> > & Me 109's instead of Fiat's And Macchi's. While The Germans exchanged
> > technology with Japan, How come Italy seems to come up short? Would The
> > Med Campaign have gone differntly if Italian Pilots have had first rate
> > equipment from their Axis partner?
>
> Well, the Italian -did- license-build German aircraft engines -
> specifically the DB 601 and DB 605 which were the same engines used in
> the Bf 109s.
>
> And once equipped with the Daimler-Benz engines, Italian fighters were
> not noticably inferior to their German counterparts. The Macchi MC 202
> and 205, the Fiat G.55, and the Reggiane Re. 2002 and 2005 were
> competive aircraft right up until the end of the war. Indeed, after the
> Italian surrender, several Luftwaffe units partially or completely
> re-equipped with Italian fighters.

Kurt Tank (Fw 190 designer) was actually sent to Italy to evaluate the
Italian fighters for production in Germany.
Back at Rechlin he flew them. A test pilot, Petersen evaluated the G.
55 as the finest fighter in the Axis and
it was decided to put the G.55 into production. This fell through due
to the manhours required. 15000 hours
per G.55, 8000 hours for productionised variants and 5000 hours for
the 109.

Story here:
http://xoomer.alice.it/g55/G55his.htm

Having said that the problems with German fighter aircraft lay with
the RLM specifications and production demands rather than the
designers.

The best solution would have been to cancel the Me 410 and give the
DB603A engines to the Fw 190D-9 DB603A variant instead of waiting for
the Jumo 213 variant till August 1944.

This aircraft was about 30km/h faster at sea level than the Fw 190 and
and 40km/h faster at high altitude. The later DB603E was much faster
still. Some 2000 Fw 190D appearing in later 1943 would have given
the allies problems since the Luftwaffe would have had an aircraft
that could out turn both the Me 109 and the Fw 190A at height while
matching roll rates and turn rates with the P-51 at speed.
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/leistungsdaten-1-10-44.jpg

I like the Me 410, it was a fine aircraft. Capable of carrying a
1000kg bomb load 1100 miles (not much worse than a B-26 with its
3000lb bomb load) and it could deliver it with precision at standoff
distances using its computing dive bombing sight. It was as fast as
the Me 109G. It was however the wrong aircraft for the Luftwaffe's
situation.



>
> Italy's problem was always production capacity - Italy was just barely
> an industrialized country and it just didn't have the industrial base to
> crank out aircraft in the numbers required by modern war. Retooling the
> production lines to produce Bf 109s instead of MC.202s would have
> required too much loss of production for very little if any gain in
> performance.
>

They produced the DB605 under liscense: all they needed. The Germans
could have provided a few more engines earlier.