The Story of the Fw 200 Condor (Part 1)

Hermann Goering and the Goblet of Fire

    I like to imagine our story beings in the summer of 1939, in the opulent office of Hermann Goering. Goering is presiding over a meeting to decide some point or other with his generals, when (like in “The Right Stuff”) a young officer runs down an marble and granite hallway and bursts in on the Generalfeldmarshall . The officer shouts “Field Marshall!  We have no anti-shipping squadrons!” This was true. With war looming with Great Britain once more, the Luftwaffe had no plans or aircraft set aside for fighting a naval war with Britain. This was in a large part due to to Goering himself, who hated the idea of any Luftwaffe resources going toward any project that did not directly glorify the Luftwaffe (IE Goering.) The Kriegsmarine had several years ago argued that it should have its own air wing; an argument that Goering's political weight had no problems crushing. What specialized naval planes the Luftwaffe did have - an assortment of float-planes and flying boats - had been developed for operations in the Baltic. Up until 1938, German war plans had called for the Navy to secure the Baltic in the eventual war with France, and aircraft had been built for this mission in mind -  not for attacking British shipping, and definitely not for reconnaissance over the Atlantic Ocean.

       So, possibly to support the Kriegsmarine (or possibly just to keep the Kriegsmarine from saying 'and this is why we should have our own air assets') a new bomber wing was hastily formed in the middle of the summer of 1939 to specialize in naval bombing and reconnaissance. X.Fliegerkorps began training on He-111s and Ju 88s; its commander was Gen. Martin Harlinghausen, an officer who started in the Kaiser's Navy but transferred to the air force in the 1920s. During Spain's civil war, he had been in charge of the fascist Condor legion's anti-shipping unit, which made him a logical choice for leadership.  General Harlinghausen then ran into a much more difficult problem: while the Nazi warplane bench was deep with good medium bombers, it had absolutely nothing in the way of a aircraft suitable for reconnaissance over long distances. Many rival nations had developed the first long range bombers, but the Luftwaffe was singularly lacking in those: the Luftwaffe in 1939 had been built and optimized for close support of the army. In 1936, the Luftwaffe had started the development of a long range bomber that would develop into the He 177 'Grief' (Griffon). Unfortunately, thinking war was still many years off, the specifications for the He 177 were incredibly ambitious. While the prototype had flown by 1939, it was estimated that the bomber would not be operational until late 1941.

    In desperation, General Harlinghausen sent his adjutant,  Hauptmann Petersen, to see if there were any suitable civilian planes that could be pressed into service. Hpt. Petersen was another logical choice for the Luftwaffe's anti-shipping unit:  he had started his flying career in the 1920s as a civilian pilot, and later used that role as cover during the buildup to World War 2, flying several long-distance naval reconnaissance flights against the UK. Petersen found the major aircraft manufacturers such as Heinkel and Donier uninterested in this project: they literally had so many military contracts by this point they didn't want the extra business. Junkers had something promising, in the form of the Ju 90 wide-body airliner. The Ju 90 was a civilian transport re-visioning of the Ju 89, a canceled long range bomber. Junkers had already been approached about the possibility of making a military cargo version of the Ju 90, and thought that the military bomber turned civilian airliner turned military transport could be modified into a long-range naval reconnaissance plane. Junkers, however, was like other manufacturers in that they were at capacity with other defense contracts. Junkers reps made it clear to Petersen that such a project would be a low priority that would take some time to complete.

    Then, Petersen was in for a stroke of luck. When he got to the Focke-Wulf works, he found what he was looking for already in production: one of Focke-Wulf's airliners - the Fw 200 Condor - had been modified for long-range naval reconnaissance, and was bound for the Empire of Japan. Kurt Tank, designer of the Fw 200 and manly man name contest winner, was enthusiastic about the possibility of a new military contract. (Focke-Wulf had so far sold 6 Fw 189 reconnaissance planes to the Luftwaffe, while larger firms like were literally selling thousands of aircraft to Germany's air force; Focke-Wulf was eager to get a piece of that action.) Tank sold Petersen on the idea of buying the modified Fw 200 as his maritime bomber, saying he could modify it to Luftwaffe spec in a matter of weeks. Then, in a matter of months, he could have full scale production of a Fw 200 built for the missions the Luftwaffe was thinking about.

An early Fw 200 arriving in New York City.

The conversion of a airliner to a warplane was not going to be easy, as the Condor was one of the few airplanes in the Third Reich that had been built exclusively as a civilian airplane. It had started life as arguably the first really modern airliner.  A sleek four-engined all-metal monoplane commissioned by Lufthansa, the Fw 200 initially had been built to fly as high as possible without needed a pressurized cabin – about 20,000 ft. More ambitiously, the Condor had been designed to be the first land-based airliner with the range to cross oceans without refueling –  a faster, more efficient alternative on long routes serviced back then by flying boats. With roughly the capacity of the DC-3, the Condor was named for its enormous wings, which were designed for better lift at cruising altitude.  The first prototype Fw 200 had flown in October 1937 with Tank himself at the controls. Lufthansa loved the new airplane, buying the prototype and the next few production prototypes after the first flight. Despite the American engines in the first prototype, (Pratt and Whitney Hornet radials, also used in the Ju 52), the Fw 200 went on to be a proud specimen of Aryan science. Partially to advertise the new airliner and partially to demonstrate German engineering might, the new plane was involved in several record breaking flights in 1938, first flying from Germany to Cairo nonstop, and then becoming the first plane to fly nonstop from Berlin to New York. It is on one of these publicity flights that the Condor was seen by the Japanese, who asked if a naval recon version could be made. This was the origin of the recon plane Petersen was looking at. Series production of the airliner would be identified as Condor Bs – replacing the Hornet with a BMW licensed copy of the Hornet (also used in the Ju 52,) while this new naval recon variant would be called Condor C. Meanwhile, sales to Lufthansa were somewhat slow, though, in the brief time before the war started, some of the new airliners were sold to Brazil and Denmark. One of the Danish Condors was to end up in British hands when the low countries were invaded, while the Brazilian Condors operated successfully as airliners until 1947.

A line drawing of a C-4 Condor, used 1942 onward.

Tank's first mod for the Condor C was to add defensive machine guns, and to build an asymmetrical gondola along the bottom. Essentially a glassed-in crawlspace, the Gondola was necessary  if a bombardier’s position or tail gun position was to be added without redesigning the whole friggin' airplane. In between those two positions was a bomb bay, which made more room in the former passenger compartment for fuel. For the Japanese, a pure reconnaissance plane had been fine, but the Germans demanded the ability to carry bombs if the plane was to serve in a bomber wing. Tank also added bomb racks on the outer engine nacelles: up to four 250 kg bombs could be carried externally, about what the Me 110 could carry in its fighter-bomber configuration. An additional advantage to this design was that the internal fuel tanks were easily removable, so in a pinch the Condor C could be converted back into a transport. These mods delivered range undreamt of in previous Luftwaffe aircraft: with an endurance of some 12 hours, (which would be upgraded  to be 18 in the C-3 version) the Condor had a vastly greater range than anything else currently in the Nazi arsenal. After the fall of France, Condors operating out of Bordeaux could fly in a great arc to west of Ireland, fly recon over the western approaches for hours, and then fly in another great arc around British land-based air cover to Trondheim, in Norway.

    The design flaw that would haunt the Hunting Condor was, paradoxically, that the Fw 200 was brilliantly engineered. Tank had done a hell of a job engineering a lightweight fuselage for the long range performance he was dreaming of, and while it was revolutionary for airliners, it was not ideal material for adaptation for combat roles. Any changes you make to adapt it to the hard low flyin' whiskey drinkin' life of a naval bomber is going to add weight, and thus sap performance. The Luftwaffe, while relieved it had something to support the Navy with, was doubtful about the Fw 200 as a bomber, especially as it only had a primitive bombsight.

    There were other negative aspects to the Condor's makeover. the Fw 200 C-3 (the first combat ready variant) with all of its gun turrets, gondolas, and bomb racks added a considerable amount of weight and drag. Despite an engine upgrade, the Condor was now only slightly faster than the flying boats it was supposed to supersede.  Worse, the Condor C combined this slowness with fragility. The phrase “and then the tail fell off” is disturbingly frequent in descriptions of combat actions. In addition to that, the Condor was expensive compared to normal Luftwaffe aircraft, costing nearly four times as much as a Ju 52.  Cost, the Luftwaffe's low priority for assisting the Krigsmarine, and production being limited to Focke Wulf's peacetime factory meant that like it's namesake, the Condor would be a rare bird. The Condor was also complex compared to most Luftwaffe warplanes, and this created a new problem down the road - simply getting enough Fw 200s for continuous operations. KG 40, the squadron that used Condor Cs as naval scouts, had up to 36 Condors under its command by December 1940, but only 8 to 12 of these were operational at any one time. The Condor, in addition to being expensive and fragile, was a complete pig for maintenance, with a operational readiness rate as low as 25%. While I'm not too familiar with readiness rates of World War 2 warplanes, 25% strikes me as utterly shittacular for the era. That's a hell of a lot of design flaws, and they serve to underline that the Fw 200 was a stopgap airplane until the He 177 was ready.

    The Fw 200 B saw use in transport squadrons throughout the war, and also saw service as the personal whips of the heads of the Third Reich. Hitler snapped up one of the initial production models on the suggestion of his personal pilot. Himmiler and Donitz were also to have personal Fw 200s. KG 200 (the Luftwaffe 'special forces') also would borrow a Condor occasionally, as it's extreme endurance made it excellent for parachuting spies onto remote enemy territory. Incredibly, some Fw 200 Bs would still be delivered to Lufthansa.

    As is tradition in modern military procurement, the gap the Fw 200 was filling turned out to be far bigger than expected. The He 177 was plagued with development problems until the end of 1942, and high command only put serious resources behind another successor aircraft (the Ju 290) when it became clear that the Fw 200 was failing in its mission over the Atlantic at the end of 1941. Focke-Wulf did what it could by way of upgrades, but little could be done to reduce the Condor's fragility in the face of enemy action.

The different variants of the Condor are a little confusing – because Condors were upgraded both as factory models and in the field, there are many different offshoots and sub-variants. Later in the war especially, older Condors were upgraded to later standards, but of course were given different designations. All you need to know is that the C-3 is the 'early' version and the C-4 is the 'later' variant- most of the various sub-types were based off of these two designs.

* C-0 (Autumn 1939) - The initial ten training aircraft, actually just renamed Fw 200Bs.

* C-1, C-2 (Dec '39 - August '40) – Initial production variants that lacked self sealing fuel tanks and fuselage reinforcement for combat flying. Production was 16 aircraft.

* C-3 (Sept '40 to Mar '42) -  Main early variant of the Fw 200, essentially the first Condor model built for combat. After many early aircraft were lost due to stress failures, the fuselage was properly strengthened for military use. Range and defensive endearment upgraded with larger machine guns and 20mm Cannon replacing light machine guns. The engines were also upgraded, with 1000 hp Brembo radials that had water-methanol injection for bursts of 1200 hp.  Active mostly between fall 1940 and 1942, these aircraft were cursed as the 'scourge of the Atlantic' by Churchill in a speech due to their many successes against Allied convoys. Total production 52.

* C-4 (Mar' 42 to May '43) – Main later variant of the Fw 200. The forward turret was upgraded into a larger hydraulically power turret mounting a MG 151/20 cannon, a nasty piece of hardware – the MG 151/20 often made up the main armament on Luftwaffe fighters. The C-4 also usually mounted radar.  This was by a country mile the most useful upgrade the Fw 200 was to receive in the entire war: the production FuG 200 naval radar had a range of some 80 km in a 25 km-wide band. What's more, this bit of avionics allowed a Condor to loiter at medium altitudes and shadow a convoy beyond visual range. The C-4 also received a Lofte D7 bomb sight, replacing the Condor's former crap bomb sight with a superb one. This bombsight allowed accurate bombing from medium altitudes (3000 m) and what's more, could even be aimed by radar, allowing attacks through cloud cover. The upgrades of radar and this new bomb sight would, surprisingly, allow for a brief second period of success as a naval bomber. Surviving C-4s were often upgraded to later variants. Total production 107.

* C-5, C-6, Mar '43 to Sept '43) – A confusing jumble of small upgrades to the C-4. Some were factory built, others were upgraded to these standards in the field. Often upgrades were for the addition of radar or the ability to launch Hs 293 guided bombs. Total production: 39.

* C-8 (August '43 to Feb '44) – Final version of the Fw 200, built to be a Hs 293 carrier. Featured an extended gondola for the crewman who guided the bomb. Production ended in February 1944, with 9 factory produced, and another 16 Condors upgraded to the C-8 standard.

Top: a Fw 200 C-2, with the early engines and smaller turret, with an unusual black underside. The "globe-circle" symbol is for KG 40. Bottom: a C-1/C-2 in flight. Later engine nacelles would be more compact.

Kurt Tank, for his part, had dreamed of a proper successor airplane to the Fw 200, and by the end of 1941 had on the drawing boards a Fw 300. If the Fw 200 superficially resembled a DC-3, the Fw 300 was akin to the C-46 Commando: it had a long, ovoid fuselage with a fully pressurized cabin. Interestingly, it retained the cargo-carrying/airliner aspects of the Ju 290 and the Fw 200. This project was shelved, as high command wanted more work done on the Nazi pipe dream of the Amerika bomber.

The Thing in Itself

    Ironically for a airliner, the Fw 200 was exceptionally cramped inside. The adaptation of the Condor to a warplane had left several important flight controls out of the reach of the pilots from where they were sitting, and pilots had no rearward visibility. Bad ergonomics reached its peak with the trap door in the engineer's compartment immediately behind the cockpit. Thanks to the placement of the bulkhead doors on both sides of the engineer's compartment, the trap door (when open) was a pit between them.

 This German propaganda film features the Condor and at the 2:45 mark you can see the navigator/bombardier climb down to the bombardier's position if you don't know what I'm on about.

The space in the second compartment got worse in the C-4, as the hydraulic turret was a big cylindrical block of real estate in the center of the room, which crewmen had to crawl around. Immediately behind these were the fuel cells, and somewhere, the hatch to access the glass crawlspace where the rear machine gun was. Fw 200s also had 'waist' machine gun positions like in a B-17, though I think it was only optionally manned, and unlike the B-17 the guns were kept behind complex glass windows. Behind that was the rear top turret, with a similarly ornate '20 mm cannon under glass' arrangement which I believe the Condor shared with the He 111.

The glass cover slides forward for when the cannon is in the stowed position. Also, a nice detail shot of the forward turret on the C-3.

The glass cover slides forward for when the cannon is in the stowed position. Also, a nice detail shot of the forward turret on the C-3.

Until the C-3, Focke-Wolfe had pulled a rush job on the Condor's production, and had forgot to reinforce the fuselage, which meant dangerous stress cracks would form after only a few months combat flying. The C-3 was properly reinforced, but the Fw 200's airliner hull was (once again, ironically) suffering from its brilliant engineering. A more stoutly built airliner might have taken to these mods better, but the lightweight fuselage was now at it's limit as to how much weight it could take. A little beyond, actually: it was discovered the hard way that landing with bombs in the internal bomb bay sometimes would break the fuselage right in the middle. So after that, the bomb-bay usually remained empty. Also, the extra weight made staying aloft difficult if even one engine was lost – unlike say, the B-24, badly battered Condors rarely made it back to base. While self-sealing fuel tanks were introduced with the C-3, the only actual bit of armor on the whole plane was in the Captain’s chair.

The definition of an 'engineering tradeoff'.

 Like the Deadly Albatross soaring over the Ocean

     So with all that said, it seems like the Condor was doomed to a ignominious military career.  In fact, thanks to training, tactical mistakes on the part of its adversaries, and ideas from officers serving with the squadron, the Fw 200 would earn the ultimate honor of a Nazi war machine: Churchill would curse them as the 'scourge of the Atlantic.' As a recon platform it was somewhat effective in the far reaches of the ocean acting as an eye in the sky for U-boats, but surprisingly, it would be remembered best as an improvised bomber, having an actual 'happy time' where small groups of Condors would rack up many merchant ship kills.

    Hauppman Petersen, the officer who discovered the Condor, was assigned to head up the new wing of Fw 200s. Designated KG 40, this new wing was ready for operations in 1940 when the Nazis invaded Norway, initially flying recon missions alongside He 115s.  Fw 200s also flew straight transport missions, supporting the paratroops who as the campaign's opening move had captured Norway's airfields. When France fell, KG 40 was moved to Bordeaux to support U-boat operations in the Atlantic Petersen found himself fighting several battles at once – training his crews in the job of finding convoys over the ocean, while keeping his superiors from diverting Condors to other assignments, such as mining British harbors or making surprise raids on Liverpool. Slow production  made building up of Condor numbers difficult – KG 40 would often send only one Condor over the western approaches in a twenty four hour period. With the the crew's binoculars as the only detection system, recon flights in this period skimmed the ocean's surface at only a few hundred feet. As a result, many flights detected nothing. This justifiably produced a lot of inter-service bitching from the Kriegsmarine. This was in the middle of the first 'happy time' for German submarines, and relatively small numbers of U-boats were racking up kills with both hands – when they could find targets. 

    At the same time Condor operations started in the Atlantic, the strategic situation was changing for the Third Reich. Even in July and August 1940, with the Battle of Britain raging, Hitler had lost whatever enthusiasm he had for invading Great Britain, and was already dreaming of his next war, with the USSR. So when it was proposed that the Luftwaffe and Krigsmarine establish a total blockade against the British Isles, Hitler readily agreed, as it freed up the Weremarcht to get moving eastward.  Hitler calculated that even if the blockade didn't knock Britain out of the war entirely, it would weaken it to the point the island nation would be unable to oppose his plans, and allow the Nazi war machine to deal with the Soviets without distraction. The key to this strategy would be cooperation between the German air force and navy – which (spoiler alert!) was never very good. In fact, at one point Nazi Germany would be waging no less than five campaigns against British supply lines, with very little coordination between any of them.

      The search method of the Fw 200, if not great for actual searching, was excellent for bombing attacks. Given the low visibility haze that usually obtained over the Atlantic, a Condor would be visible to a ship only for a minute or two before it was dropping its bombs. Condors until the C-4 had a very basic bomb-sight, so the attack method was a low level bombing run 'bracketing' the target with the Condor's bomb load. Initially attacking convoy stragglers, Condor crews soon learned that convoys away from land based air cover had no defenses at all against air attacks. So, even a glass bird like the Condor could be used as an effective low level bomber. Petersen, once he discovered this, knew he had found the Condor's niche.

    As the Battle of Britain ended and the Blitz began, the improvements made to the Condor with the C-3 began to pay dividends. The Germans had been caught off guard before the war began for the need of a maritime bomber; now it was Britain’s turn to be caught off guard. Unfortunately for the British, by the time they perceived the risk, they were already under attack.

Condor Attacking a Convoy, and a Condor crew preparing for a mission - 1940

It was actually one particular attack that alerted the Royal Navy to the Condor danger. On October 26th 1940,  a Fw 200 C-3 attacked and set on fire the 42,000 ton ocean liner Empress of Britain. Taken under tow, the hulk was sunk by a U-boat. This attack was highly alarming to the Royal Navy: ocean liners in the Battle of the Atlantic often sailed alone, as they were capable of great sustained speeds – think 30 knots vs the 14 of the standard Atlantic Convoy – and often carried surface armament besides, making a submerged or surface attack by U-boats very unlikely. Further, the Royal Navy simply discounted the danger from air attacks.  Because of this, liners were often used as troop transports, so the sinking of one could lead to a great loss of life. Empress also carried some obsolete AA guns, which did nothing to impede the Condor's attack. Not only was the Empress of Britain the largest merchant ship lost in the Battle of the Atlantic thus far, the fact that the cause was a kipped-up airliner was especially galling to the British.

    A hasty assessment convoy aircraft defenses by the Royal Navy revealed  the depth of the problem. Modern AA guns had been thrown into production, but 1940 was a crisis year for British industry: all of Britain worked feverishly to re-arm its army, which had lost all of its equipment in May during the Dunkirk evacuation (not to mention the Battle of Britain that summer and fall.) The Navy was first in line for these new AA guns, leaving the convoys to make do with one or two obsolete WW1 era guns. Coastal Command, the branch of the RAF in charge of protecting Great Britain's coasts and sea lanes, was in a similar state: it was a dumping ground for obsolete aircraft no longer wanted by other services. The two aircraft that were the exceptions to this were, interestingly, modified airliners: the Short Sunderland flying boat, and the Lockheed Hudson. The Sunderland was heavily armed and legendarily tough, but at this point in the war were few in number, and slower than the Fw 200. While the Sunderland could guard a convoy to keep a Condor from attacking, they lacked the speed to pursue Fw 200s. The Hudson was a development of the Lockheed Electra, and while a danger to U-boats, they were lightly armed and armored. With a speed only a little better than the Condor, the Hudson was one of the few aircraft a Condor had a even chance of besting in combat.

The Rivals of the Fw 200: A RAAF Short Sunderland, and a RAF Hudson bomber.

The sinking of the Empress of Britain seems to have coincided with KG 40 finally being fully trained. Now they were not only the aerial scouts of the wolfpacks: the Condor had come into its own as a predator of Allied convoys. While the first two months saw few sinkings by Fw 200s, by the end of the year KG 40  had managed to sink 100,000 tons of merchant shipping and damage a further 190,000 tons without taking any losses from British defenses. Coordination with the U-boats, on the other hand, remained a problem. At one point early in the campaign, a Condor found a convoy and radioed its position to nearby U-boats, only to get no answer. When the pilot landed, he complained to U-boat command about this: he was then told that when he spotted the convoy, there were no U-boats in his area!

    Despite these handicaps, KG 40's success at bombing netted promotions and glory for all the airmen.  KG 40 personnel also got to go home for Christmas. Christmas 1940 also saw a brief but amusing palace coup. The German Navy was in the middle of its first happy time, where relatively few U-boats sank an astonishing number of Allied ships, and it infuerated the Kriegsmarine heads that their submarines had to spend precious time trying to find convoys because the Luftwaffe couldn't be bothered to do its job properly. When Goering went on Christmas vacation at the end of 1940, Adm. Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, sent Adm. Donitz to Hitler to beg that the Fw 200 be released to the Kriegsmarine's direct control. A direct quote from Donitz in this meeting: “If even 20 Condors are put under our control, U-Boat sinking will shoot up!” Hitler (possibly feeling the spirit of Christmas) agreed, and for two months, the Kriegsmarine had direct control over KG 40/I. Donitz, unlike Raeder, was very interested in the use of airplanes in naval matters, and dreamed of coordinated attacks between aircraft and U-boat wolf packs. He found a willing ally in the form of the promoted Major Petersen, now Commander of all of KG 40 and from January to June 1941, the drafted airliner would reach the peak of its success.

Part 2: Attack of the Nazi Big Birds