Sommaire pour Luftwaffe - Secret jets of the Third Reich de Aviation Classics

With work on Hans von Ohain’s HeS 3A engine progressing during early 1938, the Heinkel company set about designing a simple aircraft in which it could be demonstrated. When the drawings were completed they were submitted to the RLM, which allocated type number 178 to the design. Construction of the He 178 V1 prototype then began towards the end of the year. In approaching the RLM for type approval, Heinkel had shown its hand and revealed the work that had been going on in secret up to that point. The move invited further discussion and by the end of the year Heinkel and Messerschmitt had been asked to work on fighter airframe designs that could be powered by turbojets. Both companies were given development contracts by the RLM to proceed…

With the first production versions of the Me 163B being readied for active service and with pilots being trained to fly them into combat, it was obvious from all accounts that the type had some serious flaws. Unlike the Luftwaffe’s first turbojet fighter, no competition or formal requirement had led to the creation of the Me 163 – just one man’s singular vision and years of experimental work. The type was destined to enter service as an interceptor, yet it had not been specifically designed for that purpose; rather, that was simply the mission that best fit its unique capabilities and its unique limitations. By the beginning of 1944, effective interceptors were needed as never before. The USAAF’s Eighth Air Force was causing severe disruption to German industry and infrastructure…

When the 1-TL-Jäger competition was announced in July 1944, Junkers was not among the companies invited to participate. However, during the first presentation of designs on September 8-10, it was decided that Junkers should be asked to submit a proposal. When the Second World War begin, few German aircraft companies had their own wind tunnels, relying instead on the various aviation research institutes and organisations that were flourishing at that time. Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke in Dessau had, in contrast, owned and operated a variety of them since 1914. Its most advanced wind tunnel, capable of testing models up to Mach 0.9, came into operation in October 1941 and the company began using this to carry out swept wing research towards the end of April 1943. After testing a variety…

The story of the Volksjäger requirement of September 10, 1944, is remarkable from beginning to end. It is uncertain exactly whose idea it was to launch a second single-jet fighter competition before the presentations for the 1-TL-Jäger had even ended but whoever it was had a keen sense of how that contest was going to progress – slowly. They also evidently had a good idea of just how little time might be left to bring such a project to fruition before the necessary resources were no longer available to Germany. Starting on Friday, September 8, 1944, representatives of Blohm & Voss, Focke-Wulf, Heinkel and Messerschmitt had been discussing the latter three firms’ pitches for the 1-TL-Jäger competition – Focke-Wulf’s Nr. 280 design, Heinkel’s P.1073 and Messerschmitt’s P.1101. The meeting continued…

One of the best known and perhaps most fearsome German ‘secret projects’ designs of the Second World War is Blohm & Voss’s P.215. It is not the tailless shape, the bat wings or the gaping nose intake that tend to inspire dread, however, but the range of weapons options with which the company presented it. At a time when air-to-air missiles were still in their infancy, and since the P.215’s primary mission would be to take down bombers at night, it could have potentially been endowed with a level of raw straight-ahead unguided firepower like no other. According to the introduction to the P.215 brochure, dated March 1945: “The 215 project grew out of the P 212 design, a day fighter with only one turbojet. “With a three-man crew, with…

Messerschmitt had been attempting to build a cheap wooden fighter aircraft since 1941 under the project number P.1079. This was subsequently given the RLM type number Me 328. Three versions were initially proposed: an unpowered glider, a turbojet-powered fighter and a fighter powered by one or more Argus As 014 pulse jets. The pulse jet, patented by engineer Paul Schmidt in 1931, consisted of a simple tube of mild steel with a set of shutters over the intake at the front and a fuel inlet valve and igniter inside. Engine company Argus built the As 014 and a larger version with a square-shaped intake, the As 044. Started using blasts of compressed air to the intake, the engine was allowed to build up to a minimum operating temperature before this…

There was no experience of working with ramjets at Heinkel but its design staff at Vienna did have a lot of recent experience in advanced aerodynamics and in using low grade materials thanks to the He 162 project. In early 1945 the RLM decided to take advantage of this resource and asked the company to design a ramjet-powered fighter using the test results and designs produced by Dr Sänger over a year earler. The result was to be Heinkel’s final entirely new project of the Second World War, though not its final design. Within days of the first drawings, however, on March 31 the Heinkel designers were forced to pack up and rapidly relocate ahead of the advancing Soviet army. Much of what could not easily be carried was burned…

Physicist Paul Karlson, author of Du und Die Natur, published in English as You and the Universe: Modern Physics for Everybody in 1938, produced a report on September 9, 1943, based on an idea conceived by his friend Alexander Lippisch. It was entitled Ramm-Raketen nach Dr Alexander Lippisch, Wien or ‘Ram Rockets According to Dr Alexander Lippisch, Vienna’ and it discussed the idea of building a small but very strong rocket-propelled aircraft capable of surviving multiple collisions with enemy aircraft. He wrote: “In fighter pilot circles the ramming collision is discussed seriously as the only really certain method of attack. To make it possible Dr Alexander Lippisch has sketched a novel flying device that can be described as a ram rocket. “The proposal does not originate from a fantasy but…

Development of the jet engine in Germany began and progressed in parallel with work on gas turbines taking place in Britain during the mid-1930s. By the end of the decade, however, the Germans had moved much more decisively to realise the new powerplant’s potential. The German government encouraged all of the country’s major engine manufacturers to begin work on jet engine designs and as a result, despite the technological challenges involved, BMW, Junkers and Heinkel made significant progress during the early part of the Second World War. At the same time, pioneering work on rocket engines and gliders carried out during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s was also coming to fruition. By 1944, just as the war was reaching its tipping point, a whole host of interrelated aviation…

When Heinkel submitted its drawings of what became the He 178 to the RLM, along with the test data showing why and how it would work, it became clear that the new turbojet powerplant was a viable proposition. Heinkel and Messerschmitt were natural choices to design a fighter based around the new powerplant since both had been front runners in the 1936 fighter competition which eventually saw the latter’s Bf 109 beat the former’s He 112 fighter to mass production. Messerschmitt’s jet project, begun with the allocation of an RLM development contract at the end of 1938, was given the company designation P.65 – changed to P.1065 when the company later altered its numbering system. Early on, the firm attempted to design a single-engine jet fighter with the powerplant in…

German night fighter designs had been exclusively piston-engined until 1944. While work was being carried out to produce jet-propelled day fighters, reconnaissance aircraft and bombers, new piston engine designs such as the Heinkel He 219 Uhu and Focke-Wulf Ta 154 were being prepared for the Luftwaffe’s night fighter units. The former first flew on November 6, 1942, while the latter first took to the air on June 1, 1943. However, while both were advanced designs, neither aircraft could match the performance of the night fighter version of the de Havilland Mosquito, which began intercepting German night raiders in mid-1942. In addition, both types were beset by development difficulties – the He 219 with its engines and the Ta 154 with the glue used in its wooden construction – which left…

With a reputation for shipbuilding that was second to none it seemed only natural when, in 1933, Hamburg-based Blohm & Voss set up a new aviation subsidiary – Hamburger Flugzeugbau – that specialised in seaplanes, flying boats and maritime patrol aircraft. Based in Hamburg’s Finkenwaerder quarter, Blohm & Voss’s aircraft designers had not had cause to work on a single-seat fighter until Messerschmitt’s failing shipborne/high altitude fighter project, the Me 155, was handed to them in August 1943 by the RLM. The overtaxed Messerschmitt design team had struggled to give any time to the Me 155, which was very loosely based on the Bf 109 and shared a handful of the same components, but Blohm & Voss was delighted to have the opportunity to be working on a prestigious single-seat…

The only jet aircraft in service anywhere in the world when the requirements for the 1-TL-Jäger were issued was Messerschmitt’s Me 262. The firm had learned some hard lessons during the twin-engine aircraft’s design and development and was now able to apply real world data to its single-engine designs. Work on these had begun at the start of 1943 with the P.1092. This was an attempt to create a multirole fighter with a Jumo 004 engine built into the lower fuselage and fed by an intake just below the aircraft’s nose. None of these was particularly successful, primarily due to the low power of just one 004 – the Me 262 had two – but also because the designers struggled with the same problems faced by Focke-Wulf, such as where…

The bad weather and night fighter competition launched during the summer of 1944 had resulted in a series of stopgap designs where existing types were heavily modified to perform this additional role. The most promising of these was Messerschmitt’s Me 262B-2a with Arado’s Ar 234P-5 being the most likely runner-up. However, neither of these was ever likely to have the range to fulfil the traditional night fighter role already being carried out by piston-engine aircraft such as the Ju 88Cs and Gs. Similarly, neither aircraft had the fuselage capacity to accommodate all the electronic equipment and weaponry by this point necessary to successfully wage war in the air at night. The apparently imminent arrival of the powerful HeS 011 also put the two Jumo 004-powered types at a disadvantage. It…

During November 1944, Focke-Wulf carried out a design study on a single-seat twin-jet fighter and fighter-bomber – the Zweimotoriges TL-Jagdflugzeug mit HeS 109-011. This innovative design, outlined in Kurzbeschreibung Nr. 23, grouped both engines together in the forward lower part of the fuselage. According to the report, “compared to the single-engine TL-fighter, this combines better flight performance and stronger throttling capability with the possibility of carrying a bomb of up to 1000kg weight in the fuselage. “The stronger throttling capability results from the combined propulsion of two closely juxtaposed in-fuselage turbojet devices, one of which can be turned off while cruising without the aeroplane being forced to make rudder deflections and thus sliding angles.” All the type’s fuel was to be carried in its fuselage. Within the report, Focke-Wulf offered…

Much like his contemporaries and sometime rivals Wernher von Braun and Alexander Lippisch, Eugen Sänger was fascinated by new forms of propulsion. He had been writing scientific articles and papers about rockets since the early 1930s and towards the end of the decade he and his assistant Irene Bredt began work on a highly ambitious sub-orbital rocket bomber project which attracted the attention and funding of the RLM. He was appointed to work for the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) at Ainring in Upper Bavaria but in 1942 his bomber project was cancelled. Next he began to work on ramjets – engines where air enters an intake at high speed and is slowed, compressed and then combusted to generate thrust. Within a year he had come up with a proposal…

Charismatic brothers Walter and Reimar Horten had become interested in gliders just as the golden age of unpowered flight was reaching its peak in Germany. Aged 12 and 14 respectively, they began to regularly attend gliding events on the Wasserkuppe in 1927 and inspired by Alexander Lippisch’s cutting edge flying wing designs, they produced their first glider in 1933, the tailless H I. Over the next three years, they refined their designs and regularly attended flying events. When Reimar was called up for military service in 1936 he had the good fortune of being assigned to JG 134. His new commanding officer, Hauptmann Oskar Dinort, a competitive glider pilot, already knew him and couldn’t believe his luck at having his own glider designer on staff. He made Reimar a reserve…

While other firms focused their efforts on making supremely lightweight ground-launched bomber interceptors filled with rocket fuel and heavy ordnance, Arado took an entirely different approach. A report produced in December 1944 by designers only identified as Brauer and Lindecke details a well armoured rocket-powered air-launched Kleinstjäger or ‘midget fighter’. The authors begin by outlining their thinking behind the design: “Design description of a midget fighter: The nearer a fighter can approach his adversary, the higher the probability that he will bring him down. “However, if the adversary is heavily armed, it may be impossible for the attacker to come within effective combat range; unless, indeed, the fighter has complete armour protection making him invulnerable to enemy fire. “Such complete armour protection for a standard piston-engined or jet-propelled fighter is,…

The origin of rocket-powered aircraft in general and the Messerschmitt Me 163 in particular can be traced back to a conversation between four Germans in 1928. After the First World War, the construction of aero engines was forbidden in Germany by the Treaty of Versailles so former wartime pilots took to building gliders that would allow them to fly again. Veterans erected hangars on the Wasserkuppe, the highest peak in the Rhön Mountains, and from 1920 onwards aviators gravitated there to take part in gliding competitions. This led to significant advances in aerodynamics and aviation technology as efforts were made to extract the maximum possible performance from engineless aircraft. Among this band of aviators were Fritz Stamer and Alexander Lippisch. Both men had flown during the war, Stamer as a…

A requirement for a new single-jet high-performance fighter, known as the 1-TL-Jäger, was issued in July 1944 and Germany’s aircraft manufacturers were quick to realise that this was potentially the most important competition in which they had so far had the opportunity to participate. Designing a successful single-seat fighter carried a huge amount of prestige and the most famous fighter firms – Messerschmitt, Focke-Wulf and Heinkel – jumped at the chance to create the successor to not only the Me 262 but perhaps also the Bf 109 and Fw 190 too. The general staff of the Luftwaffe set out ambitious performance goals for the new fighter in the requirements of the contest. It needed to have a top speed of 1000kph (621mph), an endurance of one hour at 7000m (23,000ft),…

When Messerschmitt defeated Focke-Wulf in a competition to design the Luftwaffe’s mainstay front line fighter in 1936, the Bremen company went back to the drawing board. And while the Bf 109 was being battle-tested and developed on the front line during the Spanish Civil War, Focke-Wulf was developing what would become the earliest prototype of the Fw 190. This first flew in June 1939, by which time the Bf 109E had already been in service for more than six months. So while Messerschmitt was working on its next major fighter – the Me 262 – Focke-Wulf was devoting all its efforts to bringing the Fw 190 and its troublesome BMW 801 piston engine into service. It was not until the spring of 1942, with the Fw 190’s future assured and…

It is likely that the first design presented by Heinkel for the 1-TL-Jäger competition on September 8-10, 1944, was a variant of the company’s P.1073 design. However, as with the other companies, by the time of the February 27-28 meeting, Heinkel was proposing a very different layout for its HeS 011-powered fighter. The German report prepared in advance of this meeting, Comparison of Designs for 1-TL-Jäger, indicates that Heinkel’s submission, the P.1078, is new or a substantial redesign when it notes: “The design of EHF (Heinkel) was not included in the comparison of performance and weight, as it was not ready at the time.” The data that was to hand, including drawings, showed a “tailless mid-wing plane with swept back wings and controls at the end of the wings. Wings…

Designing the 1-TL-Jäger had been a process of continual evolution for Messerschmitt and this continued on into 1945 as the competition approached its crunch meeting of the EHK on February 27-28, 1945. At the last minute, Messerschmitt withdrew the radical P.1106 and replaced it with two new designs which promised to address its problems and offer even better aerodynamic performance – the P.1110 and P.1111. In these, Messerschmitt presented perhaps the two most advanced aircraft designs the world had seen up to this point. P.1110 The P.1110 had the same wooden swept-back wings as the last revision of the P.1101 but with wing root leading edge extensions designed to increase the angle of incidence. The turbojet was mounted centrally within the fuselage and fed by two intakes on the sides…

ARADO I With a great deal of practical experience with jet-engined aircraft now in hand, Arado felt it was in a strong position going into the contest. Its first design was its most unusual – a tailless low-wing aircraft with broad sweptback wings. It was not a flying wing, however, since it had a long central fuselage which housed its radar, nosewheel, forward-firing armament, pressurised cockpit for three crew members, two self-sealing fuel tanks, a drag chute to the rear, upwards firing armament and rearwards firing armament too. There were three smallish fuel tanks in each wings and the two HeS 011 turbojets were built into the bottom of the rear fuselage and had a combined, broad, flat intake. A little way in from each wing tip was a vertical…

By the summer of 1944 the twin-jet engine Horten IX single-seat flying wing fighter/bomber was almost ready to enter series production. Its designers, brothers Walter and Reimar Horten, had struggled to gain acceptance for the project, despite being given a 500,000 Reichsmark contract by Hermann Göring himself in late September 1943 to design and build three Horten IX prototypes. A month later, Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch had decided against giving the Horten IX the highest production priority rating, making it harder for the brothers to obtain the materials and components they needed. From the end of October 1943 to early June 1944, the Hortens managed to construct a working glider prototype of the Horten IX and had assembled another with housing for its two jet engines. They continued to face delays…

The ramjet type powerplant concept predates jet engines by some considerable margin – having been invented and patented by Frenchman René Lorin in 1913. In the same way that they called the piston engine ‘Otto’ after the man they saw as its inventor, the Germans called the ramjet Lorin. The British tended to refer to it as the athodyd instead – a contraction of Aero THermoDYnamic Duct. Lorin had failed to create a working ramjet because the necessary materials for its construction had not yet been invented. The design also required the engine to be moving before it could produce thrust – the air being ‘rammed’ into the front acting like the compressor of a jet engine. Lorin was also unable to get his engines moving fast enough. These problems…

While Alexander Lippisch’s move to Vienna marked a new beginning in some ways – free from the internal politics of working within the Messerschmitt organisation – it was business as usual in others. A report made up of extracts from Technical Intelligence report no. A.424, compiled for the Aeronautical Research Council on August 13, 1945, notes: “Several reports on aerodynamic and gasdynamic subjects were brought out by Lippisch and by his collaborators. The development of a high-speed experimental aircraft with two turbojet engines was started in the summer of 1943. “It was an all-wing, tailless aircraft with 45sq m area, untwisted sweepback wing with symmetrical laminar section. It was designed for a gross weight of 8000kg.” The aircraft in question was the P.11. In its original form, designed while Lippisch…

Another oddity from Arado, the firm behind the most conventional of Germany’s wartime jets, was the E.581 fighter. If it weren’t for the fact that the E.581-4 version appears in the German Aircraft: New and Projected Types document, it might well have been dismissed as a figment of some postwar enthusiast’s overactive imagination. The British intelligence report’s note on the type is terse: “Arado E.581-4 single-jet fighter – a high-wing tailless single-seater with a single HeS 011 jet unit mounted in the fuselage. The main wheels of the tricycle undercarriage retract forward into the wing, upon which are set the twin fins and rudders. Span: 29.3ft. Length: 18.4ft.” Details of a purported E.581-5 were published in a German magazine during the 1970s. This made mention of a ‘special container’ through…