Fw190A-8 WNr.739583 AGO built but what batch?

[fran]

From a friend who obtained the data plate from a U.S. Vet.
To me this WNr. falls in a gap

[Rabe Anton]

Fran—

Concerning the Fw 190A-8 WNr. 739 583, I suggest the following.

In ca. 1998, Peter Rodeike published a major and superb work on the Fw 190 that remains the best technical reference on the type today. It is Rodeike, Focke Wuilf Fw 190 Jagdflugzeug: Fw 190A, Fw 190 "Dora," Ta 152H (Eutin: Struve Druck).

On p. 267, Rodeike lists the production blocks for Fw 190A-8s manufactured by AGO at Oschersleben. One of these blocks was 739 130-739 580.

The above means that your data plate does fall into a gap (after 739 580) as defined by Rodeike. Your "gap," however, is only three aircraft after 739 580. All of us know that Rodeike, while presenting excellent and reliable data on Werknummern, may be slightly off, especially in later Fw 190 production after the summer of 1944. Judged in this light, 739 583 is not surprising and can easily be explained as a slight error on Rodeike's part. The author himself actually admits this: he wrote "≈ 410" as total production in the block in question, that is, at the time of publication, Rodeike believed the block limits to be about 739 130-739 580.

Your plate shows that block 739 130-739 580 did, in fact, extend beyond 739 580. How far? Well, we don't yet know, but it probably wasn't very far, perhaps only five machines.

Thank you for posting the image of your data plate. Thanks to that posting, we can now make a slight correction to Rodeike's figures.

RA

[fran]

Thank you Anton for the lenghty explanation. I am glad this had proved something