If only the Luftwaffe had put resource into making decent ones before 1940. That said there is still the need for a heavy bomber destroyer, as relying on a single engine fighter for that is risky. The Bf109Z would solve that problem, as it uses mostly existing parts, has over 1000km range and could carry heavier weapons in the inboard wing spar to reliably blast apart bombers.
No risk. Bf 109E-3 was the only fighter in the world that combined bomber-busting firepower with speed and rate of climb in 1939. RAF was taking a bigger risk with 8 LMGs for bomber busting.
Biger drums (75, 90 rds) were on offering well before ww2 started by Oerlikon, the Breda 12.7mm is belt fed, drop tanks were in use all around the world, including Luftwaffe (on He 51 and Hs 123), by the time of Spanish civil war. The dots are there, just connect them in a timely manner.
Not really, as models without the evaporative cooling system of the Fw187 actually flew. We don't know that any non-evaporative cooling He100s were ever made or what their performance actually was. The DB Fw187 can be estimated from data from the Jumo 210 187, but I'll find out what there is in the one book on the Fw187 that is out about the performance of the later iterations that had the DB605.
Jumo-Powered Fw 187s flew with 'classic' cooling, yet pictures and test reports of non-evaporative cooled Daimlerized Fw 187 are elusive as Bigfoot.
See the bottom of my answer for the problems with that. Expanding training programs without making cuts to training time is impossible given the resources of 1933-41 without cutting front line numbers of pilots; in 1939 the Germans had to mobilize instructors and students in training to get their front line numbers up because they simply did not have the resources to train up enough staff in the 1930s to create a large enough Luftwaffe. They were planning on war in 1942, not 1939-40 and were keeping up quality of both instructors and pupils to ensure a flow of quality combat pilots. Check out Edward Homze's, Jame Corum's, and E.R. Hooton's books on the build up of the Luftwaffe in the 1930s and they were producing what they could with what they had without cutting corners in training or sacrificing output of combat pilots to build up the training establishment much larger, which would have ensured a major deficit of pilots available in 1939 as resources would have been plowed into training expansion instead of output of actual combat pilots.
Be it as it was, LW will not win skies over England without enough of good/excellent fighters and enough pilots to fly them. RLM better start plan for war that starts in 1939/40 instead of 1942, importing fuel to improve stocks before war commences etc.
I did, it doesn't show what you're claiming.
Okay, then show a picture or a doc when they stuffed a bigger bomb in bomb bay of Ju 88.
They were separated into two bomb bays because one was supposed to mount extra fuel internally for longer range missions and be sealed. They could have either fit heavier bombs designed around the Ju88s bomb bay internally or altered the bomb bay design if they wanted with the existing wing layout, they just didn't want to because of the original design purpose.
Source? Or just trying to make a bug looks like a design feature?
The addition of dive bombing later to the mission profile was easier service by adding more external bomb racks so that bombs could be dropped in a dive without having to worry about how the angle of dive would impact the exit of bombs from the bay, so they just didn't worry about altering the bomb bay. Plus apparently it impacted the design's speed less to carry drop munitions externally rather than make the air frame larger and heavier to store the bombs internally. See the Do217 for what having high wings and a deep bomb bay for internal carry of big bombs did to the aircraft weight. It left the design seriously underpowered given the engines available in 1940-42.
There is no comparison between Do 217 bomb bay and that of Ju 88. One was rated for 2 tons, later to 3 tons, the Ju 88 carried 1 ton in it's bomb bay.
Position of the wings on Do 217 was excellent, since it allowed for an unrestricted bomb bay. It cruised faster than Ju 88 when both were carrying more than 1 ton of bombs. With almost twice the possible bomb load, Do 217 was a much better bang for buck than Ju 88, though it was too late for 1940.
I keep repeating that I don't intend to make wider or deeper the bomb bay of Ju 88, looks like my English is really bad.
You referred to them as drop tanks. If we are talking about the metal ones for bombers they weren't meant to be dropped except in emergencies, while the paper-wood ones were meant to be dropped ASAP, but those weren't AFAIK used for bombers. US and UK use was different than German use for drop tanks, as they had reserves of aluminum the Germans did not, but even they used a LOT of disposable wooden ones for fighters.
You give me too much of credit.
The manual for the Ju 87R names the drop tanks by the name 'Abwerfbarer Zusatz-Kraftstoffbehaelter', that google translate says it is 'Ejectable auxiliary fuel tank'. Manual for the Do 217E-2/E-3 names them as 'Abwerfbarer Behaelter', that Google says it means 'Discardable container'.
At any rate, I will not discuss merits of better bomb bays or drop tanks in this thread from now on.
The He111 was available in 1940 and could have been produced in larger numbers had the choice not been made to focus on a Ju88 that was pressed into doing universal service and consequently delayed in production due to design issues; anything that gets the Do17 out of production and service before the war is ideal, which means getting the Ju88 into service before the war starts, which in turn means not modifying it to dive and adding extra defensive armament among other things; you can either have it earlier without big bombs or later with them. Since the design and spec were issued before 1936 changing it in 1936 only delays introduction into 1940, which fucks up your entire scheme of improving the Luftwaffe. Having it earlier means keeping it a speed bomber which means then that is is restricted in what roles it could do. Let the bigger, heavier He111 carry the big bombs even externally, as it did IOTL and have the Ju88 focus on army support tasks in conjunction with the Ju87 and Hs123; just make enough He111s that it can do the big bomb jobs.
No worries for my scheme of better Luftwffe.
Ju 88s will be focused in operational and startegical role, depending on current situation.
The only thing bulged Mosquito could do that it couldn't before was take a cookie, which is only for city busting. The Cookie bomb was specifically a block buster to open up roofs for incendiaries to fall in. Are you really going on about producing Ju88's for city bombing AGAIN????
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb
Nah, something big is needed for blasting factories, marshalling yards, chokepoints, ports, command centers, ships etc. No tiny 50 kg bombs this time.
So with all of that and the need to make bombers to replace the losses in May-June 1940 (as well as those lost in the BoB), I don't know how Germany could make 2-3x as many fighters, even SE fighters. A Bf109Z would certainly make it easier to get economies of scale in production as the long range twin engine fighter would share between 80-90% of parts with the existing SE fighter. That would help for sure. How do you propose stepping up pilot production? Certainly helping improve the Bf109's landing gear would keep accidents down, but cutting training hours and letting in lesser quality pilots to expand numbers would increase the accident rate, as it did IOTL from 1942 on when they did just that. More accidents means more loss of aircraft in training and outside of combat. Already there were noted quality control issues in new aircraft, supposedly due to the influx of Polish PoW labor in aircraft factories. And as it was the simplifications in production that come from longer experience did not yet exist in German factories as it did in 1942 or 1944 when production was dramatically increasing despite not major raw material or labor increases in the airframe industry.
Not embarking on 2-engine fighters is a 1st step on pushing up production numbers for fighters. More pilots will require more trainers and more fuel. That costs money, thus only 60% or Flak is produced in 1936 on, includes also less Flak ammo. That still leaves Germany with 1800+ heavy and ~6000 light Flak guns by June of 1940.