New Military History Blog - first post about loss of Ju 188 in the East in 1944

[Dan History]

Your observations are welcome, Nick.

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

It would perhaps be clearer (and fairer on the Ju 188!) to relate this to the deactivation of the bulk of the conventional bomber force in the late summer/early autumn of 1944.

Re the vulnerablity of the Ju 188 to the Yak-7b, there's more to it, I suggest, than which was the faster.

I admit I may have been unfair to the Ju 188 What I could have said is that the Ju 188 proved just as vulnerable as the Ju 88 A, if not more, during the period before the bomber force was taken out of action.

You make a very fair point about the performance comparison that I proposed. A couple of other people have commented off the forums that the Yak-7b might not have had any performance margin over the Ju 188 at the suggested altitude of interception, even before the other difficulties that you mentioned are taken into account. It is clear from the Soviet records that attempted interceptions of Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft often failed. A clearer way of making my point would be that the Ju 188 was a bad enough aircraft that even the low peformance Yak-7b could intercept it in certain circumstances.

The reason that Soviet fighters performed best at low and medium altitudes was that they had fairly primitive single-stage two-speed superchargers. The Klimov M-105PF engine used in the Yak-7b was a somewhat improved derivative of the French Hispano-Suiza 12Y and carried over the latter's weak supercharger technology. The M-105PF operated at a higher boost level than its predecessors, but this came at the cost of a drop in critical altitude to just 2,700 metres (8,900 feet).

Regards,

Dan