The G1 a good airplane ?
Who ever once got involved in a discussion about the best aircaft of for example the second world war, startes to regret this very soon. Not much different is the discusion if the Fokker G1 a good or a bad aircraft was.
To qualify something you have to compare it with something else, the lack of comparison is the problem with the Fokker G1. If we look for example in comparing the Spitfire and the Messerschmit 109, although there have been hundreds of dogfights between them you think it would be easy to pick the winner. Not so, because of different versions, tactics, pilots etc the question remains till this day which one was the best. Some people use statistics to get their point across, for example one of the highest killrates of WW2 was held by the F4 Corsair. But is this fair if you arrive at the war theatre when your opponent doesn't have anymore good pilots and more bombers than fighter aircraft?
To come to a fair gudgement of the G1 we have to take into account the specific purpose for which it was designed and build.
The purpose for the G1 was to combine different tasks within one militairy aircaft. These days we call this : a multi role combat aircraft, just think of the Tornado and JSF.
The Fokker was going to make a combination of a long distance fighter, reconnaissance and a light bomber. Don't think that this "modern" idea came from Fokker itself. Outside of the Netherlands different countries thought exactly the same. Below a few of them.
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MESSERSCHMITT BF110C-1 Germany |
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POTEZ 63.11A.3 France |
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MARTIN MARYLAND 167F United States |
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ILYUSHIN DB3M Rusia |
 |
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KAWASAKI KI-45 KAI-Ko Toryu Japan |
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In the Netherlands we call this class a Jachtkruiser ( hunting cruiser ), in Germany a Zerstorer (Destroyer) en and in English an attack aircraft.
They soon found out ( no exceptions ) that the combination of an attack aircraft in combination with a fighter pure sang was deadly for the first one.Even today a Tornado or JSF wouldn't survive very long if it were opposed with a dedicated designed fighter. The taskes they could perform well were shooting down enemy bombers and recon jobs. If we talk about bombers, we talk about the type in service just before WW2, even with a large imagination no one could forsee a bomber fleet of more than a 1000 planes and a defensive armament for example seen on the B17 at the end of the war.
Once they realized the shortcommings of the attack type aircraft they started to use them for other taskes such as ground attack, once airsuperiority was established. Ofcourse airsuperiority against the Germans never happened and with the lack of everything to fight with they used the G1 as good or bad as possible.
So if the concept/usage was wrong was it still a good design ?
Below follows a list of attack aircraft from around 1940. And again be carefull to make comparisons for example don't use information from a Bf110 build in 1944! You can draw your own conlusions but I believe that Fokker didn't do a bad job.
|
AIRCRAFT |
FOKKER G1 WASP |
FOKKER G1 MERCURY 2 PERS |
FOKKER G1 MERCURY 3 PERS |
MESSER- SCHMITT BF110C-1 |
POTEZ 63.11A.3 |
MARTIN MARYLAND 167F |
ILYUSHIN DB3M |
KAWASAKI KI-45 |
|
FIRST FLIGHT |
1936 |
1938 |
1938 |
1936 |
1936 |
|
1939 |
1939 |
|
LENGTH |
10,38 |
10,87 |
10,87 |
16,90 |
10,93 |
14,22 |
14.76 |
10,60 |
|
SPANWIDTH |
16,50 |
17,16 |
17,16 |
12,60 |
16,00 |
18,69 |
21.44 |
15,02 |
|
HEIGHT |
3,35 |
3,80 |
3,80 |
3,47 |
3,08 |
4,57 |
5.50 |
3,66 |
|
MAX WEIGHT |
4800 |
4500 |
5000 |
5698 |
4530 |
6929 |
8000 |
|
|
EMPTY WEIGHT |
3150 |
3330 |
3345 |
|
3135 |
4795 |
5270 |
3965 |
|
ENGINE POWER |
750 |
830 |
830 |
1100 |
700 |
1050 |
950 |
1050 |
|
MAX SPEED |
443 |
475 |
475 |
455 |
425 |
428 |
445 |
547 |
|
ALTITUDE MAX SPEED |
3350 |
4100 |
4100 |
4000 |
|
|
|
7000 |
|
PRACTICALE CEILING |
9000 |
9900 |
9750 |
|
8500 |
|
9000 |
10730 |
|
MAX CLIMB SPEED |
12,2 |
13,9 |
13,3 |
|
8,3 |
|
|
|
|
CRUISE SPEED |
384 |
383 |
383 |
319 |
|
349 |
290 |
|
|
CRUISING ALTITUDE |
3400 |
4265 |
4265 |
3000 |
|
8991 |
|
|
|
MAX SPEED SEA LEVEL |
384 |
399 |
399 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
RANGE |
1450 |
1500 |
1500 |
1720 |
1500 |
1690 |
1500 |
2260 |
|
WING SURFACE |
35,70 |
38,30 |
38,30 |
38,90 |
32,70 |
50.03 |
66.70 |
|
CREW |
2 |
2 |
3 |
|
3 |
3 |
3 |
|
ARMAMENT |
5x7,9mm |
9x7,9mm |
9x7,9mm |
2x 20mm, 5x 7,5mm |
4X 7,5MM |
4X 7,7mm 2x 7,5mm |
3x 7,6 |
1X 20MM, 2X 12,7MM, 1X 7,9MM |
|
BOM LOAD |
500 |
200 |
200 |
800 |
2500 |
500 |
||
|
NUMBERS BUILD |
26 |
36 |
36 |
866 |
|
|
|
If from the initial concept you don't include the fighter/hunter part then I you have a viable concept, just look at the Mosquito. Don't forget here that the design was started in march 1940, it came into service in Nov 1941 and it was almost twice as heavy as his 1938 counterpart.