Bomber B - The End of The Project

The End of The Project

Prototype airframes of both designs were ready mid-1940, but in a taste of things to come, neither of the hyper engine power output class engines, the 24-cylinder, six-bank Jumo 222 or the 24-cylinder four-bank DB 604 X engine, were ready to be installed. Instead of waiting, both teams decided to power their prototypes with the BMW 801 radial engine, although with 900 hp less per engine, the planes would be seriously underpowered. The first 222s did not arrive until October 1941, and by this point the DB project had already been cancelled. By May 1942, things were getting desperate, and it was suggested that the Daimler-Benz DB 606 be used instead, even though it was considerably larger and heavier. Prototypes of both designs with these engines were ordered, although the Fw was just getting into the air with the 801s at this point and the 288 was showing a continual tendency to break its landing gear on touchdown. Desperation set in at the RLM, who had no other designs "in the pipeline" to fill the gap left if Bomber B did not work, even though some minor designs like the Henschel Hs 130, usually powered with two DB 603 or 605 engines, and the Dornier Do 317, itself being tried with the "coupled" DB 606 or 610 "power systems" in some airframes, roundly derided in August 1942 by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring as "welded-together engines", were being considered. A slightly improved Ju 88-based on the Ju 88B design-was ordered as the Ju 188, and several prototypes of "stretched" versions of existing bomber designs with four engines were also ordered.

In June 1943, the T-Amt finally gave up; by this point, even if the Jumo 222 started working reliably, as it had begun to do so in the summer of 1943, a shortage of the metals needed for the high-temperature alloys it used meant it would not be able to enter production anyway, with just under 300 development powerplants built. The Bomber B project was a massive and astoundingly expensive venture that delivered nothing, while also serving to ensure that no other designs were available in late 1943, when their existing twin-engined medium bombers started to become hopelessly outdated.