Board index Other Hangar talk Real aviation

The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor

The "real" thing.
Forum rules
Please refrain from discussing politics.

Re: The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor

Postby Jabberwocky » Mon Jun 15, 2015 2:30 pm

The Catalinas and Sunderlands were mostly submarine hunters operating out of English bases. I never heard, they were actually started from carriers or catapults. They also escorted polar sea convoys for parts of the way. Lesser known, Catalinas were also used early in war in the pacific for night raids into Japanese held waters because the Catalinas and the B-17s were the only available planes with long enough range and there were at this point more Catalinas than B-17s available.
Most of the losses of Catalinas and Sunderlands in the European theatre were caused by submarine AA and the mass of them beginning from late 1942 on when some submarines had upgraded AA. Allegedly, but that is hard to corroborate, there were also Catalina losses when the Norwegian 3rd Squadron, operating them out of Woodhaven, used them to bring agents into the occupied Norway.
So unless the Catalinas came very near to German occupied land, there was not much chance of meeting any German fighter or fighter bomber. The Bf-109 had about 80 minutes air endurance which didn't allow her to go out to where the Catalinas and Sunderlands patrolled, the Fw-190 had the same problem and the Bf-110 had more range but still not enough and she was pulled relative early and made a night fighter. So I doubt, there were actually a lot of confrontations between Sunderlands and Catalinas against any German fighter.
What sometimes ran into a Sunderland early in the war were AR-196, hardly a fighter. The Arado was used as plane on bigger naval units and the raiders. She was usually unarmed, but in some cases, she was equipped with a single machine gun used by the observer, means pointing backwards. So, no fighter at all ...
The "Flying Porcupine" and not "The Flying Hedgehog" was actually a propaganda name for the Sunderland, not the Catalina and it was not even a nickname the Germans gave it to her but British writers ... coincidentally after 1948 when the British tried to sell their overnumber of Sunderlands to other countries with the hint "The Germans called her blah blah blah because she can take so much". Later writers just copied this little sales trick without knowing where it came from. But as with the Catalina, the Sunderland didn't operate in areas where she actually could run into German fighters. What happened was one incident on June 2nd, 1942 when a Sunderland of Squadron 461 ran into 8 Ju-88 and won the "dog fight". Well, not that the Sunderland had an option, she was slower than the later models of the Ju-88. But the -88 was a bomber. She had as machine guns usually only caliber 7.92 (MG81), enough to scare a fighter, but surely not enough to do too much harm to anything bigger. So, what happened was definitively not a "dog fight", more of an "elephant fight". Bottom line: Sunderlands and Catalinas were both amazing planes and they were tough. But they didn't run into fighters. Their operational areas were just too far apart from each other.
Jabberwocky
Retired
 
Posts: 1316
Joined: Sat Mar 22, 2014 8:36 pm
Callsign: JWOCKY
Version: 3.0.0
OS: Ubuntu 14.04

Re: The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor

Postby MIG29pilot » Mon Jun 15, 2015 3:44 pm

Occasionally those planes did run into each other; There was one incident in which a RAF Coastal Command Hudson shot down a Condor. They thought it was a wellington at first.
By the way, did you ever hear about major Mad Jack Cram, who turned a Catalina into a torpedo bomber (temporarily)?
User avatar
MIG29pilot
 
Posts: 1465
Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 5:03 pm
Location: 6 feet under Snow
Callsign: MIG29pilot
Version: 2020.1.3
OS: Windows 10

Previous

Return to Real aviation

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests