After the development of the excellent FW-190 the German Luftwaffe focused much of its energy on developing futuristic aircraft such as the ME- 262, Flying Wing and experimental rocket propelled craft. Would they have been better off developing a more practical/economical piston driven successor to the ME-109 and FW-190?
Personaly think it was too late already. They had few adversarys on too manny sides each more than capable of coping with entire german army from 1943 onwards. Should have focused more on air defense and regular fighters and improving them then on sudden miracle solutions that never brought up any good to them anyway.
surely having some of developing long range heavy bomber airfleet would have been useful especially in the east to keep hitting the Russian Industrial complex after is moved beyond the urals
a longer range would have given greater payloads and greater reach across the western side of the UK
and obviously proper amerika bombers, not the sanger stuff but a b-29 type equivelant?
i know the principple of blitzkrieg meant you were meant to smash your enemy before they escaped, but whlist this method works in the small western european countrys with shorter distances and supply changes, the concept obviiously become over extended in the east?
i can see why some thing the range of “V” weapons and jets was a fruitless distraction, but ultimately with both allies deveoping jet aircraft in irregardless of what was happening in Germany then there would have come a day where the allies would have fielded jets across main land europe ? Then the piston aircraft of the luftwaffe would have been on the back foot again.
ok, maybe if they hadnt wasted the resources and had built more pisten aircraft earlier it would have tiped the balance earlier?
but then so would have finshing the destruction of the RAF rather than switching to the blitz on london?
…just a few thoughts!
This question is a complex issue and a number of factors must be considered when viewing the demise of the Luftwaffe, especially the Jagdwaffe. Many of the Luftwaffe’s problems can be traced back to the 1930s when rearmement began.
No doubt wrong choices of equipment were made as were philosphies(ie the Stuka and Zerstorer concepts) all of which helped dilute the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe.
Lack of a heavy bomber is a complex issue, the death of General Wever, dealing with advanced designs after years of no natural aircraft development, but the small size of the German economy and the inability of German industry to adequately develop future weapon systems played no small part.
digger
It would have been very useful… but it’s the unceasing problem of resources: Both building and using long range heavy bomber would have required way too much (extra) resources. Remembering that nazis had fuel-troubles even keeping the low-weight aircrafts and panzers active, it’s difficult to see how they could have operated long range heavy bombers.
Maybe they should have placed even more priority to Me262, because nazis really needed a superior aircraft to clear the skies. Postwar comparisons proved it was better than Gloster Meteor and P-80 Shooting Star (numbers varying according to what models we are talking about of course). But with all the early problems of Me262 and the total allied air superiority, it’s difficult to say/calculate/speculate how effective Me262 really would have been - or even how effective it was.
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