Shockwave Focke Wulf FW190 Butcher Bird and Focke Wulf Long Nose for FS2004

By Andrew Herd (2 August 2006)

he FW190 was unquestionably the best German fighter built during World War II, but had it not been for the persistence of the design team behind it, the plane might not have been built at all. At first glance that statement seems extraordinary, but in the late thirties the German War Ministry took the decision that only one type of fighter aircraft was to go into mass production, the Me-109 being the chosen plane. The logic behind the decision was that Germany expected any war it fought to be short and no-one in the Luftwaffe had the slightest inkling that there would be a requirement for a high-altitude bomber destroyer, let alone a need to escort German planes on bombing raids over the British Isles. This reasoning came about because it was accepted thinking in the highest political circles that after France had fallen, Britain would sue for peace and any war would be over almost before it had begun - so it didn't make sense to waste resources on designs that might not be available in time to influence the course of the fighting. The German high command would live to regret this decision and later in the war, Hitler chose the wrong moment to take the opposite view, hence the waste of resources on 'wonder weapons', few of which ended up being available in time to influence events.

The Bf-109 must have looked like a safe bet, because it was one of the best fighters available in the late thirties, but even the limited action it had been involved in prior to the outbreak of the Second World War meant that its shortcomings were becoming obvious. It had narrow track gear, liquid cooling and a layout that restricted the range of weapons which could be carried, particularly the large cannon that it was becoming obvious would be needed for bomber destruction. In combat a structural weakness that resulted in wings being shed in pullouts from dives became apparent, the 109 was expensive to build and maintain and further development meant having to deal with Willi Messerschmitt, who was not the easiest of personalities.

Against this background of official discouragement, Kurt Tank, the chief designer at Focke Wulf, had set out to design a plane which lacked the 109's deficiencies - the result being a low wing monoplane powered by an air-cooled radial, with wide track gear, a simple field maintenance schedule and above all, a structure which could be constructed quickly. For many months, development inched forward, backed by what limited resources Focke Wulf could spare and then quite suddenly, in 1938, the penny dropped at the Air Ministry and Tank's team were told to deliver the new FW fighter as soon as possible. Herr Blaser, who ran the design team for the 190 found himself up against such short deadlines that he ended up sleeping in his office most nights, but when the first flight was made on June first, 1939, it was clear to one and all that he had got his sums right.

Serious teething problems with the engine took some time to sort out, during which time flight tests against captured Allied fighters were carried out. In the course of these it became apparent that the only plane which could take the 190 on on anything approaching even terms was the Spitfire, which could outturn it, but was slower and had less effective armament. The first encounter between these two famous fighters took place over Gravelines, where four FW 190A-1s of II/JG 26 encountered a gaggle of Spitfires and shot down three of them without loss. Taken aback, the British were forced to re-evaluate their tactics and a technology race developed, with each new version of the Spitfire and the 190 leap-frogging the other until the defeat of Germany in 1945.

The FW 190A series was dogged by problems with the radial BMW 801 and by the time they had been resolved, it became clear that the 190 wasn't effective above 20,000 feet, so the design team began work on a high-altitude version and this work led to the FW 190D series. The D was a quite different plane to look at, compared to the A, having had a long nose grafted on to accommodate the liquid-cooled in-line Jumo 213. Despite apparently having a less powerful engine, the D had a better rate of climb, accellerated faster in a dive, a higher top speed and a tighter turn radius than any of the BMW FW 190s and even than the 109. The initial reaction of Luftwaffe pilots was mixed, but they learned to love their long-nose 190s, the D being one of the most effective marques of fighter ever produced.

The D appeared late in 1944, but good though it was, a truly high altitude version was still needed, which was already on the drawing board with the designation Ta 152. The Ta prefix was a personal honor for Tank, without whose persistence the fighter would never have appeared. Test flying began in October 1944, the new plane having a long nose and a greater wingspan than the 190, but sharing so many components that the first hulls were all 190 conversions. The chaotic conditions that prevailed in Germany in late '44 and early '45 meant that few were built, which was fortunate for the Allies, because the 152 was an incredibly effective airplane, boasting among other features, methanol/water injection that saved Tank's life on one occasion when he was bounced by four Mustangs while on a local flight and only escaped because of the 152's tremendous acceleration.

Shockwave have released two FW190 packs, both of which are available by instant download from the Pilot Shop. The first pack, the 'FW 190 Butcher Bird' is a 65 Mb download and concentrates on the BMW engined, short-nosed 190s; while the second pack 'Focke Wulf Long Nose' contains variants of the Jumo engined FW 190D and the Ta 152, weighing in at just over 69 Mb. Instant download probably isn't the correct description if you are still waiting for broadband, but the pack sizes are small enough to be practical over a plain old telephone system (aka POTS). Passwords are generated at the time of purchase and although there is a time window in which downloads have to be made, it is fairly broad and you are allowed several attempts - I got both packs at the first attempt without problems.

Installation was straight forward, although initially it failed with an error stating that 'dlgsplash.bmp' couldn't be found. This is the FS2004 opening splash screen, which was missing for some reason on my system, but the cure was to reinstall it, which allowed the Shockwave installer to modify the splash by adding its own logo at bottom right. You may or may not like this intrusion, but there is no way to prevent it, save by copying a saved version of the original back over the new screen. A quick check of the Start Menu revealed that I had a 'Wings of Power' entry with manuals for each of the packs linked through it - the manual for the short-nose planes is 133 pages long, while the long-nose manual tops out at 82, largely because there are fewer variants of the 190/152 in this pack. The manuals are well written, although there is a wadge of generic information early on with which you will be familiar if you own any other WOP products; there then follows a detailed section on each variant of the plane, including panel info and all the required V-speeds, as well as special advice where needed, such as how to trigger the methanol/water injection in the 152 (fun, but later...). The cockpit layout remains generically the same for all the versions, the difference between the Ta 152 and the FW 190 panels being the most noticeable, but otherwise, after you have made yourself familiar with one panel, you should be familiar with 'em all.

The visual models are excellent, not that we would expect anything else from Shockwave, with above average texture quality. There isn't that much you can animate on a WWII fighter and in this case you get all the usual stuff plus an opening canopy, working cowl flaps and a releasable drop tank. The 'Butcher Bird' pack contains the A3, A4, A5, A6, A8, A9 and F8 variants, painted in ten different, well-chosen schemes. Armament varies from the standard fit, through drop tanks, external cannon pods and wing-mounted bombs on the F8, so there is no lack of variety of short-nose 190s to choose from. Surprising though it may seem, there is quite a lot of difference between the A series variants, so the content isn't the usual case of a single visual model, repainted ten times. The later A variants with the bulged forward cowlings over the upper gun fittings look especially potent.

The 'Long Nose' pack contains six different D series planes, a Ta 152C and a Ta 152H. The D's are divided among D9s, D11s and D13s, again painted in a variety of attractive and different schemes. There is a particularly Germanic talent that lets their military take the dullest of paint schemes and ornament it until it looks simultaneously attractive and deadly, this tendency being particularly well expressed in the selection Shockwave have given us, although I don't think I would have liked to have flown 'Red 4' above left into combat (to be fair it was used all its life as an engine test bed). The Ta 152C and H only have one scheme apiece, which is fair enough because only vanishingly small numbers of these versions were completed. By late 1944, the transport and communications systems in Germany were so badly damaged that it was almost impossible to source components, let alone find the fuel to fly aircraft into action and horses were being used to pull planes around the taxiways.

The panels have that certain 'Shockwave look' and are none the worse for it - as you can see, they are based on artwork rather than photoreal images, which keeps them in line with the rest of the series. All the graphics are crisp right up to 1600 x 1200, with very little stepping and no orphan pixels. As you can see, the gauges are crisp, easily readable and all the legends are as clear as can be. One of the strengths of 'art' panels like this one is that the secondary views (right, left, quarter, etc.) match the forward view for quality and definition - on the whole, Shockwave have captured the spirit of the 190 cockpit very well, although they have had to make the inevitable compromise between a real pilot's view and the need to display enough instruments to fly the plane using a computer monitor. The later planes in WOP series have used a slightly tighter cropped view than the early ones did and are better for it, in my opinion.

Popups in the 2D cockpit (shown left) are restricted to a fuel sub-panel and an electrical panel, which includes the meth/water injection switch for planes which were so fitted. Push this and the 152s fade off into the distance, so they would be fun for pylon racing, but you only get five minutes of WEP due to an FS2004 limitation, compared to ten minutes in the real thing. You also get a set of modern radios and associated nav instruments should you want to use the sim for pleasure flights - FS2004 has no facilities for simulating wartime radios and navaids, unless a prohibitive amount of extra programming is done. You can also access the GPS, the map and all the usual 'where the hell am I?' stuff.

The VC follows in the steps of the 2D panel, the only additional comment worth making about it being that it is on a par with the best VCs I have seen. I used it to fly the plane most of the time, using TrackIR, and once you have got the viewpoint right, it is just like being in a real fighter. Or so they tell me.

The flight model is - within the limits of FS2004 - excellent. The 190 was famed for its incredibly light ailerons, which gave allowed it to do turns that would have ripped the wings off a 109. The elevators were a little on the heavy side, although this is hard to reflect in a sim, but control harmony was such that the rudder was hardly needed for most maneuvers. Stability was assessed as good directionally, unstable laterally and neutral longitudinally and the flight model more or less adheres to this, the result being a plane which is relatively easy to fly, yet extremely maneuverable. The stall in real short-nose FW 190s could be unpredictible and there was a tendency to flick if an accelerated stall occurred - Shockwave appear to have done their best to replicate this, but the moment the stall occurs, the usual FS2004 weirdness occurs and anything can happen after that point. This is not the developer's fault; it just has never been a priority for Microsoft to write code which simulates aircraft behavior outside the normal flight envelope and bearing this in mind, although I could get the 190 to spin, I had to make a special effort to keep it there. If aircraft behavior 'beyond the stall' could be modelled properly in FSX, I am sure it would be a big buying point for the new version, as this is one of the parts of flight that lends itself particularly well to simulators and it would also allow pilots to practice recovery techniques. However, all that aside, the FW flight model is good. I mustn't forget the sound set - which is OK, although I do wonder if it is actually based on recordings made from BMW 801s or Jumos - I could be wrong here.

Verdict? Liked these packs a great deal. By and large Shockwave always seem to turn in a polished product and their latest packages have been extremely consistent. If you are into FS warbirds, then these addons offer a high quality experience and good value for money. Recommended - save up and get 'em both.