Bomber B
| Bomber B project | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| The Junkers Ju 288 V2 (Second prototype Ju 288) | |
| Project for | Second-generation high-speed bomber |
| Issued by | Reich Air Ministry |
| Service | Luftwaffe |
| Proposals | Arado, Dornier, Focke-Wulf and Junkers, Henschel |
| Prototypes |
Dornier Do 317 Focke-Wulf Fw 191 Henschel Hs 130 Junkers Ju 288. |
| Predecessor programs | Schnellbomber |
Bomber B was a German military aircraft design competition organised just before the start of World War II to develop a second-generation high-speed bomber for the Luftwaffe. The new designs would be a direct successor to the Schnellbomber philosophy of the Dornier Do 17 and Junkers Ju 88, relying on high speed as its primary defence. But the Bomber B would also be a much larger and more capable platform, with range and payload figures far greater than the Schnellbombers, besting even the largest conventional designs then under consideration. The winning design was intended to form the backbone of the Luftwaffe bomber force, replacing the wide collection of semi-specialized designs then in service. The Reich Air Ministry was so hopeful about the outcome that more modest projects were generally cancelled outright, so when the project eventually failed to deliver a working design the Luftwaffe was left with hopelessly outdated aircraft.
By the late 1930s, airframe construction methods had progressed to the point where airframes could be built to any required size, founded on the all-metal airframe design technologies pioneered by Hugo Junkers in 1915 and constantly improved upon for over two decades to follow – especially in Germany with aircraft like the Dornier Do X flying boat and the Junkers G 38 airliner, and the Soviet Union with the enormous Maksim Gorki, the largest aircraft built anywhere in the 1930s.
However, powering such designs was a major challenge. Mid-1930s aero engines were limited to about 600 hp and the first 1000 hp engines were just entering the prototype stage – notably the Rolls-Royce Merlin and Daimler-Benz DB 601. But even the latest engines were limited in the sort of designs they could power; a twin-engine aircraft would have about 1,500 kW (2,000 hp) in total, the same power as a mid-war single engined fighter aircraft like the Hawker Typhoon or Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Although using a larger number of engines was possible, and achieved in some airframe examples for both the United Kingdom and the Third Reich, the production capacity of both nations was considered too small to equip a fleet of such designs. The United States, confident in its ability to produce aviation engines in any needed quantity, opted for four-engine designs with heavy defensive firepower, as seen in the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
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Wikipedia