AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 70 / 159

Plate 70 of 159 · Second World War · Monoplane fighter

Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-8

Fw 190 A-8/R6, painted as Werknummer 733682, the RAF Museum’s Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-8/R6, built as an A-8 fighter, converted to carry underwing rocket tubes and later fitted as the upper component of a Mistel composite, captured in Denmark in May 1945 and brought to Britain as Air Ministry AM75, shown at the Imperial War Museum in London for many years and at Cosford since 2013: a single-seat fighter of 34 ft 5 in span with a BMW 801 fourteen-cylinder radial in a close-fitting cowling with a cooling fan behind the spinner, two 13 mm MG 131 machine guns over the engine and four 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon in the wings, a blown canopy and wide-track main wheels that retract inwards, shown standing tail-down with the hood closed: the day-fighter scheme researched for it at Duxford in 1986, RLM 74 grey-green on the spine and upper cowling, RLM 76 light blue sides and undersides with olive and grey-violet mottling, a 74/75 splinter on the wings and tailplane, black and white crosses, a black swastika edged white on the fin, no codes, a half-white, half-black spinner, a black ETC 501 rack beneath the fuselage and a black-green three-blade propeller.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Werknummer 733682, the RAF Museum’s Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-8/R6, built as an A-8 fighter, converted to carry underwing rocket tubes and later fitted as the upper component of a Mistel composite, captured in Denmark in May 1945 and brought to Britain as Air Ministry AM75, shown at the Imperial War Museum in London for many years and at Cosford since 2013: a single-seat fighter of 34 ft 5 in span with a BMW 801 fourteen-cylinder radial in a close-fitting cowling with a cooling fan behind the spinner, two 13 mm MG 131 machine guns over the engine and four 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon in the wings, a blown canopy and wide-track main wheels that retract inwards, shown standing tail-down with the hood closed: the day-fighter scheme researched for it at Duxford in 1986, RLM 74 grey-green on the spine and upper cowling, RLM 76 light blue sides and undersides with olive and grey-violet mottling, a 74/75 splinter on the wings and tailplane, black and white crosses, a black swastika edged white on the fin, no codes, a half-white, half-black spinner, a black ETC 501 rack beneath the fuselage and a black-green three-blade propeller. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.3 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (A-8); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Fw 190 A-8/R6 modelled here.

History

The Fw 190

Kurt Tank’s design office at Focke-Wulf in Bremen proposed the Fw 190 in 1937 as a second fighter to serve alongside the Messerschmitt Bf 109. Where most new fighters of the day had slim liquid-cooled engines, Tank chose an air-cooled radial, which was less vulnerable to battle damage and did not compete with the bombers for Daimler-Benz engines. He gave it a wide-track undercarriage that folded inwards, a roomy cockpit under a clear blown canopy, and controls worked by rods rather than cables, which made it light to handle. The first prototype, with a BMW 139 engine under a ducted spinner, flew at Bremen on 1 June 1939; production aircraft had the larger BMW 801, cooled by a fan geared to run behind the propeller.

Jagdgeschwader 26 took the Fw 190A into action over the Channel coast in the autumn of 1941, and it came as a shock to Fighter Command. It was faster than the Spitfire V at most heights, rolled much more quickly and climbed and dived better, and losses rose sharply until the Spitfire IX, with a two-stage supercharged Merlin, reached squadrons in July 1942. The Fw 190 went on to fight on every front: as a fighter, as a fighter-bomber raiding the south coast of England, and on the Eastern Front as a ground-attack aircraft in place of the Ju 87.

The A-8, introduced early in 1944, was the most numerous version. It moved a fuel tank to make room for the MW 50 water-methanol boost system, which lengthened the nose slightly, and carried two 13 mm machine guns over the engine and four 20 mm cannon in the wings. Heavily armoured A-8s flew against the American bomber streams in 1944, and some carried rocket tubes under the wings to break up the formations. The long-nosed Fw 190D-9, with a Junkers Jumo inline engine, followed in late 1944, and about 20,000 Fw 190s of all versions were built.

This airframe

Fw 190 A-8/R6 Werknummer 733682

Werknummer 733682The airframe modelled

Werknummer 733682 was built as an A-8 fighter and converted to carry rocket tubes beneath its wings, and it is thought to have been modified later as the upper half of a Mistel, a fighter mounted on top of a pilotless bomber packed with explosives. It was captured in Denmark in May 1945 and brought to Britain, where it was given the Air Ministry number AM75. In 1986, on loan to Duxford, it was painted in a researched day-fighter scheme, and it was displayed for many years at the Imperial War Museum in London before moving to the RAF Museum at Cosford, where it went back on display in 2013. The model shows it as it is displayed there: grey-green on the spine and upper cowling, light blue sides and undersides with olive and grey-violet mottling, a grey splinter pattern on the wings and tailplane, black and white crosses, a black swastika edged white on the fin, no unit codes, a spinner half white and half black, a black bomb rack beneath the fuselage and the hood closed. The rocket tubes are not displayed and are left off, and the splinter pattern on the upper wings, which no photograph shows clearly, is the least certain part of the scheme.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum Midlands

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Fw 190 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 159 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.