Quote:
Originally Posted by Crumpp
They were looking for a counter to the B-29 being able to bomb at 30,000 feet and above.
The Germans had no ability to intercept anything at that altitude. The FW-190V18 was one of the designs examined and tested. The result was the Ta-152 series had better performance at altitude and the program was scrapped.
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Thanks for the answer Crumpp,
In fact I was very surprised to see a German aircraft with a 4 blades propeller (which is very uncommon, the only other i know is He177 Greif bomber) , so i thought (in my noob mind) this solution would somehow be related to very high altitude flight (after all P47 used 4 blades prop and was designed as a high altitude aircraft, and when the P51 became one too, it switched its three blades for four). To sum up i thought the 4 blades were somehow related to very high altitude rather than to power dive performance. But it was just a noob question
: anyway i recognize that i don't know anything about aircraft enginneering! Just trying to try to understand "in broad strokes"...
As for what you said about 4 blades propeller and cowling/wingroot weapons firing through the prop disc, although very rare, there were some aircraft with this configuration:
P39-Airacobra late 4 blades prop and P-63 Kingcobra, 2x50. cal (cowling) firing though the prop disc ;
Nakajima Hayate Ia, 4 blades prop and 2xHo103 MGs (cowling) firing through, and on later Ib version 2xHo5 20mm canon (cowling).
I've found any with as much guns (4) as the Fw190 though, perhaps four blades would have killed the high firing rate of these guns?