germany's amerika bomber

[tom d. friedman]

received the latest issue of warbirds international. in the book review section is an evaluation concerning a new authored book re: the messerschmitt me-264 amerika bomber that was supposed to bomb the u.s. from germany, as well as shipping in u.s. waters. a huge mother, with alot of b-29 attributes. the review claims an actual prototype was built for testing. i've yet to see a pic of this. can anybody scrounge 1 up??? i'm to cheap to buy the book.

[Robbo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_264

http://www.luft46.com/prototyp/me264.html

[JDK]

Thanks Robbo, and Google's free...

Me 264 Pix

And from our forthcoming book on German wartime bomber projects:



http://mmpbooks.biz/books/5110/r5110.htm

At the beginning of 1941, Messerschmitt
received an official order to build six P.1061 prototypes
under the designation Me 264. The order was
going to be increased to 24 aircraft if the prototype
trials were successful. These aircraft were intended
to be used for an attack on the USA.
The four-engined design looked likely to be
insufficient for this task, considering the weight
of the machine that would have to carry itself,
fuel and bomb load to the USA. In parallel with
the design work on the Me 264 prototypes, work
commenced on a six-engined aircraft, the P.1075.
Some of this work was subcontracted to Fokker at
Amsterdam in Holland.
On 22 January, 1941, the RLM announced a
specification for a long range anti-submarine aircraft.
It required a range of 26,400km without a bomb load
or 18,500km with bombs. In response, Messerschmitt
offered a series of solutions to increase the range
of the Me 264, including: towing by another aircraft
over part of the route, fitting additional engines, using
rocket take-off boosters, and in-flight refuelling from
another aircraft, a tanker whose design was based on
the Me 264. The RLM was rather optimistic in its
assessment of the Me 264’s capabilities and considered
it a favourite among the competition, including
the Fw 200, He 177 and Bv 222.
At the beginning of 1942, the Me 264 received
the first blow from Air Inspector General E. Milch,
who undertook a ‘purge’ of the excess of projects
prepared by various companies, cancelling or significantly
reducing most of them. In the case of the Me
264, this meant a reduction to only three prototypes.
Because the work load from current production
prevented concentration on the new bomber, it was
suggested that its development should be moved to
the Dornier or Wesser plants, but this idea came to
nothing. On 24 April, 1942, a technical committee
from the RLM (sent by Milch) visited Augsburg.
They re-calculated the project and decided that the
performance that Messerschmitt expected from the
Me 264 should be reduced by approximately 10%.
On the same day the RLM received a report from
Messerschmitt, discussing the concept of an attack
at the US coast by the Me 264. On 7 May, 1942, in
another report, the designer claimed that with four
Jumo 211 engines the range of the Me 264 would
be 13,000km, and with four BMW 801s it would
even reach 14,000km.

...

On 22 January, 1943, the prototype
was flown from Augsburg to Lechfeld,
where it made further flights.
During the landing after the fifth
of these flights, the fuselage and
undercarriage were damaged and
subsequently the latter would not
retract. In February, another
pilot, Gerhard Caroli, joined
the trials. He confirmed Karl
Baur’s reservations regarding
the forces on the controls. Subsequently
Baur made flights on
two and three engines, and variants,
and using the autopilot. The autopilot,
however, had too inadequate
servo-mechanisms that were
not strong enough to control the
heavy aircraft effectively.

...

The second prototype Me 264 V2 (W.Nr.
264000002) had Jumo 211J engines and
extended wing tips. The guns (two 13mm
MG 131 and three 20mm MG 151/20) were
(probably) mounted in remotely-controlled
turrets in the fuselage. A total of 1,000kg
of armour was added on key areas of the
airframe. The Me 264 V3 (W.Nr. 264000003)
was going to be almost identical. Both prototypes,
about 80% complete, were
destroyed during the
same raid as damaged
the Me 264 V1.

[Scott Rose]

From Our Luftwaffe Resource Center
http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/me264.html

[tom d. friedman]

up till now i've seen only seen artist renditions. looks like a real brute. i'm amazed at the fact that there is no co-pilot station!!! thanks for the pics guys!!

[bdk]

I think that Scott Photoshopped that one! Look at the FW-190D cowlings on that B-29...

Wasn't there a liquid cooled 36 cylinder radial on dusplay in the US from another Amerika bomber???? I remember it used to be on display at "Travel Town" in Griffith Park (Glendale, CA). Travel Town still exists but they got rid of a lot of the cool stuff (Cutlass and a Neptune as I recall). Where did all that stuff get off to?

[JBoyle]

Buy the book.
My wife got it for me for Christmas...pretty romantic, huh?

Seriously, it talkes alot about the technical troubles in designing, building, and test flying an advanced aircraft in wartime.
IMHO...and based on information in the book, the only way it could have been a player in the war is if the UK had lost the Battle of Britain and/or the US hadn't joined the war for a couple of years.

That's usually missing in the books that have nice paintings of advanced Luftwaffe aircraft in operational situations and give the impression that they were fully developed and waiting on the shelf to push back the allies...IF ONLY Hitler had given the word, OR they had a few more weeks, OR they had enough fuel....
There is a lot more to designing and fielding an airplane than a three-view, some wind tunnel data, and some weight/range estimates.

Seeing how long it took the US, UK, France, and the USSR to perfect some of their postwar advanced aircraft (some of which were never perfected or turned into a decent weapon system) during the 50s..and with nodoby bombing them, makes me wonder how the Nazis would have done it in 1944 or 45.

Last edited by JBoyle on Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[rwdfresno]

I think that Scott Photoshopped that one! Look at the FW-190D cowlings on that B-29... Wink

Wasn't there a liquid cooled 36 cylinder radial on dusplay in the US from another Amerika bomber???? I remember it used to be on display at "Travel Town" in Griffith Park (Glendale, CA). Travel Town still exists but they got rid of a lot of the cool stuff (Cutlass and a Neptune as I recall). Where did all that stuff get off to?

We got the Panther and Neptune. We sold the Panther to Kermit and the Neptune is still sitting disassembled at our place. The Neptune sustained serious damage due to negligence and vandalism while at travel town. The Cutlass is in Pensacola, FL. They also had a V-1 and a P-40 and some other aircraft engines and such that were all gone by the time that we came on the scene.