Ten. Gianluca Missi wrote:Ju 86 was a nice effective plane and when equipped with diesel engines by BMW was a great high altitude bomber , the fact is that Germany never understood the importance to wage war to where the enemy warpower was built , even when russian factories moved eastwards of the Urals where within reach of their bombers the missions aiming to disturb the production can be counted in terms of a few dozens maybe less ... and always with insufficient strength .
From September 1st 1939 till surrender nothing was made to produce an effective heavyweight (think of the british blockbuster) , during the whole BoB campaign the backbone of the inventory of the German armory where 500 Kg. and 250 Kg. with the diminuitive 50 Kg. bombs .
Not to mention that when talking of high altitude bombing one must be provided of excellent aiming devices in order not to spread everywhere its bombload , something that the German technology coul easily achieve if only required to deemed unnecessary when your bomber force is made of fast low to medium altitude flying light bombers , when bombers came in higher the results achieved , in terms of precision , worsened drammatically .
Also I do believe that only the Allies and among them only the U.s.a.a.f. could afford the losses caused by daylight raids and sacrifice hundreds of airmen to achive their objectives , the loss rate of most of the raids was equal to that suffered by the Luftwaffe during BoB but Goering simply couldn't afford those percentages ; remember we are talking percentages and of course since American formations came by hundreds and German by tens we are talking completely different numbers .
Anyway my bet would still be Ju 290 .
Or since we are talking America Bomber .... Enterprise and photonic torpedoes and fasers .... after all Sulu might well be counted as part of the Axis .
Gian
What bomb load could the Ju-86 carry at highest altitude?
On the issue of bombs, the USAAF found the best bombs were a large number of small incendiary bombs unless the target was hardened...but that was very rare.AS I recall the germans found that produced the best results over london?
In terms of accuracy USAAF bombers did get to within 700m CEP with practice over germany but yes lots of bombs are needed to achieve results....and that means lots of bombers and escorts. Even if you convert the bulk of the medium bombers to strategic bombers [ 2-3 to 1 conversion], you still end up with about 1/10th of what the allies produced... so it would have limited effect unless very well directed. USSBS shows that only a few % of the bombing missions were needed to disable and destroy the german fuel industry and a few % more could have disabled the aircraft industry by bombing the engine production plants. They never located that bottleneck and thus didn't achieve that.
So even a small number of bombers can have a significate effect if properly directed. But look at the fuel situation. In Germany with synethic fuel industry the bulk was made 'incountry' as opposed to the Allied situation where almost all the fuel was shipped in. Thats why I [and others i gather too] believe the best use of such bombers would be to increase maritime bomber roles by an order of magnitude.
What I had in mind was the combination of Guides missiles [IE Hs-293] combined with a bomber that could fly above the allied fighter cover constantly to deliver such ordnance accurately...it could be made to work provided you convert medium bomber force and divert other industries like the V-1 production towards increasing guided missile production by orders of magnitude.
Regarding speed. Tony [sorry bout that
], I agree nothing is set in stone and the example I chose was simply based on comparison with JU-88. You say it would not be much help but how much difference do you mean? Can you give an example of massive power increase not resulting in major speed increase thats comparable to an anticipated Ju-89 up engined model? As I see it every single major plane that gets an engine upgrade results in speed altitude and range improvements.Heres what I got interms of estimating increases.
. The Ju-89 has weight of 31,000 lbs and mounts four DB-600 engines and can haul 3500 lbs of bombs over 9000m [~ 30,000 ft] @ 240 mph & 1800 miles range [~ 9 hour endurance @ 200mph ] protected with 2 x LMG and 2x HMGs. However the prototype carried up to 5000kg to 30,000 ft or 10,000kg to 24,000ft altitude.
With further development in the late 1930s Jumo 211J engines could be employed to increase speed altitude and range. Based on similar power increases on the Ju-88, this resulted in 25-30% increase in speed, 1/3 increase in altitude and ~ 9-10% increase in range.
If applied to Ju-89, that should result in about 300mph maximum speed and fly long range bombing mission of 4000lb bomb load at 32000 ft with 250 mph cruise speed for ~ 10 hours .
Does this sound reasonable?
Last edited by Paul Lakowski on 29 Mar 2005 08:31, edited 1 time in total.
by Paul Lakowski on 26 Mar 2005 21:59 
