I share with you photos of one of the most curious designs of the Luftwaffe during World War II. I'm talking about Junkers Ju-287 and its unusual design. If it had entered into service and built in quantity would have changed the course of the war? What do you think? Visit the link below, you will find it a lot of photos and a full report on this almost unknown aircraft. I hope you enjoy. http://aviacaoemfloripa.blogspot.com.br/2011/01/blog-post.html Best Regards!
It has an unusual aerodynamic design. (Nice collection of photos by the way) Luftwaffe had a lot of promising designs that never came to full production because of the ending of the wars, but to predict Ju-287's impact on the war we'll need a bit more than photos. Such as the estimated speed of flight and agility, weight carriage capacity, mounted weapons, etc. I am no aeronautics/weapons expert to discern those from photos alone, so I googled it: In wikipedia it says the the swept-forward wing was used to add extra lift at low airspeeds due to the low response of the turbines at takeoff and landing. Flight tests showed very good handling characteristics too. So my immediate thought is this: while the wing design is a genious way of countering those flight problems, it just goes to show how desperate the engineers of Luftwaffe were to make these aircrafts flyable and war-capable. See they didn't try to tamper with the turbine, instead they focused on a lower-hanging fruit that could be applied much more easily (after all these prototypes were made with scraps from other aircrafts) rather than making a new turbine from scratch. However it wouldn't be enough to turn the tables at that stage of the war. Hitler had already lost too many battles at that time and was on the defense (if I'm not mistaken), so even a full scale production of these aircrafts would only take him just as far as bombing his enemies' capitals in retaliation. A move that could have even worse consequences for Germany if we consider that the US had a functional atomic bomb at that time.
