hello and welcome to World of War Birds I'm Brian Pierce hello war birders and welcome to this second video in this series on America bombers which were the aircraft that Nazi Germany intended to use to hit Targets in North America introduction unlike the allies Nazi Germany never had a firm strategic bombing policy plus the concept of Blitz Grigg with which they started the war actually ran counter to the idea of industrial bombing if you could knock out your enemies in a series of lightning quick campaigns then there was no need for a long-term program to degrade and destroy the enemy's industry nevertheless ideas were on wish lists and drawing boards from quite early on for long long range bombers capable of hitting targets far away in Russia and hopefully even America if need be one aircraft that was on the drawing board was the mhash Schmid m264 which is often compared with the US boeings b29 and is sometimes called the Luft vfas super Fortress let's look at its story it did not help for the development of any of these aircraft that neither the the lvfa nor the rlm the German Ministry of Aviation really had an advocate for this type of strategy or this type of airplane the only real bomber Zealot that they ever had was General Walter VAV who was a World War One veteran and supporter of the Strategic bomber and was pushing for them as early as 1934 initially it was for the Euro bomber that he was seeking figuring correctly in the end that in any war against against Russia the Soviets would pull back their industry and that the Luft vafa should have a way to hit it prototypes of the Euro bombers were ordered such as the dorier do9 and the yunker ju 89 these were not particularly successful I suppose that they could have been improved if there had been a competent and enthusiastic Shepherd guiding them through the Wilderness General Walter vaver would have been the shepherd but he couldn't because he died in an air crash in 1936 other rlm and lvfa leaders who were more interested in numbers of aircraft rather than size of aircraft quietly cancelled the project one man who was an advocate was Willie mmid he wanted to build and sell these longrange bombers to the luthfa the response was mainly lukewarm throughout the early War years although in March 1941 the the rlm issued orders for new longrange bombers and authorized the immediate construction of six pre-production test aircraft things accelerated after Pearl Harbor and the entry of the US into the war now there was a bit of a scramble and in the spring of 1942 the America bomber program was formally introduced the goal was for a long range strategic bomber for the lvfa with a range of at least 7,200 miles so that it could attack the United States Mesa Schmidt pushed ahead on its work on the m264 which was already one of the more developed options design and development in order to reduce drag as much as possible on the 264 the airframe was very smooth and clean with a circular cross-section the pilots occupied a cabin in a fully glazed nose which was known as a stepless cockpit think of the b29 or the Millennium Falcon behind the cockpit was a rest area for the crew complete with bunk beds and a galley with a hot plate for cooking which were included as a measure of comfort for the extremely long range flights that the aircraft would be undertaking the massive wings were shoulder mounted with a span of 141 ft and contained the four engines installed mid cord the wings held nine fuel tanks each the wing had a slightly swept Leading Edge and a straight trailing Edge again for drag reduction of course the landing gear was retractable but it was also of the tricycle configuration which was more rare at the time like the B24 Liberator or b29 super Fortress the aage had double tail fins the power plants initially selected were four yunker yumo 2 11 inverted V12 engines which produced 1,340 horsepower each it was time to start building prototypes prototypes the first prototype took to the air on the 23rd of December 1942 and there were problems the bomber was found to be underpowered even though it was not yet being asked to carry any offensive or defensive weapons or even any armor the wings were found to be too small with a wing area of 1,375 Ft in comparison the b29 wing area was 1,736 Square ft these smaller Wings caused the 264 to have poor climb performance poor maneuverability and stability and the takeoff and Landing speeds had to be overly High one change that was made was swapping in BMW 801g radials which delivered 1,700 50 horsepower each this was better but still not enough though in comparison the b29 for right R 3350 is produced 2200 horsepower and even they were on the edge of not being powerful enough for the big bomber in fact early on in the 264 development General erhart milch the Inspector General of the lvfa had concluded that the m264 would not be suitable as a bomber for attacking the United States it also didn't help that General milch did not like Willie mmid at all but the project was grudgingly retained for two reasons one it would serve as an important intermediate step towards a future six engine variant that would be more suitable think of the US b36 two the m264 could still be used as a long range Naval reconnaissance aircraft to work with uots attacking the Allied convoys in the midatlantic you know like the fw200 Condor had been doing two more prototypes followed the me 264 version 2 included armor for the engines crew and gun locations but no actual defensive Armament was installed and it was missing vital equipment that would be required for actual operations the version three was to be fully armed and ready for operations and production but the test program wasn't going all smoothly one test flight ended up running off the end of the runway and stopping in a plowed field when the brakes gave out another time the left gear failed on Landing causing a 180° belly ground Loop in fact the future of the program wasn't going smoothly at all in June 1943 General milch was having doubts he wondered whether Germany actually had the industrial capacity to produce the m264 in any numbers he Fred about the m264 cabin heating system and he stressed that more effort should be focused on other designs namely the [ __ ] of wolf 6 engine ta400 and the existing ju 290 and H 177 designs notice that mesha Schmid was not included in this list and was being pushed out did I mention before that General milch didn't get along well with Willie mmid so milch probably gleefully announced the cancellation of production plans for the me 264 he then had to walk this back on July 4 1943 following a meeting between Hitler and Admiral Donuts when the furer had promised the Admiral that there would soon be reconnaissance m264 coming down the pipe to help out with his ubot but in reality mmid was being overstretched by producing existing models and coming up with new aircraft such as the me262 jet late in 1943 the writing was on the wall for the me 264 Admiral Donuts and the cggs Marine turned their back on the 264 in favor of the ju 290 and the Planned ju 390 the Luft vafa switched their interest to the Future ta400 and the henle h G 277 for the America bomber candidates in May 1943 it seemed that nobody wanted to dance with the m264 anymore to add injury to these insults late in 1943 the second prototype m264 was destroyed in an Allied bombing attack the first prototype was damaged by a US aaf Air rate on the 18th of March 1944 and flight testing only resumed on the 16th of April following repairs it then entered service with transport staffle 5 hm maybe things are finally looking up for the me 264 no not really 2 months later in July 1944 the first prototype was damaged during an Allied bombing raid and was never repaired the third prototype which wasn't even finished was destroyed during the same raid it was the end of the road for the 264 so next time on World of warb birds I already mentioned that the m264 had been spurned by the Luft vafa for the faka wolf ta400 so who was this pretty girl to dance in which everyone had become so interested we'll look at her next time if the episode is not out just yet be sure to subscribe to not miss a thing if you enjoy learning about these weird and wonderful warbirds then show your love by hitting me with a super thanks a like or join me on P patreon check out the dozens of other videos and the hours and hours of audio content in the extensive back catalog of podcast episodes until next time
