what… yet another Fw-190??

I know, I know… SP is rife with 190’s, so why bother building yet another one? Well, because it’s tricky to build and because SP’s new features invited me to cook up a detailed one. Not a perfect replica of course, but resembling the Fw closely enough to look somewhat convincing. Although I should leave that up to the SP community to decide, of course.

The “Würger” – a brief history

Many books were written about the 190; I’m not going to copy them all here –suffice it to say that the Fw-190 was an iconic plane, and we’ll make do with a short history.

The development of the FW-190 began with a contract in 1937 from the RLM (“Reichsluftfahrtministerium”) for a new single-seat fighter. The new plane was designed by Kurt Tank, a German aeronautical engineer and test pilot, and chief engineer in Focke-Wulf’s design department. The Fw-190 had excellent handling characteristics, but its BMW radial engine initially caused the test pilots nothing but misery; they hardly dared to leave the immediate vicinity of the airfield, since something was always bound to go wrong with the engine. All problems were eventually overcome of course, and the plane was cleared for service in ’41.

The final result? One of the best fighter planes of WW2. The Focke-Wulf was not only faster than many of its contemporaries, but also had superior handling and a faster roll rate. It was armed to the teeth with both machine guns and autocannons, and could easily be modified to comfortably carry an array of weapons such as bombs, rockets, or cannon pods with additional 20 or 30 mm cannons.

Despite their relatively short Luftwaffe-career, the Fw-190 left an undeniable impression -Chuck Yeager once commented that the 190 was the only axis plane to match the P-51D Mustang.

The build

The version presented is a run-of-the-mill Fw-190A-8, arguably the most produced or at least the most common variant. I tried to capture the plane’s design as best as possible, unfortunately having to omit some design features for the sake of smoothness and part count (already ridiculous as it is) to end up with, well, this.

As for the livery: some of you may have noticed I’m not a fan of flashy colors and contrasts; war machines –after WW1, that is- usually look rather drab and gloomy. The build gives a decent impression of Fw-190 “Schwarze 7” of JG3 “Udet”, with the typical all-black cowling and overall lack of color except for some RLM-standard camo.

Flying it

I’m quite sure the flight model isn’t that of a real Fw-190A-8; after all, the only thing to go on are specs, which seem to vary depending on the source. And of course I’m not trying to make a perfect Fw-190 replica… I do love an element of arcade gameplay, keeping things simple & fun. It’s a matter of taste, but I find overly detailed flight simulators rather boring and prefer not to spend time on preflight checks, lengthy start procedures with a myriad of buttons to be pushed in some exact sequence etc since none of this has added value for the really fun part –which is the flying & fighting. And so, I kept the “realism” down to a certain minimum. For instance, the Fw-190 was reported to be “rather squirrely” on the ground, and that’s not much to go on, of course… but I translated it to a build that suffers from a hint of engine torque, needs some pedal-tapping to avoid ground loops on takeoff and landing, and has absolutely zero visibility when taxiing -although I did build in the option to “lean out of the cockpit” slightly, which improves the view a bit, but not much. Anecdote: for e.g. parking the planes, Fw-109 pilots had a guy from the ground crew lying down on one of the wings, shouting directions to the pilot.
The plane has a rather snappy roll rate and the possibility for up to 7G twists and turns. SP doesn’t allow for niceties such as the general condition of the pilot and if/how long he would be able to take the punishment; as is the case with quite a few planes of the era, the Fw-190 itself can probably handle more than the guy in the cockpit, and the pilot would black out long before ripping off the wings.

In short: the plane should handle nicely, although it’s probably not much fun to fly using a keyboard. Use half flaps on takeoff, twitch the rudder to keep going straight. For landing, use full flaps and throttle down to some 30-35% and you’ll be fine. Once landed, don’t just hit the brakes but tap ‘em slightly as needed. In reality, the Fw-190 had very good brakes indeed; slamming those and locking up the wheels would probably not be something you want to do… I’m quite positive they didn’t have ABS and traction control in the 40’s :p

Controls

The plane has a full cockpit, with most of the elements from a real Fw-190 present -most, not all, since that would clutter the dash. After all, not everything can be functional; a number of gauges are just for show (anything related to e.g. oil temperature/pressure, oxygen flow to the pilot’s mask etc) and we certainly don’t want to be pushing buttons, flicking switches and replacing fuses during the flight.

Controls are mostly standard -meaning there’s roll, pitch and yaw; the trim slider is for pitch trim only (no need for roll and/or rudder trim), VTOL down operates the flaps.

AG1: closes the canopy. As standard, the plane spawns with its canopy opened; you should close it before takeoff, but forgetting it is no big deal since it will automatically close.
AG2: when the canopy is open, AG2 will lean you (meaning, the Pilot camera view) out of the cockpit slightly so you can almost see where you’re going…
AG3: toggles the sun filter on the gunsight. Not very useful really, just a silly gimmick…
AG4: dump the drop tank
AG5: this is an important one: has to be pressed prior to starting the engine. It’s the only thing I implemented by way of “start procedure”…
AG8: toggles nav lights

Armament

This build has a relatively standard armament for an A-8 fighter (fighter-bombers of course had a varying loadout), with two MG 131 machine guns (475 rounds each) in the nose, the two standard MG 151 20 mm cannon in the wing roots and two additional Mg 151’s in the wings -good for a total of 780 20 mm rounds.
The plane has a typical REVI gunsight, slightly offset to the right -so I added a separate cam view for dogfighting, since you’re not lined up with the gunsight in normal flight. Not that it matters all that much; the gunsight doesn’t really have any interesting functionality –I used cannon for all weapons, even the small-caliber machine guns, and so SP’s built-in targeting system does a far better job.

ENJOY!