Favorite German plane

[STURMBOCK]

HI
My username is STURMBOCK,and with such name its normal that my choice is the FW 190 all versions
The butcher bird over the channel with the yellow nose,and the D9 against the US bomber raids over Germany
I like the HEINKEL 219 UHU the balck widow of the Luftwaffe too a fantastic aircraft

[Dragunov]

i like the stuka, but it was outdated.

howabout a mouthfull of HE 162? supposedly it was a beaut to fly.
the TA152 was also a nice one.

[knopfler]

i must say
BF 109 ALL VERSIONS, even the gallands one with ashtrash

[dduff442]

Hi All,

I do some sim-fighting online occasionally and normally fly the Bf-109G. It's heavy and doesn't turn particularly well, but also powerful and has great acceleration. Its weight can be an advantage with the right tactics (you've more energy for a given Alt and Spd than your opponent). The MK-108 30mm 'electric gun' is superb. One well-timed attack is enough to bring down any target. A real ace's machine.

Regards,
dduff

[Dragunov]

what sim? i have IL2 sturmovik: forgotten battles ace expansion....blabla and i found it pretty good... the guns shoot too straight though from the real footage ive seen.

and heavy armement? check out the BF109 Z: 4 MK108s and a optional MK103, all 30mm goodness.

[dduff442]

Hi Dragunov,

I meant the engine rather than the gun when I used the word 'powerful,' although 1x 30mm is fine. There's a gun-camera video on the web somewhere of a German fighter hitting a B-17 with at least 15 - 20 cannon shells (20mm presumably) -- without seeming to do it any critical damage. No vapour trails, no fires and no serious structural damage except to the port undercarriage. I doubt any aircraft ever survived more than three or four 30mm hits, and one was usually plenty I'm sure.

A Yak-3, La-5FN etc will cancel out a 109 no problem if handled correctly; they're much newer designs after all. Neither is the Bf pilot in danger if he plays his cards right, however, provided he has a bit of sky underneath him for big vertical manoeuvres.

As regards the ammo flying too straight, my gunnery was always lousy until I came across an old RAF manual on the web. Maybe it's easier than in reality, though the drag on the rounds is the only thing that could be modeled wrongly. There are reliable sources on the muzzle velocities of the various weapons and bullet drop isn't that difficult to model.

I play Il-2 as well, but in its original version. (Well I did say occasionally. My joystick is a bit screwed as well - has a twitch in the rudder).

Regards,
dduff

[mickeyrom]

I would say my favorite german plane is the stuka I love the noise makers they scared the living daylights out of people and it was pretty effective .Also the Messershmit Komet is a favorite of mine

I dont know if you already know this,but there is a Ju87 hanging from the ceiling of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

[Michael1940]

..well, or maybe Bucker Jungmeister?
No, no wait i got it...The Dornier 26!
The last of the great Dornier Flying boats....sweet lines on that one.

[phylo_roadking]

For me, has to be "Tante Ju"....too many formative hours spent watching Where Eagles Dare!

[mickeyrom]

How about the Heinkel night fighter,the Uhu(owl)I believe it was He119.
For WWII AC aficionados,see if you can find a book called The Wooden Wolf".You wont be disappointed,trust me.

[Matt B.]

Hey guys,
My favorite is the Focke-Wulf 200 "Condor."
The reason being, is that it had a long range and probably the potential for becoming a major bomber (possibly the German counterpart to the USA's B-17?). Unless I am mistaken, I do not think that many were produced during the War by Germany and that they were very fuel-consumptive.

Matt B.

[phylo_roadking]

They also had remarkably weak undercarriages, despite how sturdy they "looked"...and a horrible habit of breaking in two on landing, either just in front of the tail or just behind the nain wingspar!

[jerijerod]

Messerschmitt Me 110 C4/b. Fast with a long range and bombs. Sweet aerodynamic body lines and in the hands of erpobungsgruppe 210 deadly too.

[HeinrichFrey]

And what`s about the magnificent Me 262? Yes.

[phylo_roadking]

More on the Condor I recently did elsewhere...

Early-mark Condors relied on external hardpoints. IIRC, there are only 14 ever recorded as being fitted with extra internal racking, and it's these few aircraft that the strange 4,500lb bombload figure is taken from...and these in 1944, so don't fit in with the maximum advance date for the Wehrmacht in the USSR. The normal figure is only 1,000lbs, literally a drop in the ocean. Later models with the full ventral bay and internal racking were compromised by the need to carry a dummy concrete bomb for zeroing the poor bombsight on "combat" flights!

Major issues which made it unsuitable included...wingmounted main fuel tanks which couldn't be uparmoured to any useful degree - leaving it very vulnerable to attack from below and to the rear, and of course to AA fire. The famous structural weakness just forward of the tail or just aft of the main wingspar - and on some aircraft BOTH! This was atrocious in early models, with 8 of the first 14 C-models delivered cracking up, but the problem was never fully rectified. The burning undercarriage brake hubs were another; poor design meant that the brakes could seize on and burst into flame on landing - and ALSO seize on overnight and not free up properly when taxiing so a pilot could raise a burning undercarriage into the wheelwell of his "wet wing" after takeoff.... Constant upgrading of the defensive armament in both calibre and number led to takeoff and landing weights increasing, together with the extra weight of the ventral bay and extra armouring and fuselage strengthening...all adding to the undercarriage issues of course. All of which meant changing from Fafnir to Bramo engines didn't add any extra performance, it was compromised more with every mark change.

The Me110-C had noticable issues too

It had a number of inbuilt flaws that the RAF and others, starting with the Poles on the first day of the war - learned to exploit.
The FIRST issue was that the mechanical fuel injectors fitted meant that they were very slow to accelerate from a cruising speed. Therefore when escorting bombers, they could be bounced from behind, and their attackers simply dive away at speed and outpace them as they couldn't pick up enough speed quickly enough to give chase.
The SECOND problem was the manouverability of the Me110. The small tail surfaces meant that the aircraft has to be moving right up within 40 mph of its top speed to be as manouverable as the designers intended. Therefore it simply couldn't outmanouver monoplane fighters - whether British Hurricanes or Polish Pzls - UNLESS it was a very high speed dogfight...and as you can see from above, it took a long time for the ME110 to actually GET to that manouvering speed!!!!
As the war progressed - BOTH these problems became worse as the Me110 was converted to a night fighter; for the exhaust cowls fitted to the engines to prevent the aircrew being blinded at night "detuned" the engine and made the acceleration problems even worse.

The mods clipped about 35 mph off the F-model's top speed - which was a major inhibitor as a nightfighter when it had to chase a "target" across its Kammhuber Line box, catch it, and then add enough speed for an attack. It could chase a Stirling or a Whitley, but had trouble catching Lancasters or Halifaxes. The G-model added another 55 hp at 18,800 feet. However, this slight power gain was THEN gradually compromised as the weight of radar sets increased, and extra tankage was added.

The 110's main weakness was however exposed AGAIN in October 1943; a number of G-2s were modified for dayfighting again and equiped I./ZG 26.....to exploit a gap in the range of Allied escorts which meant that from late summer USAAF bombers made the last leg of their journey over Germany without escort. But on the 4th of October the first Thunderbolts arrived without warning - AGAIN behind the attacking 110s! - over Frankfurt-am-Main, and brought down FIFTEEN 110s in one day with no loss