aircraft variations question

That question will get some people scratching their heads.

Anytime a company made a change to the original specification it resulted in a variation number being assigned to the design. I just read a book on the B-29 and there were more variants than I ever thought about. Change the radios, give it a new spec number. Remove the tail cannons, give it a new spec number.

This only applied to production aircraft, field mods were vast, though many of them did end up being employed at the factory...which did meant issuing a new spec number...which filtered to the ones in the field as well.

My guess to answer your question would be either something from the Germans. 

What a question;

As an example, the Do217 was made in approx 50 variants (inc. prototypes) with somewhere in the region of 17 readily known of field conversions being available.

I imagine the FW190, Ju88 & He111 are all quite "varied"  - but I imagine that this would be down to nature of the country these craft came from. There were several allied aircraft out there (B-24 for example) that were modified on an ongoing basis without much official happening to the version / variant - much in the same way that several current aircraft have been in such a state of "variation" that upgrades to the entire  fleet with the sole reason of bringing comonality to the fleet (for maintenance reasons) have been carried out.

I recon the FW190 must be up there,  M.R. will no doubt have an opinion on this one?

This post may be better answered in the AC forum?

THe bf109 had so many variations that the Rlm could not keep track. I don't know off the top of my head how many were built but between the pressurized versions, and various other add on's it was alot. Alot more than the fw190.

If I had to fathom an educated guess, I would also say the '109.

what about the Spitfire? They at least got to a MK23 (maybe even a MK25), and then there were the Seafires.

gary