Fw 200 C-5, the invisible sub-type? A review of published and documentary sources.

[INM@RLM]

VERY VERY helpful, Rasmussen. MAJOR THANK YOU.

On the C-4s these Kracke Flugbuch records support my interpretation that early examples of the C-5 were still plated as C-4s. From your post, this seems to have been the case for the first ten examples of the C-5 with W.Nr. 0201 to 0210. When reported in the loss records, however, these were consistently identified as Fw 200 C-5s:
W.Nr. 0201 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 02-Sep-43 with 9./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0202 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 31-Jul-43 with 7./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0203 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 damaged 25% on 23-Oct-43 with III./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0203 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 11-May-44 with Stab III./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0204 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 17-Jan-44 with 3./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0205 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 40% damaged on 20-Jun-43 with 3./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0206 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 27-Oct-43 with 7./KG 40.
W.Nr. 0207 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 01-Dec-43 with 8./KG 40.

On the C-8s your Kracke Flugbuch records show deliveries of these eight aircraft starting earlier than I had in my reconstruction and the conversions being applied to only every second aircraft from W.Nr. 0250 up to 0256. The loss record shows 0257 as a C-8, and 0259 we already know was further converted to a C-5/FK by FoWu. That leaves only one identity of the later 8 genuine C-8 deliveries still to be pinned down: provisionally I'm suggesting this was W.Nr. 0260. So the eight later C-8s would now appear to be: W.Nr. 0250, 0252, 0254, 0256/7/8/9/60 with W.Nr. 0259 after being further converted at FoWu to a C-5/FK. (The only other batch of C-8s being of course W.Nr. 0223/4/5.)

The C-6s you listed from Kracke, match almost perfectly to the identities I have categorised as C-5s up to and including W.Nr. 0243, with just these four differences:
- W.Nr. 0221 is recorded by Kracke as a C-6 but the documentary evidence is this W.Nr. had been reserved for the C-5/U1 long before that aircraft was actually built. (See the ‘Baumuster-Übersicht Fw 200 C, Stand vom 20.II.1943’ )
- W.Nr. 0224 is actually confirmed as a C-8 in its loss record, and in my reconstruction is the second of the batch of three C-8s assigned to I./KG 40 in Aug-43.
- W.Nr. 0245 & 0247. Of these the latter, W.Nr. 0247, was captured intact at the end of the war as a C-5/FK, but it could have started life as a C-6, as indeed could 0245.

Reassuringly, included within Kracke's C-6 listing are two examples independently corroborated as being of the C-6 sub-type (1943 variant using my terminology).
W.Nr. 0214 loss report has this as a C-6;
W.Nr. 0237 is independently corroborated as being plated as a C-6 from inspection of the wreckage.
Kracke also includes as a C-6 W.Nr. 0219 which I already suspected to be a C-6 (1943 variant).

Not so much loss data available for these aircraft listed by Kracke as C-6s but which I believe to have actually been C-5s. So far we have just this:
W.Nr. 0211 reported as a Fw 200 C-5 100% lost on 17-Aug-43 (reported as a 2./KG 40 100% loss; my interpretation is this was a 2./KG 40 crew in a III./KG 40 aircraft).

To help clarify matters a little more, what would be invaluable would be to see the flight dates linked to each of these Kracke W.Nr. identities, most especially those for the C-6 identities. Are we talking about what I refer to as the 1944 variant of the C-6 designation, or is it the 1943 variant, or is this actually a mixture of both the two later flavours of the C-6?