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The main problem for aircraft designers in the 1930s was a lack of engine power. Construction methods had progressed to the point where airframes could be built at any required size, but the engines needed to lift them were not available. The US, confident in its ability to produce any required quantity of engines, opted for four-engine designs with heavy defensive firepower, as seen in the B-17. England and Germany did not have this luxury, both were severely constrained in engine production and tried to make due with two engine designs. Both also invested heavily in a new generation of much more powerful engines, which would provide the needed power for B-17-sized aircraft powered by only two engines. By the late 1930s the new high-power engines started to run, and both England and Germany drew up designs based on them. In England the Avro Manchester proved to be a failure, but when the Royal Air Force finally acquiesced and the design was re-built with four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, the resulting Avro Lancaster emerged as possibly the first truly useful heavy bomber.

In 1936 the RLM had started the competition for the first purpose-designed schnellbomber, a bomber fast enough to simply outrun the defending fighters. It was thought that, with the limited power available, the bomber's two engines would mean it would always be faster than a single-engined fighter. This point was "proven" in the 1936 Air Races in Zurich, where the Dornier Do 17's outran fighter designs from across Europe. Later that year they selected the Junkers Ju 88The Junkers Ju 88 was a WW2 Luftwaffe twin-engine multi-role aircraft. Among the most versatile planes of the war, it was used as a bomber, close-support aircraft, nightfighter, torpedo bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. A solid aircraft with great perfo over a number of competitors. However the tradeoffs for speed were serious, the Ju 88 was a small aircraft, carrying a fairly small load in its tiny bomb bay. This could be addressed by adding additional load on external racks, but doing so dramatically reduced performance due to increased drag. In addition the limited engine power meant that the plane could not lift a reasonable warload and the fuel needed to carry it any distance, dramatically limiting its combat effectiveness. In order to make up for its shortcomings, a number of other aircraft such as the Heinkel He 111The Heinkel He 111 was the primary Luftwaffe medium bomber during the early stages of World War II, and is perhaps the most obvious symbol of the German side of the Battle of Britain. Developed from a pre-war airliner design, the He 111 was phased out of and Dornier Do 17 were also pressed into service to fill particular performance niches, a problem no one in the Luftwaffe was at all happy with.

The Ju 88 was just entering service when Germany's own high-power engines started bench testing. Daimler-BenzDaimler-Benz AG was founded on May 1, 1924 by the merger of Benz & Cie. and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft. It merged in 1998 with the Chrysler Corporation to form DaimlerChrysler AG. See also List of automobile manufacturers Aircraft engine manufacturers D was offering the DB 604 and JunkersFor the Prussian/ German landowning classes, see " junker". The name Junkers is well known in connection with aircraft, which were produced under this name for the Luftwaffe during World War II. They were instrumental in many campaigns such as bombing Gue their Jumo 222The Jumo 222 was a high power aircraft engine design from Junkers. The design failed to mature even after years of intensive development, dooming the entire Bomber B program along with it. Only a small number were built, never leaving the prototype phase,, both of which planned on delivering 2,500hp to start with. Compared to the Jumo 211The Junkers Jumo 211 was the aircraft engine used by German company Junkers to propel its Ju 88 twin-engine, multirole airplane which was built for the Luftwaffe and heavily employed in World War II. The engine power generated by the Jumo 211A was 900 kW's in the Ju 88, these new engines would over double the power available to 5,000hp. With this sort of power a significantly more capable design could be built, one with considerably larger internal space for a much large bombload, more fuel for longer range, and even better speed.

Junkers had been studying dramatically more capable versions of the Ju 88 powered by their Jumo 222 or Jumo 223The Junkers Jumo 223 was an experimental 24-cylinder aircraft engine based on the Junkers Jumo 205. It had four banks of six cylinders in a rhomboid configuration, with four crankshafts one at each vertex of the rhombus, and 48 pistons. Only one example i from late 1937. No serious work was undertaken, but after Heinrich Hertel left Heinkel and joined Junkers in 1939, the EF 74 design was submitted to the RLM in May 1939. Accordingly the RLM sent out the specifications for Bomber B in July 1939, the Ju 88 retroactively becoming Bomber A. Bomber B called for a new medium with a maximum speed of 600km/h (373mph), able to carry a bomb load of 4000kg (8,820lbs) to any part of Britain from bases in France or Norway. To improve crew performance and defensive firepower, the designs were to have a pressurized cabin with remote control armament. With the extended range, larger payload and better performance, the Bomber B design would replace all existing bombers in service.

Prototype airframes of both designs were ready mid-1940, but in a taste of things to come, neither the Jumo or DB engines were ready to be installed. Instead of waiting, both teams decided to power their prototypes with the BMW 801 radial engine, although with 900hp less per engine, the planes would be seriously underpowered. The first 222's did not arrive until October 1941, and by this point the DB project had already been cancelled. By May 1942 things were getting desperate, and it was suggested that the Daimler-Benz DB 606 be used instead, even though it was considerably larger and heavier. Prototypes of both designs with these engines were ordered, although the Fw was just getting into the air with the 801s at this point and the 288 was showing a continual tendency to break its landing gear on touchdown. Desperation set in at the RLM, who had no other designs in the pipe to fill the gap left if Bomber B didn't work. A slightly improved Ju 88 was ordered as the Ju 188 , and several prototypes of "stretched" versions of existing bomber designs with four engines were also ordered.

In June 1943 the T-Amt finally gave up; by this point even if the Jumo 222 started working reliably, as it had been recently, a shortage of the metals needed for the high-temperature alloys it used meant it wouldn't be able to enter production anyway. The Bomber B project was a massive and amazingly costly venture that delivered nothing, while also serving to ensure that no other designs were available in the late-1943 time-frame when their existing planes started to become hopelessly outdated.