Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Fw 190 A-5

The A-5 was born from a practical finding: the Fw 190 could carry far more ordnance than was being asked of it. To exploit that, the BMW 801 D-2 engine was moved fifteen centimetres forward — a modification already tried on the A-3/U1 — which shifted the centre of gravity ahead and allowed more weight to be carried aft. Between November 1942 and June 1943, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-two aircraft of this version were built.

No other Fw 190 version generated so many sub-variants. The A-5/U2 was a night Jabo-Rei, with anti-reflective fittings and exhaust flame dampers, an ETC 501 centreline rack for a 250 kg bomb and 300-litre drop tanks under the wings. The U3 was a pure Jabo; the U4, a reconnaissance aircraft with two RB 12.5 cameras; the U8, another Jabo-Rei that ended up redesignated as the Fw 190 G-2; the U12 replaced the outer cannon with two underwing gun pods carrying two MG 151/20 each, for six cannon in total; and the U14 was able to carry a torpedo. The A-5/R11 was a night fighter conversion with FuG 217 Neptun radar, with dipole aerial arrays fore and aft of the cockpit and above and below the wings.

The trainer family also came out of the A-5: some veteran aircraft were converted into the A-5/U1 by replacing the MW 50 tank with a second cockpit, and those aircraft were later redesignated Fw 190 S-5. An A-5/U3 that crashed into a marsh near Leningrad in 1943 was located in 1989, restored in the United States and returned to flight on 1 December 2010 with its original BMW 801 engine; it is preserved today at Everett, Washington.