Focke-Wulf 200 Condor | When Airliners Go To War

the fokkerwolf 200 condor had a history that was as varied as it was filled with misfortune the interwar years saw the rapid development of commercial aviation from the flimsy wooden fabric and highly flammable biplanes of the 1910s and 20s into the sleek all-metal and slightly less flammable monoplanes that would have become associated with the golden age of aviation several pioneering long-distance flights had proven to the world that long-distance commercial air travel was the future initially these long-distance flights were mostly done by seaplanes as the long stops along the way often lacked the appropriate landing facilities required and landing heavy complicated machines carrying fuel and people on rough uneven terrain often produced undesirable results but by the mid-1930s the trend had begun to shift however in a seaplane-dominated industry it was still considered an unusual concept when kurt tank of fokkerwolf proposed a land plane to deutsche lehanza an all-metal four-engined monoplane capable of carrying passengers across the atlantic ocean much like the geopolitical spheres of the world in the mid to late 1930s the development and service life of the condor got very messy very quickly the first prototype designated v1 took to the skies just one year after development began on the 27th of july 1937. production began in 1938 with the fogger wolf 200a they would then follow up with the more powerful heavier fockerwolf 200b and the 200d that had even more fuel for longer commercial flights to make long distance flights economically viable in terms of fuel consumption the condor was designed to cruise at an altitude of around 10 000 feet or as high as comfortably possible for passengers without the need of a pressurized cabin this cruising altitude required the aircraft to have a very long wingspan at least comparatively for the time which earned it the nickname condor these characteristics had the side effect of making the condor a commercial aircraft rather attractive for military use as well despite being known for their use in germany and their military used in the luftwaffe it was actually imperial japan that first considered the condor for military applications in 1937 the first prototype had flown from berlin to tokyo to demonstrate the long-distance capabilities of the new airliner and to continue the trend of metaphorical bridge building between the two nations the air crew themselves having the honour of being received by emperor harihito upon their arrival to japan along with japan ordering commercial versions of the aircraft a request was made by the imperial japanese navy for a military version of the condor as they needed a long-range high-altitude aircraft for maritime search and patrol duties and it made more sense to order a ready-made designed by a friendly nation than to spend precious time and resources developing your own unfortunately for the japanese navy they would never receive their condors the same prototype that had flown from berlin to tokyo was on its long way home and on approach to a stopover in manila when all four of its engines decided to stop working the condor was designed to fly on just two engines in an emergency but being relegated to an oversized glider had never been part of the design plan and the aircraft briefly attempted and failed to become a seaplane whilst conflicting stories for the cause of the accident were a cause for concern one source claiming a fuel pump failure another that a fuel line had broken and a third saying that the crew had selected the wrong tanks the main reason for japan not getting its condoles was in fact the outbreak of the second world war for japan kurt tank had modified a fokkerwolf 200b1 to create the new 200 v10 prototype with more fuel which added weight three machine guns which added weight a short ventral gondola with four and armed gunning positions which added weight and a lot of additional equipment which surprisingly added weight this is something that would come back to haunt fockewolf rather quickly however at the beginning of the war only two condors were in service with the german military and both of them were as transports one being hitler's own feuda machine however by the time of the norwegian campaign there was a pressing need for a long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft that had to be addressed it was not so much the fact that the luftwaffe had not foreseen this need but that the one aircraft the heinkel 177 which was being developed for this role was so far behind schedule that it would not be entering service until 1942. the fokkerwolf 200 was the only aircraft that could be adapted in the short term for this role and the luftwaffe instructed fuckerwolf to develop the fockerwolf 200 v10 prototype into a more robust aircraft with a bomb carrying capacity the result was the fockerwolf 200c series now of the 10 planes in the initial pre-production match the first four were delivered as transport aircraft and the rest were armed these pre-production units were delivered to the newly formed campgrada 40 in denmark before the end of the norwegian campaign things quickly moved on to the c1 which had the ventral gondola lengthened and added a narrow bombay to the airframe it also had increased the defensive armament totaling four mg-15 machine guns mounted in various points and a forward-firing 20 millimeter cannon in the gondola all of this added even more weight to the condor despite adding structural reinforcements hastily converting commercial aircraft for military use was bound to cause some problems and the condor developed the unhappy reputation of wanting to break its back every time it landed eight of the c1 variants would be lost to this problem alone making it rather unpopular amongst the leftwaffle ground crews despite that rather worrying structural issue the condor started to make a name for itself in military operations in support of the creeks marina over the north sea and the atlantic ocean where to its credit it did rather well one of the more publicized achievements of kg40 was the attack by oba lieutenant bernard jobe on the 42 000 ton liner empress of britain off the north coast of ireland on october 26 1940 which left the large ship crippled she was then promptly torpedoed and sunk by a u-boat job was awarded the night's cross and later on he would go on to command kg-40 and receive the oak leaves as a major from the middle of june 1940 to the first months of 1941 the condors were reported to have sunk over 330 tons of shipping prompting winston churchill to call them the scourge of the atlantic that being said the sinking of most of that shipping was only made possible by flying the bomber at dangerously low altitudes so that the bombs were almost guaranteed to hit as the condor's low altitude bomb site was considered to be relatively primitive in mid-1941 a change of tactics occurred the heavy shipping losses prompted the british to develop the catapult aircraft merchant ship as a way to improve their defenses against the combined condor u-boat menace on the 20th of september 1941 a condor was lost when attacked a convoy escorted by hms audacity the first escort carrier during the second voyage of the aircraft four condors were shot down although the audacity was primitive and soon sunk by u-751 it announced the beginning of the end for this particular reign of terror incurred by the condors the vulnerable condor was increasingly confronted by enemy fighters launched from either catapult equipped merchant ships or escort carriers and the fockerwolf 200 crews were now instructed not to attack and to evade all combat unless unavoidable they would then be used to report allied shipping movements instead the plan being they would guide the u-boats in towards the convoys they shadowed using a transmission of direct finding signals but they would not directly communicate with the submarines themselves to improve its anti-shipping effectiveness the fokkerwolf 200c4 was equipped with anti-shipping radars though advanced and highly praised these modifications added even more weight to an already stressed and overloaded airframe the c4 had a top speed of only 330 kilometers an hour at cruising altitude and it was even slower at sea level it was a fatally slow pace making the condor easy targets for ship-launched hurricanes if set upon the crew of the bomber had to completely rely on their defenses as even moderate defensive maneuvers would cause the aircraft to rapidly disassemble and it still had a habit of breaking up on landing by the time even more improved models entered service in late 1941 they faced greatly improved convoy defenses boasting ship-launched aircraft and armed patrol aircraft such as sunderlands and liberators survivability fell and over the next year the aircraft were called away to other theaters mostly for transport and supply missions however there was one incident where a pair of condors found themselves engaged in a dogfight against a b-24 liberator admittedly it wasn't the most graceful dog fight of the war with one condor sent into the sea the liberator performing an aquatic force landing and then the second condor crashing amongst some hedges later on in bordeaux but it was a dogfight nonetheless and would have been quite the site from the deck of hms highlander which had observed the engagement in 1943 two condors were used as transports on the eastern front flying supplies into the stalingrad pockets losses from all causes continued to limit the number of condors available for general operations the aircraft simply not being adequately robust for operational load carrying and maneuvers more than 20 aircraft were to be lost as the result of wing spa failures alone such a loss was not insignificant in the total production run of about 250 aircraft by this point in the war the condor was being replaced in the maritime patrol role by the ju-290 but they were still being employed for anti-shipping strikes in 1943 kg40 began a new phase of attacks on convoys particularly those sailing from gibraltar to britain this is where the c4 variant with its anti-shipping radars saw the most use however as the crews were under strict orders not to attack the convoys from below 10 thousand feet so as to avoid losses from uh anti-air gunnery scarcely any worthwhile results were achieved due to the poor accuracy of bombing from this altitude before the end of 1943 kg40 started to receive the new fockerwolf 200c8 which made use of germany's new anti-shipping missile the henshill 293 but on their first operational sortie the condor had a run-in with a raf sunderland and was shot down further missions followed but with minimal success and with the loss of their airfields following the normandy invasion the condors were pulled back to germany they would continue to serve until the end of the war however only as personal transports and supply aircraft [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Rex's Hangar

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Keywords: fw 200, world war ii, focke wulf, history, aviation, focke-wulf, fw 200 condor, war thunder, focke-wulf condor, he 177, maritime patrol, luftwaffe, germany, britain, battle of the atlantic, Atlantic convoy, naval radar, ww2 navy, reconnaissance aircraft, heinkel, CAM ship, bordeaux, airliner, scourge, atlantic, condor, naval warfare

Id: WuMwyqfXciE

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021