If the “Amerika Bomber” was put into production and became operational how would it have compared to a B29? or even a post war B36? Hypothetically, would it have been able to carry a bomb comparable to little boy or fat man from mainland Europe to New York and return?
Empty weight: 39,500 kg (87,100 lb)
Loaded weight: 53,112 kg (117,092 lb)
Max. takeoff weight: 75,500 kg (166,400 lb)
Empty weight: 74,500 lb (33,800 kg)
Loaded weight: 120,000 lb (54,000 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 133,500 lb (60,560 kg) ; 135,000 lb plus combat load
This does not really need to be debated.
Off to General Questions.
Poorly. The Ju 390 was cobbled together from Ju 290 parts, and the 290 didn’t set the world on fire as a bomber, so to speak, having been cobbled together from an airliner, which rarely works well. The 290 couldn’t handle wartime use and often broke up. Its bastard would probably have done not a lot better. And claims that it could have made a round trip to NYC with fuel and a heavy A-bomb (the Germans were convinced that the bomb needed to be heavier than the Allies did) are pure pipe dreams. As stated in Wikipedia, “Werrell later examined the available data regarding the Ju 390’s range and concluded that although a great circle round trip from France to St. Johns, Newfoundland was possible, adding another 3,830 km (2,380 mi) for a round trip from St. Johns to Long Island made the flight ‘most unlikely,’” and that was regarding a trip without bombs.
The Amerika Bomber projects were complete wastes of resources once the US got in the war and that Hitler persisted in the delusion long after it was clear that Germany could only build a handful of long-range heavy bombers is further proof that he was a kind of ally to the Allied war efforts.
The Ju-390 was never intended as a bomber. It was an ultra long range transport aircraft designed to carry 10,000kg over 8,000km. It should be pointed out that the optimum cruise altitude was just 6,300ft and above 21,000ft the BMW801E’s two stage supercharger kicked in dramatically increasing fuel consumption. The Ju-390 had a very low cruise speed of 237knots. In a steep bank the wing experienced dangerous wing flutter according to test pilot Hans Werner Lerche.
Germany intended the Heinkel He-274 built at Toulouse in France to be the Amerika Bomber according to General Wilhelm Voss.
Actually it was not only intended to be a bomber but a maritime reconnaissance plane as well. The only 2 produced Ju 390s were Ju 390As, the transport variant. The Ju 390B was to be the maritime reconnaissance variant and the Ju 390C the bomber variant. Lack of suitability for a role never stopped the Luftwaffe from trying; the only operational German ‘heavy’ bomber in WW2, the He 177, was badly hampered in that role due to Luftwaffe doctrinal requirements that it be able to dive bomb.
The Ju 390, Ta 400, He 277, He 274, Me 264, FW 300, and Horten H.XVIII were all contenders for the Amerika bomber.
Messerschmitt Me 264 (prototype only) 3,000 kg
Focke-Wulf Fw 300 (proposed only) unknown, The FW 200 could carry 5,400 kg on a short range mission.
Focke-Wulf Ta 400 (proposed only) 10000 kg ??
Junkers Ju 390 (prototype only) 1800 kg??
Heinkel He 277 (prototype only?) 3,000 kg
B-29 =** 9,000 **kg
What made the United States superior to other countries in aircraft? Why did the Russians have to take a B-29 apart and copy it instead of designing their own?
Other nations did fine in everything but the heavy long range bomber dept. They didnt think they needed one, to start.
They have a plan to conquer the world and don’t figure they need a long range bomber?
I dont think they ever really thought/planned about conquering other than Europe.
Japan thought it could beat us by stomping our fleet.
They never sat around drinking beer, and Goring said, “You know, it would be neat if instead of our guys fighting Russians at 100 degrees below zero, we could fly some big bombers over there and bomb the shit out of them”?
Goring thought he could handle that with medium bombers. He did try for some, but it was too little too late. The USA started with it’s program in 1934. There wasnt even a real Luftwaffe in 1934.
And there was constant in fighting over resources between the Army, the SS, the Navy and the Air force.
Yeah, that sort of stuff never happened in our military! 
I’m sure one of the factors that influenced US bomber design was the basic fact that we are oceans away from any enemy. Any bombers we build have to contend with that. Germany didn’t get into the heavy bomber game seriously because they could reach everybody in Europe with what they had.
Yes, good points.
Actually at around exactly that time in 1934 Germany was developed a Ural bomber program exactly for the purpose of bombing Russian factories in the event of a German-Russian War. It was abandoned in 1936 after the death of its main proponent as the Luftwaffe heads felt it was better to impress Hitler by having numerous medium bombers as opposed to using those resources to make a fewer number of heavy bombers.
They didn’t have to, but it’s a lot cheaper.
The B-29 was - by far - the most complex and expensive weapons development project in the history of the world to that point; yes, according to most sources, it was more expensive (in total development and production, not per unit) than the A-bomb itself. It was, quite deliberately, way, way ahead of anything else. The B-29 was requisitioned as an extreme stretch goal; “design and build a bomber than is just super better than anything else.” So Boeing did, but it took a long time and a pile of money.
The other combatants didn’t do this largely because they couldn’t afford to. The British had a massive strategic bomber program but in terms of cost-to-benefit ratio were better off producing Lancasters and Halifaxes by the thousands until Germany was beaten into the ground; spending billions designing and retooling for a way more advanced bomber simply did not make economic sense for them at any point in the conflict. In fact, that’s the reason they kept making the Halifax despite preferring the Lancaster; it was cost effective to keep pumping them out with existing tooling, production methods, and procedures, rather than switching. The Soviets didn’t really need a plane like this during the war, and so later just copied the B-29. Germany, as discussed, took half-assed measures to build large bombers at all.
Here’s a question, I see on numerous websites that discuss the Amerika Bomber program that many of the German examples are far and away better than the B-29 in terms of technical specs and performance. I don’t know if this is just Pro-German propaganda but I find it hard to believe that the often slapped together Amerika Bomber aircraft that only had a few short years in terms of design and production work would out-class a purpose built aircraft developed since 1938 and had the full weight of the American military-industrial complex behind it.
None that I saw that actually reached prototype stage.
Maybe some of the ones in planning looked good on paper. :dubious:
The B29 had this, a 55 litre supercharged monster.
Powerplant: 4 × Wright R-3350 -23 and 23A Duplex-Cyclone turbosupercharged radial engines, 2,200 hp (1,640 kW) each
The Germans were trying to make supercharged engines - BUT the BMW engine for their heavy bomber wasn’t ever production ready, and they were going to use 6 of them still. The B29’s engine had 50% more power and so needed only 4 engines…
What the germans had was the Junkers 213A , which had a similar single-stage two-speed supercharging … but it experienced lengthy delays before finally being declared “production quality” in 1943… which was a bit late for helping the war effort… By that time the factories were being bombed consistently and was never produced in volume, and hence couldn’t help protect the factories…
Basically, no the design they could build in WW-II was inferior, for only two reasons. 1 . Their best supercharged engine was smaller and lesser power…(But similar specs per volume and per weight) and 2. they couldn’t actually built production quantity of the supercharged engines.