Luftwaffe Emergency Fighters--Osprey X-Planes No.4

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by Robert Forsyth

In late 1944, the German Air Ministry organized what it called an 'Emergency Fighter Competition' intended to produce designs for quick-to-build yet technically and tactically effective jet fighter aircraft capable of tackling the anticipated arrival of the B-29 Superfortress over Europe, as well as the British Mosquito and US P-38 Lightning which were appearing in ever greater numbers.

Thus was born a cutting-edge, highly sophisticated series of aircraft including the futuristic and elegant Focke-Wulf Ta 183; the extraordinary Blohm und Voss P.212, and the state-of-the-art Messerschmitt P.1101 series. Armed with heavy cannon and the latest air-to-air rockets and missiles, these were designed to inflict carnage on American bomber formations at high speed. Using stunning three-view illustrations of each prototype along with full color artwork, aviation expert Robert Forsyth traces the history of the extraordinary aircraft of the 'Emergency Fighter Competition', Hitler's last throw of the dice in the air war against the Allies.

Series: X-Planes (Book 4)
Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (June 20, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472819942
ISBN-13: 978-1472819949
 

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Wow - it's about time he wrote this book - it's going straight to the top of my must-buy list!
 
Here a blog entry about this new X-Planes aviation book series.

Osprey's Big Reveal: X-Planes

Posted by Pete Ward on 15 August 2016 08:00:00 BST

X-Planes is our brand new aviation series, looking at the dangerous and thrilling world of experimental aircraft. The first 2 books in the series publish in September 2016, and we are pleased to announce four new titles for 2017.

XPL: North American X-15

The revolutionary X-15 remains the fastest manned aircraft ever to fly. Designed and built as the Space Race hotted up, the X-15 was intended to research hypersonic speeds and flights to the edge of space, and form the basis of a possible orbital spaceplane. It obliterated previous speed records, achieving Mach 6.7 and altitudes beyond the edge of space, 100km above the Earth. These ultra-high altitude flights – where the air no longer supports aerodynamic flight, and X-15 pilots relied on spacecraft-style rocket thrusters to keep control – qualified several pilots as astronauts, including Neil Armstrong. In all, the three X-15s made 199 flights, testing new technologies and techniques which helped make the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttle viable propositions.

XPL: Luftwaffe Emergency Fighters

In late 1944, the German Air Ministry organised an ‘Emergency Fighter Competition’ intended to produce designs for quick-to-build yet technically and tactically effective jet fighters capable of tackling the anticipated arrival of the B-29 Superfortress over Europe, as well as the British Mosquito and US P-38 Lightning which were appearing in ever-greater numbers.

Thus was born a cutting-edge, highly sophisticated series of aircraft designs, including the futuristic and elegant Focke-Wulf Ta 183; the extraordinary Blohm und Voss P.212, and the state-of-the-art Messerschmitt P.1101 series. As the war ended before they could be fully developed and built, none of the Emergency Fighters saw service, but these advanced aircraft would heavily influence fighter design in the early years of the Jet Age. This book includes a new colour three-view of every Emergency Fighter, plus technical art and a battlescene of how jet aerial combat might have looked if World War II had dragged on into 1946.

XPL: TSR2

The TSR2 is one of the greatest 'what-if' aircraft of the Cold War, whose cancellation still generates anger and controversy among aviation fans. It was a magnificent, cutting-edge aircraft, one of the most striking of the Cold War, but it fell victim to cost overruns, overambitious requirements, and politics. Its scrapping marked the point when Britain's aerospace industry could no longer build world-class aircraft independently. More than 50 years after it first flew, it is still one of the icons of British Cold War aviation, at once representing the very peak of British aero-engineering achievement, and the most powerful symbol of its decline.

XPL: Bell X-2

Pioneering the now-standard layout for supersonic fighters, the Bell X-2 was one of the most influential research aircraft of the early Jet Age. Although it now looks like a conventional jet fighter, it was revolutionary at the time, with swept wings and a completely new type of airframe, and was capable of exploring Mach 2–3 for the first time. Designed in the late 1940s alongside the X-1 programme, Bell combined the most advanced US technology with knowledge captured from Nazi Germany to produce aircraft that were far ahead of any others in their field.

In the early 1950s the absence of adequate computers and supersonic wind-tunnel data meant that pilots could only test new technologies the hard way. Both X-2s were destroyed in crashes, killing two test pilots, but the knowledge gained from the program was invaluable in developing aircraft that could safely fly in the Mach 2–3 range. Every high-speed aircraft from the 1950s onwards, from Concorde to the SR-71 Blackbird to the hypersonic X-15, relied on data originally gained by the X-2 and its brave test pilots.



Four new additions to your 2017 wishlist? Let us know in the comments section below.

Link: https://ospreypublishing.com/blog/cat/military-history/post/OspreyBigReveal_XPL
 
Out now!!!

Very good book with some very rare and never seen photos!
fe:
 

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Just got it yesterday: nice pictures (some known, many unknown) but as often with Osprey, quite small. Even the blueprints are tinier than 1/144 scale in some cases.
Nice artwork too (but it perpetuates the use of RV bands well after they fell out of favour)

JCC
 
JC Carbonel said:
Just got it yesterday: nice pictures (some known, many unknown) but as often with Osprey, quite small. Even the blueprints are tinier than 1/144 scale in some cases.
Nice artwork too (but it perpetuates the use of RV bands well after they fell out of favour)

JCC

Not many unknown, to be fair. And these aren't the only problems with it... ;)
 
My issue with the Osprey books in general is too much space given to (now computer-generated) artwork at the expense of original photos and drawings.
 
CGI : very true! We have the same problem in France with T'n'T magazine regarding project armour.

JCC
 
Just as info, Osprey X-Planes No.5 and No.6 will be about the TSR2 and the Bell X-2.
Sources found at Amazon.
No.5: http://amzn.eu/cINUSxe
No.6: http://amzn.eu/hAkjmIc
Feel free to start a new topic. :)
 
I love to see colour profiles - they're probably the best bits of this book.
When they first showed the cover (was it last year?) it had Messerschmitt P.1111 and P.1110 in the little list of types on it but disappointingly these were evidently disappeared from the final thing.
I also noticed that they'd erroneously put 'Heinkel P.1087C' rather than 'Heinkel P.1078C' in the list and I figured they were bound to spot it and correct the typo but... it's still on there, at least on my copy.
 

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My copy has been corrected : P.1078C

As I read it I see many other projects mentionned and nothing put into perspective. For example it would be interesting to know why the Focke-Wulf P.VI Flitzer went to the full scale mock-up then disappeared and was superseded by the P.V Huckebein ....

JCC
 
JC Carbonel said:
My copy has been corrected : P.1078C

As I read it I see many other projects mentionned and nothing put into perspective. For example it would be interesting to know why the Focke-Wulf P.VI Flitzer went to the full scale mock-up then disappeared and was superseded by the P.V Huckebein ....

JCC

Manfred Griehl said the same sort of thing in Jet Planes of the Third Reich: The Secret Projects Volume One nearly 20 years ago. Worth comparing the two texts. The 'Flitzer' was first outlined in Baubeschreibung Nr. 272 dated Feb 1, 1944. It seems to have got the 'Flitzer' working title in about May of 1944. There's some evidence that an updated version appeared as Baubeschreibung Nr. 277 before it was finally presented on September 8 as it appeared in Baubreschreibung Nr. 280.
The summary of the Sept 8-10 meeting shows that the 'Flitzer' was a disaster. Its top speed was calculated at 50-100km/h below that of the Heinkel and Messerschmitt designs. The Focke-Wulf internal memos from that period consist of equal parts 'we need to get a design together for the new requirement' (Volksjager) and 'what happened with the Flitzer - why were we so far behind the others?'. After it was pitched again for Volksjager a few days later (and rejected again) the Nr. 280 was dropped. In December Focke-Wulf was pitching its Baubeschreibung Nr. 279 aircraft instead - what became the Ta 183. I'm not making up all the 'Baubeschreibung' stuff btw. That's actually there in the documents (see attached)! In Feb 1945 the Nr. 279 aircraft was joined by the Kurzbeschreibung Nr. 30 aircraft and together they were pitched simply as Focke-Wulf I and Focke-Wulf II. All that business about 'P VI' and 'P V' is just wrong.
 

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fightingirish said:
Just as info, Osprey X-Planes No.5 and No.6 will be about the TSR2 on 2017-10-19 and the Bell X-2 on 2017-11-30.
Sources found at Amazon.
#5: http://amzn.eu/cINUSxe
#6: http://amzn.eu/hAkjmIc
Osprey X-Planes No.7 and No.8 will be about the North American XB-70 Valkyrie on 2018-03-20 and the Bachem Ba 349 Natter on 2018-06-19.
Dates might change, no guarantee. :)
#7: http://a.co/1wzRENm
#8: http://a.co/0pAZlaz
Feel free to start a new topic. :)
 

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