Focke-Wulf Fw 190

By 1938 the Luftwaffe's fighter strength rested entirely on the Messerschmitt Bf 109, and the Reich Air Ministry prudently sought a back-up design. Kurt Tank at Focke-Wulf answered with a fighter built on a wholly different philosophy. Where the Bf 109 was a highly-strung thoroughbred, Tank set out to build a robust 'cavalry horse' — a tough, simple aircraft that could be flown hard from rough fields by ordinary pilots and serviced under field conditions.

His boldest decision was the engine. Against official scepticism Tank chose the big air-cooled BMW 801 radial, accepting its bulky frontal area in return for ruggedness and freedom from vulnerable cooling systems. The prototype first flew on 1 June 1939, and the production aircraft introduced a wide-track inward-retracting undercarriage, heavy armament and an electrically-operated systems suite far in advance of its rivals.

When the Fw 190 entered combat over the Channel in 1941 it came as a brutal shock to the RAF. Here was a German fighter that outclassed the Spitfire Mk.V in almost every respect — faster, more heavily armed, and possessed of a phenomenal roll rate that let it flick out of trouble in a way no Spitfire could follow. For a year, until the Spitfire Mk.IX appeared, it held a clear edge over Fighter Command.

The design's one persistent weakness was falling performance at high altitude, where the BMW radial lost its breath. The cure came in 1944 with the inline-engined D-9 'Dora', which fitted a liquid-cooled Junkers Jumo 213 in a lengthened nose and restored the type's edge in the thin air where the bomber battles were fought. From the Dora flowed the ultimate high-altitude development, Tank's superb Ta 152.

For a year the Fw 190 was the RAF's nightmare precisely because it was a mystery: nothing captured, nothing to test. That ended on 23 June 1942, when Oberleutnant Armin Faber, disoriented after combat over the West Country, mistook the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and landed his intact Fw 190A-3 at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

The windfall was flown against every Allied type within weeks. The trials confirmed the 190's superiority over the Spitfire V — and quantified exactly where the new Spitfire IX, rushed into service that July, could and could not fight it. Rarely has a single navigation error rebalanced an air war so quickly.

The Fw 190 proved one of the most adaptable airframes of the war. The radial-engined A-series matured into a devastating bomber-destroyer, bristling with cannon and, in its armoured Sturmbock form, sheathed in extra plating to ram its way into American formations. The F and G sub-types were dedicated ground-attack and fighter-bomber machines, carrying bombs, rockets and anti-tank weapons.

Around 20,000 were built in fighter and attack versions combined, making it one of the most numerous German aircraft of the war. The line culminated in the long-winged, pressurised Ta 152H, among the finest piston fighters ever flown — fast and superb at extreme altitude, but built in mere handfuls far too late to matter.

In the West the Fw 190 first made its name against the RAF over the Channel, out-fighting the Spitfire V and striking the English coast as a fast, low-level “tip-and-run” raider that was gone before the defences could react. As the American daylight bombing offensive grew, it became the Luftwaffe’s principal bomber-destroyer.

The most violent of these actions were the charges of the armoured Sturmgruppen — Fw 190A “Sturmbock” fighters sheathed in extra plating and armed with heavy 30 mm MK 108 cannon, closing to point-blank range and, if need be, ramming to break up the B-17 combat boxes. It was a brutal, costly way to fight, and it reflected how desperate the daylight battle over the Reich had become by 1944.

On the Eastern Front the Fw 190 found its other great career. The F and G variants became the Luftwaffe's principal close-support aircraft, blunting Soviet armour and infantry in their thousands, while the fighter versions gave the Jagdwaffe some of its highest-scoring aces — among them Otto Kittel, who claimed 267 victories, most of them in the Fw 190, before his death in action in February 1945.

But numbers told against it in the end. By 1945 even the magnificent Dora and the handful of Ta 152s flew in a sky owned by the Allies, their pilots hunted on take-off and landing by roving Mustangs and Thunderbolts they could rarely shake. The best German fighter of the late war was being beaten less by better machines than by overwhelming quantity.

Versatile, heavily armed and immensely tough, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was the Bf 109's indispensable partner and, in many respects, its superior. Kurt Tank's insistence on ruggedness and simplicity gave the Luftwaffe a fighter that could serve as interceptor, bomber-destroyer, ground-attack aircraft and night-fighter, from the Atlantic coast to the Russian steppe.

That so adaptable and well-engineered a design could be turned to so many roles is the measure of Tank's achievement. Roughly 20,000 were built, and the type served on every front the Luftwaffe fought — from the day it stunned the RAF in 1941 to the last sorties over the Reich in May 1945.

• Peter Rodeike, Focke-Wulf Jagdflugzeug Fw 190 A, Fw 190 “Dora”, Ta 152 H (Struve).
• William Green, The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (Macdonald).
• John Weal, Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Aces of the Russian Front (Osprey, Aircraft of the Aces).
• Robert Tate, Fw 190 Dora, Vol. 1 (Eagle Editions).