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Re: Ju 188 - why not?
Hello Graham
at least I don’t blame RLM on 109 development, even if there was a plateau in performance improvement between F-4 and G-6/AS, but that was more because of the problems with DB605A. I agree with you on the sometimes unreasonable harsh critics on RLM, it made its mistakes but so did the other orgs in other countries which controlled aviation development and production. Maybe Udet was a failure but under pressures of war all made mistakes.
The extended wings, you might well be right, I wrote from memory.
I agree that engines were a major problem because of need more performance for ever heavier planes and there were bottlenecks in BMW engine production. And yes, British had their fair share of engine problems, early Bristol sleeve valve radials were unreliable and generally Roy Fedden seemed to have given too little attention to supercharger performance, RR had the Vulture and Napier seemed to have mismanaged its Sabre development. All British 2000hp engines were delayed or run to too big problems producing many problems in a/c development and production.
On Ju medium bombers, IMHO something ought to be done because Allied (incl. Soviet) fighters and AA got better and because there was no meaningful advancement in Ju88 performance its survivability suffered and it lost its ability to operate daytime in MTO with reasonable lossrate, partly because the number of LW fighters was becoming too low. If more powerful engines were not available in sufficient numbers at least some aerodynamic chances should have been done.
Juha
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