Heavy Fighter - Germany

Germany

A major heavy fighter design was the Messerschmitt Bf 110, a German fighter that, prior to the war, the Luftwaffe considered more important than their single-engine fighters. Many of the best pilots were assigned to Bf 110 squadrons, and they were specifically designated as Zerstörer ("destroyer") units. While other, lighter, fighters were mainly intended for defense, the destroyers were the ones mainly intended for offensive missions: to escort bombers on missions at long range, then use its superior speed to outrun defending fighters that would be capable of outmaneuvering it. This doctrine proved to be a costly mistake. In practice the Bf 110 was only capable of using this combination of features for a short time; it served well against the Hawker Hurricane during the Battle of France, but was easily outperformed by the Supermarine Spitfire during the Battle of Britain (also in terms of maximum speed). Eventually Bf 110s were converted to interceptors (especially night fighters) and ground-attack aircraft for rest of the war. The Me 210 and Me 410 Hornisse were all-new aircraft designs meant to replace the Bf 110, but also could not outrun contemporary single-engine fighters.

Towards the end of the war, the Dornier Do 335 Pfeil could have been an ideal twin-engined Zerstörer fighter design for the Luftwaffe due to its centre line thrust format, which placed its fuselage-mounted twin engines' propellers on opposing ends of the fuselage, and potentially allowed much better maneuverability, and did allow dramatically higher speeds (just over 750 km/h or 465 mph), than any other twin-piston-engined aircraft of its era, but like so many other advanced German aircraft designs that were actually produced by Germany late in the war, the Do 335 never had the chance to be produced in quantity.

Following the example set by the Bf 110, the Japanese built the broadly similar Kawasaki Ki-45. Likewise neutral Netherlands built the twin-boom Fokker G.I, only to be seized by the Luftwaffe after the German invasion of the Netherlands.