Messerschmitt Me.210, part two

Messerschmitt's engineers had started working on a replacement for the Bf.110 since 1937 and, when this aircraft entered service just one year after, the RLM was already looking for its successor. Messerschmitt submitted a modified Bf.110 design as the Me.210 and Arado presented the Arado Ar.240 (which has been already posted in this very same blog).The Me.210 was a substantial departure in design terms from the Bf.110, but used many of the same parts. The main difference was that the modified nose area was much shorter and it was located over the center of gravity, it had an internal bomb bay, completely new wings designed for higher cruise speeds and a highly advanced remote-control defensive armament system that gave the gunner a greater wider field of view. 
Theoretically its performance was impressive, as it could reach 620km/h (390mph) on two 1330hp Daimler Benz DB 601F engines, making it around 80km/h (50mph) faster than the Bf.110 and almost as fast as any single engined fighter of the time.
The Me.210's landing gear was the result of the same design philosophies that had resulted from the main change in the earlier Ju.88's main landing gear design. One main gear had a single gear strut that twisted through 90º during retraction to give the main gear wheel resting atop the lower end of the main strut when retracted inwards into the wing. However, unlike the Ju.88, the main gear wheels were inboard of the main gear struts when fully extended, instead of outboard of the struts like the Ju.88's ones.
The Me.210A-1 variant, which was a heavy-fighter-bomber variant was produced from January 1941 (with deliveries to the Luftwaffe delayed due to the problems with the prototype) until March 1943. With a total of 354 Me.210A-1 produced, Messerschmitt was the main manufacturer of the type with 328 of them manufactured both in their plants of Augsburg and Regensburg and 26 of them being manufactured by Mühlenbau un Industrie AG, in Braunschweig in February 1942 only.
The Me.210A-2 variant, was also a heavy-fighter-bomber variant with dive bombing capabilities.It was manufactured from 1941 until 1943 by Messerschmitt AG, both in Augsburg and Regensburg but also by the Hungarian Dunai Repülögépgyár Rt. where it was produced under the designation of Me.210C-1 despite being regular Me.210A-2s.
The Me.210 was delivered to the frontlines in April 1942 and it proved to be very unpopular within the pilots. Production was stopped for some time at the end of that same month after delivering only 90 of them. Another partially completed models were put in storage and the Bf.110 was put back into production, because in spite of the new design, greater firepower (both offensive and defensive) and the newer Daimler Benz DB 605B engines, it was still an outdated design.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_210

2. https://forum.valka.cz/topic/view/1019

3. https://forum.valka.cz/topic/view/63148

4. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters