I heard from a British engineer that the Focke Wulf Fw200 Condor was built to be a bomber. And she was a patrol plane. I wonder, if the Luftwaffe decided that the Fw200 was good for long range bombing? Rather than patrol? What would be the outcome of the battle of britian then?
A Different Aircraft?
- Thread starter martinroberts
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Actually the Condor was originally designed as a long range passenger aircraft and used as such. It was not structurally as robust as a purpose designed military aircraft, and was prone to structural failure. It had neither the capacity for a useful bombload nor the ability to tolerate damage that a bomber would need.
Your British engineer probably drives the trains. Kurt Tank worked with Rohrbach building flying boats but was convinced that land planes were the way to go, and left with his ambition. This ambition became the Condor which flew from Berlin to Brooklyn in 1938, over 4,000 miles against strong headwinds, and returned. The fuselage was wider than a bomber needed, and construction was lighter. Its conversion to military required the addition of a long gondola under the fuselage to house defensive guns, a bombardier, and a weapons load. Hitler selected one as his personal transport. Germany needed 1500 B-17s and some Mustangs, not 267 Condors, to make any difference in the BoB, and Dowding would still have something to say about it.
As I recall , the FW-200 originated as a Japanese naval patrol bomber, taken up by the LW to fill a similar requirement for the KM....So the engineer was right...although there is no doubt it was an adapted civilian design poorly built since the LW couldn't care less about the KM.
Had the C-in-C Wehrmacht remained a military man he could have convinced the KM to made a prewar deal with the LW-So all the planes built for the navy would have been off the shelf LW models, then they could have ended producing abut 600-650 CONDORS -more than twice as many.
Had the C-in-C Wehrmacht remained a military man he could have convinced the KM to made a prewar deal with the LW-So all the planes built for the navy would have been off the shelf LW models, then they could have ended producing abut 600-650 CONDORS -more than twice as many.
yeah , surprisingly WIKI has reasonable accurate bit about this plane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_200_Condor
Given the circumstances , it was a win-win for both services at the start of the war, while its role as a pirate bomber ended with the CAM ships its role in locating convoys for BDU, was vital mid war in helping to locate 1/2 of all North Atlantic convoys from late 1941 to 1943.
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Might I wonder what sort of Mustang and B-17 Equivalents could have entered service by the time of the Battle of britian?
You might very well wonder. Germany possessed the finest tactical air force in the world at one time, and Tooze and Ovary have written why Germany couldn't have everything, like an effective strategic bombing force as well. It's the stuff that dreams are made of.
The only realistic chance Germany has of defeating Britain is to win the battle of the Atlantic - and win it by 1942 at the latest - Bombing Britain did not work (Air drop mining Western British ports by night might help) and being a 'civilian' airline design (not a bomber) it proved to be more vulnerable to damage than contemporary Bombers of the day.
To that end every Condor should have been used to hunt down convoys in order that Submarines and early war surface raiders could intercept them and also use its limited bomb load - given success experienced by the fairly limited number of Aircraft grudgingly provided for this task OTL if more airframes were allocated to this task then losses of merchant shipping would have increased and would have required a more robust response from the allies earlier.
However - Herman Goering was as reluctant to release such aircraft for these tasks as Bomber Command was!
Hmm good share - although this type does not appear to have had a very successful career - with a 33% loss rate on long range missions and low serviceability rates - although I would put this down to user error and misuse
thaddeus
Donor
they are very similar sized aircraft, the performance advantage of Piaggio explained by more powerful radial engines but the Condor was using what were considered surplus Bramo radials (there was plan to add fifth engine which would have resulted in identical hp figures.)
the main problem was it was about two years behind in development cycle.