Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Beale
The first one, with the collapsed landing gear and four cannon in the wings is an A-8 or A-9 ...
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Agreed.
It's most likely an A-8 because it appears to have a 12-bladed fan, as opposed to the A-9's 14-blade fan. In the close-up of the nose below, you can see that each group of 3 blades spans an arc of 90 degrees.
Because it has the rear support ("Abstützblech") behind the armored headrest, it would be a late-production A-8.
However, nothing about the late-war Luftwaffe is straightforward, so it's still possible that it's an A-9. I read somewhere that some A-9s were retro-fitted with the 12-blade fan because the increased cooling effect of the 14-blade fan was negated by the extra power required to run it. Unfortunately, I didn't make a note of the source of that info. Does anyone know more about it?
Leon Venter