[Chaoic16]

Iar-80/81 is one of my all time favorite aircraft. As i grew up I was reading books and magazines about it.
Was generally a good plane for the first part of the war, but by 1944-1945 it was greatly outperformed by all the fighters it had to fly against. Be it Russian front line fighters on the Eastern front, American P-51's and P-38's over Ploiesti, or the German late war 109's and 190's that fought against after August 1944.
Nevertheless it gave a good account for itself.
The biggest handicap the aircraft had was the engine.
IAR realized that the Mistral Major was at the limits of its development potential even by the middle of 1941, when the 1000A model reached the same ultimate output as the original Gnome-Rhone versions. An ongoing program to fit the IAR.80 with a more powerful engine had been in the works for most of the design's lifetime, but this proved to be a fruitless endeavor.

The most obvious choice for a new engine would be the BMW 801 used in the Fw 190. This engine produced a full 600 hp (447 kW) more power, and although it was heavier, it was of roughly the same size as the K14. IAR engineers estimated that a BMW powered IAR.80 would have a maximum speed of at least 600 km/h.
This sort of performance would have made it one of the fastest airplanes of its day, comparable with the Supermarine Spitfire V's and 109F's, and bested only by the 190 itself.
But as always the Germans were unable to supply the engine as every example coming off the line was needed for installation in a German airframe. Licensed production was likewise out of the question, the engine production was in the midst of being ramped and the demand was so great that not even one set of jigs could be spared.

If they could have gotten the BMW-801 engine the new IAR would have looked something like this:

A drawing i found:

I took the liberty to paint over a sort of profile:

I give my first born for it. :lol: :mrgreen:

Added to the list under Romanian nation and I also labelled the link to color profile you made with yoru name, in order, to give you credit for your work.




Chaoic out...