Why Wasn't the Ju 290 Massed Produced?

[SpicyJuan]

Hello everyone, I had a quick question regarding the Ju 290: why wasn't it massed produced? It seems like it was a great transport plane, and could've been of great use to the Wehrmacht. The bombers variant looks very promising too

[thaddeus_c]

Junkers was developing the JU-252 and JU-352 for transports. Luftwaffe had existing FW-200 Condor and developing HE-177.

think the failure of the latter two finally led to production of JU-290 (or Condor didn't really fail, perhaps obsolete is correct term?)

Germany would have been way ahead if they had made evolutionary changes to HE-111 instead of HE-177 and built "big Junkers" 290 (or whatever designation) instead of JU-252, JU-352.

[Urmel]

They acquired (over 200?) SM.82 from 1941 onwards and kept producing them post-Armistice in Italy. The SM.82 gave them far more bang for the buck (11t empty weight, 19t MTOW, no impact on German aircraft production).

Also, look at the empty weight of the Ju 290. It was far too much plane for LW transport needs - 33t empty weight, 44t MTOW. That extended range comes at a great structural inefficiency cost. There's a reason they used it as a LR maritime recce plane.

[thaddeus_c]

They acquired (over 200?) SM.82 from 1941 onwards and kept producing them post-Armistice in Italy. The SM.82 gave them far more bang for the buck (11t empty weight, 19t MTOW, no impact on German aircraft production).

Also, look at the empty weight of the Ju 290. It was far too much plane for LW transport needs - 33t empty weight, 44t MTOW. That extended range comes at a great structural inefficiency cost. There's a reason they used it as a LR maritime recce plane.

sorry if my answer was a muddle, did not mean to use JU-290 as a transport (with exception of flights to Far East) but rather to point out a Junkers program (JU-252, & JU-352) that could have been scrapped to allow expanded JU-290 production.

(expanded to 200 - 300, plausible delivery starting in 1942?)

btw thanks for mentioning SM.82, had forgotten all about that one, and did not know the large numbers used.

[Urmel]

It was more a response to the original poster, but you also seem to suggest the Ju 290 could have been produced to replace the Ju 252 and 352 which were dedicated transports? I think there would have been a role in LR maritime offensive recce for the Ju 290.

[Ifor]

I know it's digressing slightly, did the Luftwaffe stick with the JU52 due to politics, convenience etc? Why didn't they push ahead with a better transport? To compare the DC3 with the 52 although the mtow are not strikingly dissimilar, everything else seems to favour DC3.

[SpicyJuan]

I know it's digressing slightly, did the Luftwaffe stick with the JU52 due to politics, convenience etc? Why didn't they push ahead with a better transport? To compare the DC3 with the 52 although the mtow are not strikingly dissimilar, everything else seems to favour DC3.

They did. It was called the Ju 252, but with the worsening of the war situation, the RLM told Junkers to redesign the aircraft so it didn't take up as many strategic resources, the result was the Ju 352. The Ju 352 actually started mass production around 1943/44 but was cancelled by the Jägernotprogramm. In case you were wondering, the Ju 252 was a superb transport aircraft, but the Ju 352 was considerably inferior, but still much better than the Ju 52.

[Ifor]

Appreciated. Thank you.

[thaddeus_c]

It was more a response to the original poster, but you also seem to suggest the Ju 290 could have been produced to replace the Ju 252 and 352 which were dedicated transports? I think there would have been a role in LR maritime offensive recce for the Ju 290.

my intention was to point out a program that could have been scrapped to allow expanded (and earlier) production of JU-290, since the inevitable reply about scare resources. use it in every role FW-200 Condor was used in.

for transports more gliders could have been converted to powered flight using captured French engines.

[SpicyJuan]

It was more a response to the original poster, but you also seem to suggest the Ju 290 could have been produced to replace the Ju 252 and 352 which were dedicated transports? I think there would have been a role in LR maritime offensive recce for the Ju 290.

my intention was to point out a program that could have been scrapped to allow expanded (and earlier) production of JU-290, since the inevitable reply about scare resources. use it in every role FW-200 Condor was used in.

for transports more gliders could have been converted to powered flight using captured French engines.

I don't think that they should have. You can't really compate the two as transports since the Ju 290 has almost double the MTOW of the Ju 252 (100,000 lbs and 50,000 lbs respectively) although I don't have any RM figures for either of them. Thus I think the Ju 252 gives you more bang for the buck, and a four engines heavy transport like the Ju 290, albeit very useful, is a luxury the German's couldn't afford due to their strategic situation.

[Cantankerous]

It was more a response to the original poster, but you also seem to suggest the Ju 290 could have been produced to replace the Ju 252 and 352 which were dedicated transports? I think there would have been a role in LR maritime offensive recce for the Ju 290.

The Ju 290 was designed to replace the Focke-Wulf Fw 200C Condor, and the Ju 90 V11 airframe was converted to the first Ju 290 prototype (the Ju 90 V6 and V7 were modified into military transports after winning the development contract for a late 1939 requirement for a military transport). The Junkers Ju 252 and Ju 352 were evolutionary developments of the venerable Ju 52, and Focke-Wulf's losing competitor to the Ju 290 was the Fw 300, which had been originally designed as a passenger aircraft and later a military transport.

[T. A. Gardner]

The complexity and number of parts in a Ju 290 compared to a Ju 88 to say, and Me 109, is on an exponential. Mass production of the Ju 290 would have eaten heavily into production of other Junkers aircraft to achieve. The Ju 290 was simply too much plane for the German aviation industry to mass produce, and you have to ask to what end would it have been useful to achieve?

Look at it this way...

Let's say Junkers gets production up to where they are making about 3 Ju 290 a week or about 12 a month. Hardly mass production, but surely achievable. So in a couple of months you have squadron service levels available and in say about 4 to 6 months you have a KG's worth of these planes available. What do you do with them?

If they (I'll use 40 planes) go out on a bombing mission that has a moderate risk of defensive action in it, and lose just say, 2% of the planes shot down, damaged beyond repair, or operationally lost to some issue, that's one plane per mission. If they are flying regularly, the factory can just keep up with losses at that rate.
Then there's the fuel issue. Each Ju 290 takes something like (maybe someone has the exact figure) 7 to 9 tons of fuel per mission. 40 planes is using 280 to 360 tons of avgas every few days, say somewhere around 3000 tons a month to sustain regular missions. Where does the gas come from?

It's just too much plane for the Luftwaffe to support in even moderate numbers in operational use.

[Urmel]

Not sure I'd be as negative. They continued production of the Kondor, which was certainly much more wasteful in terms of bang for your buck than the Ju 290 would have been.

FW200 production numbers from LdW:

Jahr 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944
Anzahl 36 58 84 76 8

That's 160 units in 1942/43, or 84 units in 1943/44, depending on when you think they could have scaled up production.