Today, in the Freeware Hot Files List, the "What-If" (Brown, Green, Blue) exterior colors of this historic WW II German Aircraft caught my attention. This aircraft was proposed to be a replacement for the famous, but obsoleted, Ju87/Stuka. Notice its oversized and elongated engine nacelles, due to the peculiar design of housing the main landing gears within the nacelles. Please find, below, two images for each paint - gears extended. Curious facts worthy of Note: Lead Designer of the (German) Blohm & Voss range of aircraft, was Richard Vogt. During later part of his life, while at Boeing, he investigated the effect of the length and shape of wings on the flying range, and he also proved that small extensions attached to both tips of the wings (winglets) improved the aerodynamics and increased the operational range of the aircraft. His last assignment, at Boeing, was the after-launch evaluation of the design of the Boeing 747. He died, in January 1979, in Santa Barbara, California, at the age 84.

So, these are the images of an aircraft that never materialized, but likely contributed to future evolutions of other aircraft. [FlightSim(FW) - Erwin Welker]

While I appreciate the shots I have to say, that is one ugly airplane.  IMHO

Being that it was intended to replace the Junker 87, the B&V P185 actually has a somewhat obvious potential design flaw in it. Like almost every Luftwaffe bomber of the period - in large part because of Ernst Udet's obsession with dive bombing, but not helped by thoroughly horrible man, Erhard Milch's, idiotic behaviour either - the RLM had insisted that every Luftwaffe bomber had to have some dive-bombing capability.

This was no bad thing for the Junkers 87 however, which was sturdy aeroplane capable of withstanding the stresses of dive bombing and pulling out with high G and that sturdy construction served the venerable 'Stuka' well in its later role as a tank-buster in the Russian theatre of WW2, but its development came at some cost; like the P185, the prototype Junkers 87 originally had a twin-finned tailplane, until it was discovered after several fatalities during its development, that such a layout was very prone to flutter a so more conventional single fin coupled with a sturdy externally-braced tailplane was the way to go, such that when not deploying their dive brakes, production series Junkers Ju87 dive bombers were known and indeed demonstrated to have withstood speeds of well over 500 mph.

In fairness, designing a replacement for the Junkers 87 was really a tall order as the good old 'Stuka' was a really fantastic aeroplane which has been much maligned by historians, many of whom claim that it was a sitting duck in combat and outclassed by Allied aeroplanes, simply because they've read or heard that being often repeated as though it was some kind of incontrovertible fact, when it isn't really true at all.

Back with the P185 though, I think it looks a bit like another less well known WW2 aeroplane - the Westland Whirlwind.

Dan and Alan: Thanks!....Didn't think this 15-minute post would generate such excitement on a Sunday...🙂...

Alan: Very good notes, as always, and reference to Ju87....!

And, Dan: Now, you see why I said, only the "...exterior colors of this..aircraft caught my attention...". So, let's just say it looks interesting!

But, more seriously, Richard Vogt, the driving force behind the Blohm & Voss series, I now understand, was supposedly an eccentric genius, with his inventions full of oddities and novelties, allowing the (limited) available technologies he had to grapple with at the time. Such inverted Gull-Wing type (mostly military) aircraft were not un-common during those days. And, when, one combined large engines with such wing-shape, it did end up looking "ugly"....

The U.S. built Corsair also had inverted Gull-wing, but it looks, much more graceful with, of course, just one engine. There were some noted advantages (at the time) to the inverted Gull-Wing design such as lower drag, folding/unfolding of the wings, and larger clearance for other things...But, I agree, one of the disadvantages was some looked odd.

After all, the Seabird, from which such wings takes the name from, is such a  graceful bird...with normal gull-wings, of course! Have a good one!

Generally speaking, I think gull-winged designs look pretty good, and of course there is also the (less well known) Soviet Yermolayev Yer-2, which does in fact share quite a lot of similarities with that P185 and still manages to look quite pretty for a twin engined warplane: