The Re.2005 VDM situation is crazy

If the airspeed indicator needle touched the 720 km/h mark…this means that the figure is an indicated air speed.

that’s what I would say but perhaps it had different instrumentation for test flights, who knows.

The figures I am quoting in-game for 5,900m are done by diving from 7km spawn in test flight and then letting plane decelerate to a point where it is not losing speed.

We cannot duplicate the real life testing procedure to the letter because we do not have a timeframe for how long they let the plane decelerate. It would be possible to get a higher measured top speed by 5-10 kph if the instrumentation at the time and timetable did not account for the last bits of declaration; i.e deceleration from 640-630 takes a long time.

this book was among those used for the original bug report.
As I stated in the post, the DB605A-1 paired with a MW-50 is really just a DB605AM.

here's more info if you need




you can clearly see that, other than the performance numbers, the only changes are compression rates and the injectors (and the use of C-3 fuel). In the last table it’s literally written that the DB605AM is a DB605A with those changes.

8 Likes

What is the date on the last chart though?

ok fair enough. Thank you.

You mean 1944? It’s the year in which they started mass production of fighter equipped with that engine.
The engine was in the work before that and the MM.495 received what was probably a prototype since the way it’s described seems exactly like a DB605AM

What primary source indicates that it’s a DB-605AM that was used in the Re.2005 MDM.495?

The test flight of the plane with the German built engine and prop is in June 10, 1943. This timeframe just doesn’t seem very likely when you consider that the earliest documentation of using MW-50 on a Bf.109G-4 in a test flight is from September, 1943. And according to “The Secret Horsepower Race” / Calum Douglas, the DB-605 was something of a flaming dumpster fire in basically all of the first half of 1943.

Assuming that the Re.2005 was equipped with MW-50 would require the following,

  1. Major engineering problems for the DB-605 were solved by the middle of 1943. We can hand waive this as say that the engine shipped to them was basically a prototype held to the highest standards even if we have no proof.

  2. The Germans prioritized the development of the Re.2005 over their own domestic designs due to the test flight occuring 3 months prior to the earliest available documentation of flight testing a Bf.109 with MW-50.

  • An alternative is that the Bf.109 was tested prior to the available documentation and that none of the earlier documentation or even mention of the testing survived the war.

Either scenario is more unlikely than it is likely.

What DB605 are you talking about? The A or the AM version?
All of the serie 5 aircraft were equipped with a DB605A engines and so did some other german planes so I guess not all DB605A were flaming dumpsters. If you are talking about DB605AM then Idk.

Some books say the MM495 was give to the German and it was given a “special” DB605A. This special engine had modified compression rates and Methanol and water injection. It was never called DB605AM so we don’t have primary sources.

Why do we believe it was a prototype of a DB605AM? Because if you look at Daimler-Benz info on the engine it is literally stated that the DB605AM is a DB605A with modified compression rates and MW-50. So it makes sense that they didn’t tell the italian engineers that they gave it a DB605AM (since they wouldn’t know what it was), but instead told them the changes they made to that “special” engine.
Again, those changes match in a 1 for 1 the characteristics of the DB605AM. I don’t know why the German would test it on the Re2005 other than just test if a different fram would change the engine’s performance… or because if they broke it they wouldn’t lose an otherwise repourposable Bf109 frame.
However it seems to me pretty unlikely that the engine was something other than a prototype DB605AM because… seriously what other engine could it be?

We are trying to get the primary documentation for these changes and possibly some figures for the performance.

2 Likes

I am talking about the DB-605 in general.

Screenshot_20251116-051553

Screenshot_20251116-051659

Screenshot_20251116-051834

Hopefully the screenshots are in the correct order, but according to Calum Douglas translation of Luftwaffe meetings, the DB-605 was not performing well in 1943.

The engine was actually even worse in 1942. The Italians built engines were not special in the fact that they had to be de-rated.

And what primary sources do these books cite to make that claim? That is the crux of the issue. It seems that the MW-50 equipped engine claim is probably dubious given the timeframe for the test flight.

Did these authors just see that the German engine was labeled as “special” in Italian documents and just assume that meant it was equipped with MW-50?

I think it is just as likely, if not moreso, that the engine that Germans equipped it with was not equipped with MW-50, but instead incorporated the technical changes that were made in order to get the engine to run more reliably and not have to be de-rated.

It seems odds that the Germans would equip and test fly an Re.2005 with MW-50 before they even attempted to equip and test fly their own fighters with it. It’s an even more odd conclusion when you consider that the June 10th test flight date would mean that the Germans equipped the Re.2005 with MW-50 prior to concluding their own research into it.

As I’ve mentioned above…it is incredibly unlikely that the engine was a DB-605 AM.

2 Likes