What if the Heinkel He 112 was the Luftwaffe's choice?

[The Wooksta!]

Heinrich Hertel redesigned the He 112A after it's rejection and came up with the simplified and more elegant He 112B, which every pilot that flew it loved.  Except the Japanese.  That didn't shake the RLM and the He 112 became an also ran, but the Rumanians were using them against B24s and the Spanish shot down a P38 with one.

Redesign from the ground up?  No, totally new sheet of paper.  The He 113 aka He 100.

Say Messerschmitt falls under a bus in '33 or annoys the Nazis enough to get himself a trip to one of their holiday camps near Dachau.  The He 112 gets into service, but combat in Spain proves the need for a redesign, so you get Hertel's He 112B.  The RLM says it's still a bit parts heavy, but they'll take them for now, so they go all out designing a successor, the He 113.  With the 112 in production, that'll get pushed back a bit.

[jcf]

The He 100 engine installation was its achilles heel when it came to modding the design,
as Harold suggested an He 112 approach would be more usable, and perhaps an increase
in wingspan to allow for additional fuel and easier changes/additions to armament etc.,
as time passed. Perhaps something roughly equivalent to the Ki 61 with an He 112 type
canopy, not quite a Ki 61 III, but similar in appearance.

[Weaver]

An alternative would be that they buy both designs. Let's say the RLM were less dogmatic about only picking one type and were persuaded of the virtues of a UK-style 'insurance policy' approach. That way the 109 (small manufacturer, lots of potential but an unknown quantity) is balanced by the 112 (established manufacturer, expensive but 'safe').

[KiwiZac]

AFAIK a major killer criterium for the He 112 was that it was expensive and more compliacted to produce than the Bf 109.

Like how the Spitfire was more complicated to produce than the Hurricane? [/devil's advocate]

[jcf]

AFAIK a major killer criterium for the He 112 was that it was expensive and more compliacted to produce than the Bf 109.

Like how the Spitfire was more complicated to produce than the Hurricane? [/devil's advocate]

A more extreme difference in some ways, at least the Spifire wing was thin, the thick-wing of the 112 would have caused
difficulties over time as increasing engine hp and thus performance, as done with Spitfire, would have more quickly reached a
point of diminishing returns.

[Weaver]

If the He 112 was adopted as the Luftwaffe's primary fighter, might we have seen production of the He 111 ended sooner to free up Heinkel to produce more fighters? After all, there was a choice of three medium bombers, in contrast to the situation with fighters, so perhaps more Do 17s or Ju 88s would have been ordered instead, and advanced versions such as the Do 217 and Ju 188 introduced sooner?

Another thing to think about: if BFW (Messerschmitt) had lost the RLM fighter competition, what would they have done? Would Willy Messerschmitt have stayed there, or moved to another company? What other irons did they have in the fire?

[Rick Lowe]

They were doing the Bf-110 for a start, which carried on in production through most of the war.

And later working on the 210/410 series.

[jcf]

Do 17 and Ju 88 are not good choices over the He 111, as bombers, in the early days,
it was the Luftwaffe's 'medium-heavy' until the Do 217 came along, so with what was
going on I don't think the RLM would want to commit to closing the 111 line.