The Junkers Ju 287 you could call it the mother of all forward-sweapt design aircrafts. The Ju 287 was a multi-engine tactical jet bomber built in Nazi Germany in 1944.
It fetured a forward-sweapt wing design and the Ju 287 V1 (First prototype of the Ju 287) was one of very few jet propelled aircrafts with a fixed landing gear. The Ju 287 was meant to provide the Luftwaffe with a bomber that could avoid interception by outrunning enemy fighters. The one to come up with the design idea was the project head designer Dr. Hans Wocke, as a way to provide the aircraft with extra lift at low airspeeds.
This design allowed the installation of one massive bomb bay in the best location, in the aircraft center of gravity of the aircraft. The wings would not be an issue becouse the wing spar was passing behind the bomb bay. Witch means the wings could be in the best located in the best aerodynamic location, centre of the fuselage.
Flight test began on 8 August 1944, with the aircraft displaying extremely good handling characteristics and reaveling as well some problems of the forward-sweapt wing design under some flight conditions. The most notable of these problems was the wing warping or excessive in-flight flexing of the main spar and wing assembly. Some tests later they came to the conclusion that the warping problem would be eliminated by the concentrating greater engine mass under the wings.
At one occasion during a test they dived at full jet power and attaining a speed in the medium div-angle of 660 km/h. But sadly after the 17 flight in September 1944 the Ju 287 project was shelved to save resources for the Volksjäger program.
But at the end of the war the program was suddenly re-lunched again, and production of the Ju 287 V3 started but sadly they could not finish the hole plane before the war ended. Only 80 - 90 % of the plane was made but it had just some few stuff missing like the engines had some parts missing and weapons etc. And so the story of the Ju 287 came to an end in Germany, but the program continued in Russia under the USSR leadership witch gave birth to the EF131 and EF140.
Could not have agreed with you more on your statemeant! There so much more WW2 era prototypes that can be added witch are so diffreant and intressting! They would 100% give more life to War thunder and make things more intressting!
Yes i was thinking the same thing! It would be a great jet bomber at that Br and there are still other planes that can catch up with it! So like you said 4.0 - 4.3 will be a balanced br for it!
This seems like a very interesting additions! I love these WW2 additions and I really wish we see others like the Me 262 B-1a/U1 night fighter as well.
I think that you messed up. Your suggestion is for the Versuchs 1 (V1) testbed airframe only meant for testing of the wings, not the actual definitive aircraft as designed [Versuchs 3 (V3)], hence the lack of armament, low top speed, & fixed landing gear:
Sadly a -1 from me. The V1 was a testbed and nothing more, no bomb-bay, no armament, unretractable landing gear, ~300 kph maximum achieved top speed. Utterly useless ingame even as a 1.0 plane simply because it was never armed and had neither plans nor provisions to be armed.
I think if we ever see a Ju 287 ingame it would be the V3, which was only partially built, but even then it’s dubious as I think only a mockup wing was constructed that was specifically linked to the V3 to test an engine setup, otherwise only wind-tunnel models and wood mockups existed.
For “high” tier jet bombers, Germany really only has two more options, the OKB-1 series (EF 131, EF 140 and EF 150), and the Canberra B.2, unless Gaijin would be fine with adding the proposed Ju 287 V3, which is sadly a pretty paper-based plane, with limited flight performance data from the V1, which would not be representative of how the forward swept wings would perform at speeds the Ju 287 V3 was projected to fly at, meaning around 800-900 kph.
So in conclusion, no to the V1, but a pretty hopeless yes to the V3.
I think the V3 would be a viable option to add. Also I have a question. Would it be in any way possible to see the Me 262 B-1a/U1 night fighter ever added to the game? I think it could work even though the mission it flew really isn’t present in the game anymore.
