Focke-Wulf Fw 190D Dora
The Focke-Wulf Fw 190D, nicknamed the Dora, was the long-nose, high-altitude development of the Fw 190 fighter, created by replacing the radial engine with a liquid-cooled Junkers Jumo 213. German pilots rated it the finest piston-engined fighter in Luftwaffe service and more than a match for the P-51D, but it entered service only in the autumn of 1944, and between 650 and 700 were completed. Four D-model aircraft survive, all of them in the United States.
Why It Mattered
The Fw 190 D was built to cure the Fw 190 A's standing weakness: the radial-engined fighter's performance fell away at the high altitudes where Allied bomber formations and their escorts operated. Focke-Wulf replaced the BMW radial with a liquid-cooled Junkers Jumo 213, producing a longer-nosed fighter much superior to the A-8 in climb, dive and level speed, which German pilots considered more than a match for the P-51D Mustang. Many of them rated the D the finest piston-engined fighter in Luftwaffe service. But the Dora reached squadrons only in the autumn of 1944, as the wider war was being lost, and between 650 and 700 had been completed when production ceased in 1945.
Design Notes
The D was a re-engined and re-engineered development of the Fw 190 A, not a new design. Its Jumo 213A was a 12-cylinder liquid-cooled engine previously used only in bombers, rated at 1,776 hp and boosted to 2,240 hp by water-methanol injection. Its radiator was annular, a ring mounted just behind the propeller spinner. The D's nose was longer than the A's and its tail was redesigned; pilots on both sides dubbed it the "long-nose". Armament was two 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon in the wings and two 13 mm MG 131s over the engine; some D-9s carried bombs, and radar-equipped versions served as night fighters. Kurt Tank, the type's designer, regarded the D as an interim design pending the Ta 152, and the D-9 became the basis for that follow-on aircraft.
Operational History
Prototype testing began in March 1942, and small batches of preproduction D-0 and D-1 fighters were delivered for service evaluation in the spring and summer of 1943. The first production variant was the D-9, its number following the A-8, and construction began in the summer of 1944 at several plants, among them Cottbus and Kassel-Waldau. Service began in October 1944 with III./JG 54, then JG 26 by January 1945, with JG 2 and JG 301 following early in 1945. On II./JG 26's first operational mission with the D-9, the unit shot down four Lancaster bombers and a Mosquito for the loss of one Dora. D-9 groups, JG 2 and JG 26 among them, joined the mass airfield attacks of Operation Bodenplatte on 1 January 1945; JG 2 suffered 40 percent losses, and 250 fighters were lost in all. In practice the D-9 was rarely used against heavy-bomber raids; fighter-versus-fighter combat and ground-attack missions took priority in the war's last months. The collapse came quickly: JG 6 took delivery of 150 D-9s in April 1945, yet by then the bombing had cut fuel so deeply that the unit could put only four aircraft into the air at once.
Afterlife
The type's career briefly outlasted the war: the Soviet Union put a batch of captured D-9s into service with the Baltic Fleet's naval air arm, where they apparently served until 1947 or 1948. Captured Doras were evaluated in the United States, and the Smithsonian's D-9 was flight-tested by the USAAF at Wright Field, with a performance report issued in September 1946. By the Smithsonian's count, four Fw 190 Ds survive, all of them in the United States, among at least eleven Fw 190s held by museums worldwide. The survivors include the only surviving D-13, displayed by the Flying Heritage Collection in Everett, Washington; restored close to flyable condition, it is not flown because of its rarity. The Smithsonian's D-9 has been on loan to the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base since 1975. The Dora also flies on in replica form: the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach operates modern Flug Werk-built replicas in regular flying demonstrations, one of them configured as a long-nosed D-9.