German Aircraft Design during the Third Reich

Abstract

German military victories in 1940 and 1941 and the curious glamour that the Hitler regime holds for many people has led to the belief that German aircraft design was the best in the world in the Nazi period. In reality many pre-war German designs were mediocre and the most successful, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, owed its success to having its engine replaced by one heavier, and almost twice as powerful, as the one it was designed for which led to a variety of performance problems that were exacerbated in later wartime versions with even more powerful engines. The contemporary British Spitfire, already marginally superior in its earlier versions, turned out to have much greater development potential. Later the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter was pressed into service ahead of comparable British and American types before the problems with its engines had been properly dealt with: its much-vaunted swept-wing configuration was the result not of theoretical work by German academics on the issue of compressibility at high speeds (which was at that stage unknown to aircraft manufacturers) but of the need to compensate for the effect of the unexpectedly heavy jet engines on the centre of gravity. The Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket fighter was also brought into service prematurely: a wonderful aircraft to fly when the propulsion unit did not blow up, it represented a conceptual dead-end as it turned out that the flying wing format, or variations on the tail-less aeroplane principle, was incompatible with near-sonic or supersonic speeds.

Keywords:

• German Aircraft Design 1933–945
• aerodynamics
• early gas turbine technology

Notes

1. Details of the performance etc. of all aircraft referred to in this article are available in John W. R. Taylor (ed.), Combat Aircraft of the World (London: Ebury, 1969) Specifications issued by procurement authorities in this period generally stated requirements only for speed in the case of fighters and speed, range and bomb load in the case of bombers. Issues such as construction materials, take-off distance etc. were not specified. The more detailed requirements for ship-board aircraft and the difficulties and disappointments manufacturers might encounter in meeting them are discussed in A.D.Harvey, ‘How Ill-equipped Was the Fleet Air Arm in 1939?’ RUSI Journal vol. 155 no. 3 (June/July 2010), 66–71.

2. ‘The Bf 109B was superior to the standard I-16 type 10 above 3000 metres, though most air fighting in Spain was below that height, and I-16’s fitted with a Wright Cyclone R-1820 F-24 motors had the better performance even above 3000 metres’; Yefim Gordon and Keith Dexter, Polikarpov’s I-16 Fighter: Its Forerunners and Progeny (Hinckley: Midland 2001), p. 66.

3. Martin Caidin, Me 109: Willy Messerschmitt’s Peerless Fighter (London: Purnell, 1969), p. 40.

4. The National Archives, Kew, AVIA 6/2394 Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough: Report No. B. A. 1640, ‘Messerschmitt Me. 109 Handling and Manoeuvrability Tests Sept. 1940’, by B. Morgan and D. E. Morris, pp. 1, 2, 12–13, 25, 28.

5. Despite their speed three Me 410s were shot down over England during the night of 8–9 November 1943 and others were shot down during the following months: Winston G. Ramsey, The Blitz Then and Now, 3 vols (London: Battle of Britain Prints International, 1987–90), vol. 3, pp. 314, 317, 328 and 340.

6. See e.g Bernhardt L. Mortensen, ‘Rabaul and Cape Gloucester’, in Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate (eds.) The Army Air Forces in World War II, 7 vols. (Chicago: University Press, 1951), vol. 4, pp. 311–56, at p. 320, and Frank Farrell’s chapter ‘Mindoro’, pp. 390–412 in the same volume. For Japanese anti-aircraft defences see The National Archives, Kew, AIR 23/2414 (duplicated in AIR 23/4951 and WO 208/1553), ‘Japanese AA Defences Experienced in Burma’, especially p. 7 and AIR 40/2177, HQ Allied Air Forces, Flakintel Bulletin No. 41, 18 January 1945, ‘Japanese AA Defense Tactics at Clark Field’, p. 1. Eighty per cent of Japanese light A.A. consisted of Type 98 20 mm cannon firing at 120 rpm, less than half the rate of fire of the 20 mm Oerlikon.

7. Michael O’Leary, ‘Database Douglas Invader’, Aeroplane, 30.5 (May 2002), 37–58, at p. 42. General George Kenney commanding Allied Air Forces South West Pacific Area did not mince his words: ‘We do not want the A-26 under any circumstances as a replacement for anything.’ The USAAF was still using the A-26 in Vietnam two decades later.

8. The author is currently engaged on a study of the medium bomber in the Second World War, which he hopes to publish in two years’ time.

9. The National Archives, AVIA 6/10072, Royal Aircraft Est. Report No. AERO 2255, ‘Flight Tests on German Tailless Aircraft, Messerschmidt [sic] Me.163B’, by W.G.A. Port [March 1948], p. 4.

10. The National Archives, AVIA 28/2427, Power Jet Report Not R.1089 ‘The Jumo 004 Jet Engine’, April 1945, p. 16 [paragraph 5.1], cf. Antony L. Kay, German Jet Engine and Gas Turbine Development 1930–1945 (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 2002), pp. 63, 71, 82 and 86–87.

11. Frank Whittle, Jet: The Story of a Pioneer (London: Frederick Muller, 1953), p. 290.

12. Ibid.

13. Frederick A. Johnsen, Captured Eagles: Secrets of the Luftwaffe (Oxford: Osprey, 2004), p. 109. American designers did however copy the Me 262’s leading edge wing slats in the North American F-86 Sabre: ibid., p. 139. The notion that the swept wings on the F-86 and also on the Russian MiG-15 were copied from the Focke Wulf Ta 183 is based simply on a coincidental resemblance.

14. David Baker, Messerschmitt Me 262 (Marlborough: Crowood, 1997), p. 138.

15. Graham Simons, Northrop Flying Wings (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2013), pp. 11–12.

16. Ibid., pp. 17, 27, 30–31, 35, 45–47, 50, 59–60.

17. The National Archives, AVIA 15/193, ‘Tail-less Aircraft Advisory Committee’: 20th Meeting, 19 October 1945, p. 11. Heinz Scheidhauer continued his association with Horten after the war, piloting a Horten Ho XIVc glider over the Andes in 1955 to become the first man to fly over the South American Cordillera in a glider.

18. The National Archives, AVIA 6/10878 RAE Technical Note No. Aero 1765 ‘Brief Notes on Possible Policy with Regard to Research and Development on Swept Wings’, by M. B. Morgan, MA, FRAeS, February 1946, and see also AVIA 61/10821, RAE Technical Note No. Aero. 1706, ‘German Research on Swept-back Aerofoils’, by M. Gdaliahu, Licencié ès Sc. (Aspect ratio is the ratio between the wing span and the distance between the leading and the trailing edges.)

19. Junkers Ju 287, <www.wikipedia.com> [accessed 5 February 2015].

20. The National Archives, AVIA 6/10443, Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough Technical Note No. Aero. 1324, November 1943, ‘Comments on Design of A Tailless Glider with Swept Forward Wing.’ See also AVIA 15/1939 ‘Aerodynamics Sub-Committee Aeronautical Research Committee’, Ae 2302, 25 August 1943.

21. Jeffrey Ethell and Alfred Price, The German Jets in Combat (London: Jane’s, 1979), pp. 79, 93, 95–96.

22. The National Archives, AVIA 6/9021, fig. 3 and AVIA 6/9213, p. 1. These files are duplicated in The National Archives, DSIR 23/15079 and DSIR 23/14751.

23. The post-war cult of Napoleon was a Europe-wide phenomenon: see A. D. Harvey, ‘Napoleon: The Myth’, History Today, 48.1 (January 1998), 27–32. British admirers like Hazlitt and Trelawny, though supposedly on the liberal side in politics, now seem to have something about them reminiscent of prominent socialists in France and Belgium who rallied to Hitler’s cause in 1940.