The Me 264 V2 was constructed with armor in place though sans its defensive guns but was not fully completed. The Me 264 V3 was given its guns and full armor (this one too never fully completed) but by this time, German interest in the project had waned. The Me 264 faced a slew of material delays and underperformed in tests despite claims made by the people at Messerschmitt. The German Navy (and the RLM for that matter) instead decided to focus their attentions on using the Junkers Ju 290 in the preferred roles and wait on its intended long-range, six-engine cousin - the Ju 390 - to achieve operational status. The official call for cancellation involving the fruitless Me 264 program came to an end in Reichsmarschall Technical Order Nr. 2. The Me 264 program was closed down officially on September 23rd, 1944.
Proposed Developments
The Me 264 V4 would have been fitted with BMW 801 E turbocharged engines and a GM-1 boost system. Other visions saw the Me 264 in an armed transport role, fitted with a remote-controlled turret. Still other developments could have been powered by jet engines and turboprops or fitted with drop tanks or a bevy of reconnaissance cameras. An armed, long-distance reconnaissance platform was designated as the Me 264A while a long-range bomber variant was to take on the designation of Me 264B.
Walk-Around
The external appearance of the Me 264 was not unlike that of the upcoming American-produced Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The aircraft sported a torpedo-like, all-metal, tubular fuselage with a streamlined and heavily-glazed forward area housing the cockpit. The fuselage quickly tapered off into an empennage and topped by a "T" style tail assembly sporting a pair of rounded vertical tail fins (ala the B-24 Liberator). The main, large-span wings were high-mounted assemblies extending out just aft of the cockpit and ahead of the fuselage center. Each wing housed two radial piston engines in streamlined nacelles emanating from the wing leading edges. The wing leading edges themselves were swept while the trailing edges were straight. The undercarriage was fully retractable and made up of single-wheeled ("donut" style) main landing gear legs and a single-wheeled nose landing gear leg. The main landing gears recessed into underwing wells while the nose landing gear recessed rearwards under the cockpit floor. The nose gear was further complicated by rotating some 90 degrees to lie flat underneath the cockpit floor.
Defensive armament was to have been comprised of 4 x 13mm MG 131 machine guns complimented by a pair of 20mm MG 151/20 cannons in remote-controlled turrets (ala the B-29 Superfortress). The offensive internal bomb load was limited to 6,614lbs.
The End of the Line
Junkers eventually won out in the long run with their large Ju 390 - a design that could take advantage of the existing Ju 290 parts already in circulation and production. In all, only the three Me 264 airframes were produced, with the V1 only ever achieving flight and this eventually being fielded in a limited role with Transportstaffel 5. Under German orders, Messerschmitt's focus then turned on developing their Me 262 twin-engine, jet-powered fighter. Hitler's dream of harassing the American East Coast was dead.
While the V2 and V3 prototypes were destroyed in subsequent Allied bombing raids, the V1 forged on until suffering a direct hit in another Allied air raid. The V1 was not repaired, however, and therefore left out of operational service for the duration of the war.
Miscellaneous
Some reports based on the interrogation of a German POW based at Lechfeld in 1943 revealed that a Sonderkommando Nebel Me 264 flew a regular route from somewhere in Finland to locations in Japan. This is of particular note for it showcases the range inherent in the Me 264 design as well as possible future German plans to field the Me 264 in the Pacific Theater against the Australian mainland and regionally-located American and British forces.
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