The Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito was a fast night fighter
designed by Kurt Tank and produced by Focke-Wulf late in World War II. A
competitor to the Heinkel He 219, the Focke- Wulf Ta 154 was intended as the
Luftwaffe’s response to the British De Havilland Mosquito, and came near to
becoming a major combat Luftwaffe airplane. The first prototype, V1, fitted
with two Jumo 211F engines, flew on July 1, 1943. The first armed version of
the Ta 154 with Lichtenstein radar was the V3, which also was the first to fit
the Jumo 211R engines. By June 1944, the Jumo 213 engine was finally arriving
in some numbers, and a small batch of Ta 154A-1 craft were completed with these
engines. The Ta 154 had a crew of two, a length of 12.55 m (40 ft 3 in), a
wing-span of 16.30 m (52 ft 5 in), a height of 3.60 m (11 ft 4 in), a wing area
of 31.40 square m (333.68 square ft), and an empty weight of 6,600 kg (14,550
lbs). It had a maximum speed of 615 km/h (404 mph), a range of 1,400 km (872
miles), and a service ceiling of 9,500 m (31,200 ft). The landing-gear was a
tricycle arrangement with steerable nose wheel. Armament included two 20-mm MG
151 cannons, two 30-mm MG 131 nose-mounted cannons, and a MG 131 Schräge Musik
cannon firing upward at a 60-degree angle.
By August 1944, about fifty production versions had been
completed, but the aircraft never made it, mostly because a glue of bad quality
was used which ate away the wooden parts. Like the British De Havilland
Mosquito, the German Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito was made of wood. This led to
some of the production versions breaking up in mid-air, as the glue was
incapable of withstanding the stresses produced in flight. The inability to
find an adequate adhesive prevented completion of an order for 250 planes. Some
of the planes produced served with Nachtjagdgeschwader 3 (Night Fighter Group
3), a few were later used as a training aircraft for jet pilots, and some were
modified to form the bottom half of Mistel composite aircraft.
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