List of DB 605A engine construction numbers?

[Dénes Bernád]

I meant exclusively the engine construction numbers that include a slash (/). I enclose one such example, DB 605 No. 239/0118, from a Hungarian document from February 1944 (P.S. sorry, cannot find the image posting button anymore).

[schwarze-man]

Originally Posted by Dénes Bernád

I meant exclusively the engine construction numbers that include a slash (/). I enclose one such example, DB 605 No. 239/0118, from a Hungarian document from February 1944 (P.S. sorry, cannot find the image posting button anymore).

Hi again Dénes,
The use of the forward-slash (/) in the engine Werk-Nr is rare in all the 650+ engine database. There are only two examples of a / in that database and, they are 007/01188 and another early but obviously very corrupted one with 12 figures, 311002A/205-4.
The 007/01188 seems to be a mistake as it falls within many other engines in that range eg 00700933 that have 8 digit numbers.
The only note I would make, is that in this case the 007 is the manufacturer id and the 00933 is the serial number. Possibly the worker accidently added the / in error to the 007/01188 which should have been simply 00701188.
The convention of marking is consistent, the manufacturer id runs directly before the serial number on the engine Werk-Nr, as struck on the Baumusterschild and the many stampings on the engine components.
Also, within the 650 engine data, 007/01188 is the only / after the first 3 digits.
So, sorry that this is not much use.

SM

[Dénes Bernád]

Hello SM, there are too many occurences when a slash was an integral part of DB 605 A/B engines' construction number to consider it a clerical error. The explanation of this slash is what I am looking for. I will keep "digging" for an answer.

[schwarze-man]

Originally Posted by Dénes Bernád

Hello SM, there are too many occurences when a slash was an integral part of DB 605 A/B engines' construction number to consider it a clerical error. The explanation of this slash is what I am looking for. I will keep "digging" for an answer.

Hallo Dénes,
The / could have been used to demark elements of the series of digits that define a part. In the case of these engine Werk-Nr as defined by DB, they do consist of two parts, the manufacturer id and the production serial number. The id can be a single digit, two, three or four depending on the date and allocated manufacturer. The serial number of the motor is after the id but, there is no / to demark this construction of the full Werk-Nr. This is the evidence from almost all 650+ engines in the database and shows the marking of the Baumusterschild. However, it may be possible that clerical data was recorded differently by other contractors.

SM

[Dénes Bernád]

Dear SM, in these particular cases, the first three digits before the slash (there are too many to tell the slash is an error) are not identical, many of them are unique, so they are certainly not the manufacturer's identification, but rather an odd serial number, divided by the slash.
I need to "dig in" more, perhaps I will find a clue one day.

[schwarze-man]

Hi everyone,
I am pleased to say that I have more results about the DB605 engine serial number analysis from the loss records of the 800+ engines supplied by Matti, Tomislav and otherb contributors.
So far in my posts (mainly about #68 to #70) I have covered the DB600/601 engines and I think the numbers stack-up well. However, although the further numbers for the DB605 are well represented, my analysis of the DB605 5-Digit serial numbers is not satisfactory. Simply put, the numbers of engines indicated by the 5-digit block numbers seems too high. I suspect that there may be gaps in the serial number allocations that I cannot identify.
So, I decided to consider the later DB605D engines in the loss reports and I quickly saw how well defined they are, for the period Nov '44 to Jan '45. I will report those details later.
A by-product of the 605D study was a better definition of the 605A serial numbers for the new 8-digit numbering system that was introduced in about early 1943. The 8-digit numbers have the first three digits for a makers id, eg 007 for Genshagen, followed by a five-digit number for the sequential engine serial number starting 00001. So, the first engine in this new numbering from Genshagen was 00700001.
I was able to corelate the BIOS report of engine manufacture quantities, dates and plants accurately and easily confirm data against the loss table engine numbers and the inferred production numbers.
There are some interesting relationships between engine production dates and the date of the loss. Generally, the first date of loss of a series in the data will be a fairly early serial number, but it won't be the first made. The vagaries of engine supply, airframe build date and then use mess it all up. However, the dates of some losses were fairly close to manufacture and, with these series here of over 10,000 engines, there is some good correlation.
There are some errors in the data I have to work with here, possibly 1%. I think that I can accurately correct 50% of those but some are just errors that cannot be corrected accurately. Fortunately, the data is large enough to not use the info with errors.
The number of engines in this 8-digit engine serial number analysis covers approx 25,000 DB605A engines built by six manufacturing plants in the period. There is one plant with 10,000+ engines, two with 6,000+ and two with less than 2,000.
I will list the details on my next post.

Cheers

SM

[schwarze-man]

The 8-digit DB605 serial numbering appears to have been introduced in early 1943. The exact dates seem to vary with different production plants, calculated from the dates of the loss reports and the records of production figures in the BIOS report. This probably reflects the varied dates for completion of previous batches in the 5-digit serial numbering system. Very helpfully, the loss reports of the Bf 109 airframes with dates, types and sub-types gives considerable information about the engine type, although only the engine serial numbers are given. The BIOS reports of engine manufacture lack any detail of engine models produced, other than "601, 603, or 605" and the monthly production figures. The BIOS written report does give further details of factors effecting individual plants and this is helpful in some cases. Nonetheless, the details that I have extracted are accurate in respect of the overall production.
I will attempt to present a similar table to that produced earlier by Tomislav. It must be borne in mind that the dates of production are estimates from the loss records and production records. Additional complications occur where engines were held in store and also overhauled at central plants.

SM

[tanzebau]

Hello,


regarding Reggiane aircraft, so far the following DB605/Fiat RA1050 engines were identified, according to Ali d'Italia nr. 16 and Regia Aeronautica papers:


Aircraft M.M. - Engine M.M.'s
494 - 7738, 47907, 47993
092343 - 47881/001
092345 - RA 47968
092346 - 47958/078, 48014 (or 48018)
092348 - RA 47964
092354 - 48028 (or 48208)
092358 - 48115/235
096102 - 48153/273


Notes:

- where I typed RA means the document mentions explicitely Fiat.
- There is also a picture of a RE2005 showing engine M.M. 47999.
- The nr. 7738 comes from a picture. It seems it's really a 4 digit number.

[tanzebau]

Regarding DB601/alfa RA 1000 on RE2001, from an original Reggiane document:


Aircraft M.M. - Engine M.M.
9946 - RA 44935
7229 - RA 33079
08077 - RA 44470
7281 - DB 63636
7282 - RA 44705
7259 - RA 39014
7274 - DB 64963
90761 - RA 44731
7280 - RA 44938
90006 - DB 32075 or 32076
7225 - RA 44641

[Tomislav Haramincic]

Originally Posted by tanzebau

regarding Reggiane aircraft, so far the following DB605/Fiat RA1050 engines were identified, according to Ali d'Italia nr. 16 and Regia Aeronautica papers:


Aircraft M.M. - Engine M.M.'s
494 - 7738, 47907, 47993
092343 - 47881/001
092345 - RA 47968
092346 - 47958/078, 48014 (or 48018)
092348 - RA 47964
092354 - 48028 (or 48208)
092358 - 48115/235
096102 - 48153/273

It looks to me that when the engine number was written as "47881/001", the 47881 is the actual DB605 engine number and the 001 would be the assembly number (in this case, 001- the first DB605 assembled by Fiat).

47958/078
48115/235
48153/273
fits perfectly this increasing (chronological) sequence, 48153 being the 273rd DB605 by Fiat.

There are similar examples of such marking in the AS production.
00707733/819 AS0
00709343/1437 AS0
etc., where the number after the slash was also the assembly number of the rebuild AS, but it was not in sequence with the original engine number.

BTW, does anyone have any recorded AS engine numbers that do not start with 007xxxxx, or is it possible that for some reason only Genshagen produced engines were used for the production of AS engines (rebuilds)?