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Fruitbat says:
Oh, and while we're at it, here is the reason why they were produced concurrently,
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I fail to see how the obscure clippings from a second hand or third hand source have to do with Focke Wulf's original documents.
I have some old magazine clippings I can post too. Like yours, not necessarily factual, but read well.
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Fruitbat says:
because over two and a half times as many were made during the same time.
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Looking at Focke Wulf's production quotas by variant, this is not correct for fighters. It applies to airframes but not the type used to replace the FW-190A8's in the Day fighter units for tangling with allied fighters.
All weather fighters are made for IFR flight, not much dog fighting going on so it is ok to load the type down with the navigation, de-icing, and automation that makes flight under such conditions workable.
Assault ships also are not designed to fight allied fighters, they are bomber killers designed to get close and give the pilot a reasonable change at survival. In this case, the airframe is expendable with the goal of achieving the destruction of a bomber and saving our pilot to fly again.
Both of these variants have much higher wastage rates than normal fighter variants. Does it make sense that at a normal logistical reserve rate you would need to produce much more of these types?
You do realize that just one of the Sturm units could consume an entire months production of FW-190A8 airframes?
You also don't seem to realize that NDW, Fiessler, and Ago are almost exclusively turning out assault ships.
NDW for example, only produced 40 FW-190A8 normal fighters during the entire war! That is the entire run of FW-190A8 fighters from them.
The other 530 FW-190A8's produced by NDW were assault ship variants.
The 1270 airframes produced by Fiessler were mostly assault ships...
Now let’s get an idea of how many airplanes we need to replace our losses. It does not have to be complicated, we only need reach a general conclusion.
In every quarter of the war, the Jadgwaffe experienced a 100% wastage rate. That is a fact. Every four months, every single engine fighter in the Jadgwaffe was replaced. Some pilots might not have to replace their individual aircraft but others had their aircraft replaced multiple times during that four month period. Statistically, it comes out to a 100% wastage rate per quarter. War is expensive.
Let's do some simple math to grasp the scale of the logistics required to maintain FW-190A8's as the main single engine fighter in 1945. First let’s look at the number of airframe available!
Let's use that rather inflated claim of 2500 airframes and Focke Wulf's ratio of all weather fighters as well as assault ships.
2500 * .85 = 375 Normal fighter Variant FW-190A8's...
About maybe 5 weeks give or take a week or two.
Conclusion, there is not enough normal fighter variants to meet wastage rates for more than one, maybe two months before FW-190A8 normal fighter variants become extinct.
Now let's look at the FW-190A9 and FW-190D9 production:
FW-190A9 normal fighter variants ~870
FW-190D9 normal fighter variants ~1700
That is 2570 airframes. The Jadgwaffe maintained an average strength of roughly 1760 fighters of which one third is FW-190's. Just a reasonable assumption made based on RLM dictates.
1760 * .3 = 528 FW-190 fighter variants in the force
2570 total FW-190 fighter variants produced / 528 FW190 fighter variants required = 4.86 months worth of fighter variants to experience a 100% loss rate per quarter. Wow, that takes us to the last few weeks of the war!!
So, the logistical math works out and we have enough FW-190 normal fighter variants to conclude that the FW-190A9 was the predominate Anton normal fighter variant in 1945 especially considering production of FW-190A8's switched almost exclusively to assault ship and all weather fighter production in the last quarter of 1944.
Works out pretty good especially considering a small number of both FW-190A9's and FW-190D9 were built as all weather fighters.
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Fruitbat says:
Whilst irrelevant to the numbers of A8's vs A9's, this is at least interesting
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It is more than interesting; it is the reason for my statement that the FW-190A9 is more prevalent in 1945 as a normal fighter variant.
It is also based on original documentation from the source.