Afternoon all on SAS
Germany, September 1945.
With the successful prototype of the Ta-152H-6 at the hands of Hanna Reitsch and the high praise of Kurt Tank for further enhancing and evolving the Ta-152H to it's highest potential, the H-6 finally started to enter service in late August/early September 1945. These aircraft would be assigned to JG.11 who as previously noted had gone for the Ho-229A-1 for it's primary fighter. However the commander of JG.11 wanted some intermittent fighters to protect the jets they had already in service from being attacked and destroyed by allied patrols.
In the hurried production run of the Ta-152H-6 only 3 complete aircraft were made by late August, the reason for the delay as the original completion of the first batch of fighters was predicted to be in late July 1945. This in turn caused a bit of an issue with the underground factories, producing so many different armaments the Germans couldn't keep switching the jigs nesassary and the high metal quantity used to construct the Jumo 215C engine the H-6 used. With very little experience in producing such a complex engine as well as propeller manufacture, They cut some corners with built airframes by using previous Ta-152H-1 and H-0 fuselages and wings they had constructed earlier that year. Granted there was little difference but the steel used for the main wingspar was made of a lower quality than expected, which in turn made the H-6 weaker than the prototype which had been assigned in August to JG.11.
Overall a real replacement for the steel spar was found, with a combination of mixing steel with iron made it a cheap but strong wingspar to hold the wings correctly and to cope with the g-forces that was expected of it. The engine problems were solved as the Jumo 215 used the same engine casing as the 213, therefore vanquishing any problems of the intense engineering of the original 215 in the prototype.
The 3 Ta-152H-6 aircraft were assigned in September to JG.11 where they performed escort duties with stangely high success considering one was a prototype and the other 3 were a mish-mash of 2 seperate types. The armament proved deadly to allied fighters as in mid-September 1945, a patrol of P-47N's strafed the airfield at Leck, near where JG.1 where stationed with their He-162 Salamanders. The Thunderbolts attacked 2 out of the 12 Horten's which had taken part in a defence mission against B-29 Superfortresses that day, one Horten was lost but the Ta-152H-6's made their move, 8 out of the 15 Thunderbolts were shot down and were outclassed by the H-6 tremendously. In climbing fights the H-6 was untouchable due to her rapid climb rate and manueverability as well as overall speed.
In all the Ta-152H-6 was met with high praise and also to the pilots who felt they were invincible at the controls of a very powerful fighter...
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https://www.mediafire.com/file/84nl9daal17vk5s/Ta-152H-6+JG.11+Skins.rar/file