Ostpreußen, April 1945.

[photo-war]

Stive and Tony many thanks for your comments.



Here more plane deatails for review.

[leonventer]

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 ...

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

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by leonventer

Agreed.

Because it has the rear support ("Abstützblech") behind the armored headrest, it would be a late-production A-8.

Leon Venter

Good point about the fan.

Just to make things even harder, wasn’t the blown canopy also available as a retro-fit?

[leonventer]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

Just to make things even harder, wasn’t the blown canopy also available as a retro-fit?

Yes, indeed -- it seems it was just a matter of what was available.

Below is a quote from Ernst Schröder of 5./JG 300, which appears on page 271 of Peter Rodeike's "Focke Wulf Jagdflugzeug: Fw 190 A, Fw 190 'Dora', Ta 152 H":




Schröder describes the chaotic situation at the end of the war, in which repaired A-8 airframes would be fitted with the BMW 801 TU engine (an interim replacement for the problematic BMW 801 TH that was intended for the A-9.)
Similarly, damaged old-style canopies were replaced with the new blown canopies.

A real hodge-podge for us to decipher ...

Regards,
Leon Venter