The Blohm & Voss BV 138 Seedrache (Sea Dragon) was a World War II German flying boat that functioned as the Luftwaffe's main long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
This distinctive and rather pleasant-looking twin-boom reconnaissance flying-boat was nicknamed "Flying Shoe" and became operational in Bv 138A-1 form in 1940. Trouble with the three 447kW Junkers Jumo 205C-4 engines, one mounted high above the centerline driving a four-blade propeller, and one on each wing driving three-blade propellers, meant that it was little used operationally until the 656kW Jumo 205D(diesel)-engined Bv 138B-1s and C-1s entered service. Initially flown mainly over the Baltic and North Atlantic Ocean, Bv 138s later operated successfully over the North Sea and elsewhere (from bases in occupied Norway) in an attempt to search out Allied convoys and then direct U-boats on to them. The Bv 138 finished its career in a mine-sweeping role, carrying a large degaussing "hoop" around its fuselage to explode magnetic mines. A total of 273 production Bv 138s were completed.
General characteristics
Crew: 6, pilot, navigator, radio operator, nose gunner, rear gunner, upper rear gunner + up to 10 passengers
Length: 19.9 m (65 ft 3 in)
Wingspan: 27 m (88 ft 7 in)
Height: 6.6 m (21 ft 7 in)
Empty weight: 8,100 kg (17,860 lb)
Loaded weight: 14,700 kg (32,400 lb)
Powerplant: 3× Junkers Jumo 205D diesel, 656 kW (880 hp) each
Performance
Maximum speed: 275 km/h @ 6,000 m (171 mph @ 19,700 ft)
Range: 5,000 km (3,105 mi)
Service ceiling: 5,000 m (16,400 ft)
Rate of climb: 220 m/min (729 ft/min)
Power/mass: 0.106 kW/kg (0.064 hp/lb)
Armament
3 × 13 mm (.51 in) MG 131 machine gun
(Some models had two 20 mm cannons on the turrets)
500 kg (1,100 lb) of bombs or depth charges.
Original FS5 version by M. D. Anderle.
All reworked to CFS1 with new textures, damage profile and moving parts: Edmundo Abad 2010.
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This virtual model represent the Blohm & Voss Bv138 # 7R+HL, Constanza (Bulgaria) 1943.
Special thanks to Christian Maas for his excellent tool Hex-editor XVI32 and Chuck Dome by his MDL file viewer. Without their tools, I might not have been able to assign new textures to the original model.
This virtual model is up-scaled to obtain a better view in Combat Flight Simulator.
(for accurate scale in FS98, replace the file Bv138.MDL by Bv138.old.MDL and rename this as Bv138.MDL).
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Installation CFS
1. Unzip to Temporaly directory "Bv138.zip".
2. Copy "Bv138" folder to X:\CFS\aircraft directory.
