What was the coolest German aircraft concept...

[NETSCAPE]

...and why is it the Henschel HS 132? I will try to explain:

 

PILOT FLYS IN PRONE POSITION DUE TO EXPECTED 12G FORCE OF PULLING OUT OF F-ING EPIC DIVE BOMB ATTACK

TURBO JET ENGINE SENDS YOU F-ING FLYING AT 700+ KPH AT 6000m ALTITUDE

Carries 1 x 500kg bomb 2 × 20mm MG 151 cannon, and/or 6/8 PANZERBLITZ ROCKETS, why not throw in 2 x 30mm Mk 103 cannons? CHECK.

 

 

[angus26]

I feel like it would be pretty uncomfortable. 

[NETSCAPE]

Looks pretty Kampfy to me. 

[Ehret]

Concepts, only? Then my vote goes for the Zeppelin Rammer.

 

If not... then -

The Fw 187 was actually build and had great performance and range. Something the LW needed during BOB but due to typical Nazi (not)thinking the Falke got cancelled...

Edited August 22, 2018 by Ehret

[AndyJWest]

A prone pilot seems a good idea in theory. Not so much in practice. Zero rearward visibility. Bailing out is going to be difficult, and ejection is more or less impossible. I'd imagine that using the rudder pedals was awkward too.

 

Like most of the late WW2 German wonder weapons, the HS 132 was an irrelevance.  Never flew, and if it had, they were in no position to either manufacture it in quantity, nor to put it into operational use.

[NETSCAPE]

4 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

A prone pilot seems a good idea in theory. Not so much in practice. Zero rearward visibility. Bailing out is going to be difficult, and ejection is more or less impossible. I'd imagine that using the rudder pedals was awkward too.

 

Like most of the late WW2 German wonder weapons, the HS 132 was an irrelevance.  Never flew, and if it had, they were in no position to either manufacture it in quantity, nor to put it into operational use.

 

Tell me about the English Dive Bomber Jet Concept you guys developed?

 

Pro Tip: you can't.

[Ehret]

12 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

A prone pilot seems a good idea in theory. Not so much in practice. Zero rearward visibility. Bailing out is going to be difficult, and ejection is more or less impossible. I'd imagine that using the rudder pedals was awkward too.

 

It's a small miracle that they didn't consider legs amputees as way to extend G tolerances, instead. It would work pretty well.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Ehret

[AndyJWest]

1 minute ago, NETSCAPE said:

 

Tell me about the English Dive Bomber Jet Concept you guys developed?

 

Pro Tip: you can't.

 

Too busy building aircraft that actually won the war.

[NETSCAPE]

6 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

 

Too busy building aircraft that actually won the war.

 

I have so many brit memes that I want to post but I think I'd get banned for having a sense of humor. Anyways, the war is over, this thread was for fun, take er easy m8. 

 

 

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

Prone flying was tested by the Hortens prewar and by the Berlin aircraft company with the Berlin B9. Results were sobering as the advantages were overshadowed by bad visibility, quick tiredness, no bailout possebility and pain.

 

It's save to assume that he Hs 132 wasn't a breakthrew design in any way.

 

A design that actually flew however is the Ju 287 with forward swept wings.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by 6./ZG26_5tuka

[AndyJWest]

19 minutes ago, 6./ZG26_5tuka said:

 

A design that actually flew however is the Ju 287 with forward swept wings.

 

 

The monstrosity with the fixed undercarriage flew. And demonstrated that forward-swept wings had exactly the problems that basic engineering principles suggested they would. The Soviets later cobbled something together out of parts of the second and third prototypes, and managed to get that into the air. They never pursued the idea any further.

 

Edit: On checking, the Soviets did pursue the swept-forward wing design further, resulting in the OKB-1 140 design, of which two were produced. The second photo in 6./ZG26_5tuka's post above is an  OKB-1 140, not a Ju 287.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by AndyJWest

[Bremspropeller]

The idea was troublesome for aeroelastic reasons.

That has been under control since the 80s - largely due to the use of composite materials.

The concept is an also ran today, because everybody and their grandma are getting excited abot stealth.

 

Also, the Soviets dindn't just cobble stuff together - they had extensive support by a boatload of Junkers engineers.

It was in fact key people of Jumo, who make the Kusnetsov NK-12 happen.

 

 

As for the thread - pretty much anything built by Focke-Wulf and Junkers.

 

For ships'n'gigglus:

 

The Bomber-B.

More specifically: The Junkers Ju 288 .

Well, had those bloody Jumo 222s actually worked earlier anyway...

 

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by Bremspropeller

[Ehret]

8 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

The idea was troublesome for aeroelastic reasons.

That has been under control since the 80s - largely due to the use of composite materials.

 

And fly-by-wire controls not available then. However, the Ki-43 Hayabusa, a not bad plane, had slightly forward wing design.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Ehret

[Bremspropeller]

Fly by Wire isn't the enabler.

 

The HFB 320 "Hansa Jet" business-jet of 1960s vintage had forward swept wings, but didn't catch on economically.

Aeroelastic problems were solved by using tip-tanks and very torsionally stiff skin-panels there.

[Aap]

While many of the "wonder weapons" may seem awkward or even silly, hoping for a jackpot in that area was probably the second best option for late-war Germany (best option being surrendering as fast as possible, but that was not an option for Hitler). It was quite obvious that Germany was not going to out-produce USA+UK+USSR, or even more importantly match the level of pilot training, so thay had to try something else - super fast or stealthy or high-G or anything that might give an edge over the enemy with massive superiority in numbers.

Still, there was no "wonder weapon" (other than maybe nuclear bomb) that could have changed the outcome of the war.

[Finkeren]

Yeah, in all of military history, there has never been a single weapon system introduced during a war that could be said to have changed the overall outcome of said war. But as Kemp correctly points out, the German military was all out of options after 1942, they were stuck fighting a lost war, and since they weren't willing to do the reasonable thing and throw in the towel, they might as well throw **** against the wall and see if some of it stuck.

[Ehret]

3 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

Fly by Wire isn't the enabler.

 

No but helpful as forward wings can have stability issues and it can try to deny dangerous maneuvers.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Ehret

[[110]xJammer]

I am a fan of do-335. Kind of a "why not earlier" idea for a heavy fighter. Yes rear prop is a difficulty, but there are too many advantages to not be able to deal with the disadvantages of the design.

 

[SCG_OpticFlow]

Horten Ho-229, looks futuristic even today...

[Feathered_IV]

I suspect all those wet dreamwaffe designers were just drawing up the majority of their fantastical contraptions to avoid getting a rifle shoved into their hands.  

[Ehret]

1 hour ago, xJammer said:

I am a fan of do-335. Kind of a "why not earlier" idea for a heavy fighter. Yes rear prop is a difficulty, but there are too many advantages to not be able to deal with the disadvantages of the design.

 

It's a good and clever design, however... achieving similar performance could be much easier if Nazis didn't cancel the DB 604 engine. (He177 would be less problematic, too)

[[110]xJammer]

Just now, Ehret said:

 

It's a good and clever design, however... achieving similar performance could be much easier if Nazis didn't cancel the DB 604 engine. (He177 would be less problematic, too)

 

 

Dornier had his designs flying even pre-war. And it makes complete sense to have a heavy fighter in that arrangement IMO whatever the engines as the choice is whether to have co-axial or side-by-side engines. Unlike many other quite ridiculous blue designs 335 could have actually been the me410.

[Ehret]

1 minute ago, xJammer said:

Dornier had his designs flying even pre-war. And it makes complete sense to have a heavy fighter in that arrangement IMO whatever the engines as the choice is whether to have co-axial or side-by-side engines. Unlike many other quite ridiculous blue designs 335 could have actually been the me410.

 

I wonder why no one tried triple bank inline in the WW2 or a V16. For the latter many planes had long noses, already, so with some effort it should be doable.

[MiloMorai]

6 hours ago, Ehret said:

 

I wonder why no one tried triple bank inline in the WW2 or a V16. For the latter many planes had long noses, already, so with some effort it should be doable.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_IV-2220

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

14 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

 

The monstrosity with the fixed undercarriage flew. And demonstrated that forward-swept wings had exactly the problems that basic engineering principles suggested they would. The Soviets later cobbled something together out of parts of the second and third prototypes, and managed to get that into the air. They never pursued the idea any further.

 

Edit: On checking, the Soviets did pursue the swept-forward wing design further, resulting in the OKB-1 140 design, of which two were produced. The second photo in 6./ZG26_5tuka's post above is an  OKB-1 140, not a Ju 287.

 

 

Sure, the soviets more or less completed the Ju 287 V3 (which was the design intendet for it by Junkers engineers) in form of the OKB-1, but it is very obvious where it derived from.

 

Anyway, if you don't like the Ju 287 I'll raise it with the Ju 187.

 

[Herne]

some cool pics in this article lol 

 

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/501881/nazi-ufo-hitler-flying-saucer-antarctic-south-pole-base-flugscheiben-v7-haunebu-die-glocke

[Ehret]

1 hour ago, MiloMorai said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_IV-2220

 

Could be a great fit to something like the P-38 and very powerful if refined enough...

[NETSCAPE]

15 hours ago, OpticFlow said:

Horten Ho-229, looks futuristic even today...

 

Indeed, that's why I love all these designers. 

 

4 hours ago, =FEW=Herne said:

some cool pics in this article lol 

 

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/501881/nazi-ufo-hitler-flying-saucer-antarctic-south-pole-base-flugscheiben-v7-haunebu-die-glocke

 

Every once in a while I like to go down the rabbit hole on youtube about this sort of stuff, purely for entertainment value. It's fun. 

 

Spoiler

 

14 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

I suspect all those wet dreamwaffe designers were just drawing up the majority of their fantastical contraptions to avoid getting a rifle shoved into their hands.  

 

Yeah not dying is good motivation, I know first hand. 

Edited August 23, 2018 by NETSCAPE

[Dutchvdm]

10 hours ago, Ehret said:

 

I wonder why no one tried triple bank inline in the WW2 or a V16. For the latter many planes had long noses, already, so with some effort it should be doable.

 

I guess because it caused some of the same problems as with the welded together engines. Which plagued the He-177 and the Avro Manchester.

 

Grt M 

 

 

[MiloMorai]

The X DB engines as used in the early He177 had a problem with oil gather in the V which caught fire from the heat from the nearby exhaust.

 

Allison had the V-3420 engine. Two V-1710s joined by a common block.

[angus26]

2 hours ago, NETSCAPE said:

Yeah not dying is good motivation, I know first hand. 

Put that swastika into a spoiler so this thread doesn’t get deleted.

[NETSCAPE]

19 minutes ago, angus26 said:

Put that swastika into a spoiler so this thread doesn’t get deleted.

I actually did originally, I thought.

[Bremspropeller]

6 hours ago, 6./ZG26_5tuka said:

Sure, the soviets more or less completed the Ju 287 V3 (which was the design intendet for it by Junkers engineers) in form of the OKB-1, but it is very obvious where it derived from.

 

Anyway, if you don't like the Ju 287 I'll raise it with the Ju 187.

 

 

Makes a Mooney-tail almost look simple :vhap:

[AndyJWest]

6 hours ago, 6./ZG26_5tuka said:

..,

Anyway, if you don't like the Ju 287 I'll raise it with the Ju 187.

 

From Wikipedia: 

Quote

The Ju 187 project was cancelled by the Reich Air Ministry in autumn 1943 because the aircraft's projected performance, when fully loaded, was estimated to be no better than the latest Ju 87D variant (estimated maximum speed: 248 mph (399 km/h)).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_187

 

Stukas weren't vulnerable to enemy fighters because the fin obstructed the gunner's field of fire. They were vulnerable because they were slow, and because after they'd dropped bombs they were low too.  And operating them without local air superiority was unsustainable. A technologically-complex solution to the wrong problem. The Luftwaffe was better off taking the course it did, and using single-seater fighters in the ground attack role. The Allies seem to have arrived at the same conclusion, though admittedly this may have been influenced by ridiculously over-optimistic expectations regarding precision level bombing.

 

It isn't difficult to find examples of similar going-nowhere concepts from the Allies. Some of them even went into production (e.g. Vultee A-31/A-35 Vengeance). Nobody sees them as wonder weapons. 

[AndyJWest]

36 minutes ago, raaaid said:

my favourite is the soviet transparent plane

 

anybody knows its name?

 

Don't know about a Soviet one, but the Germans had the same idea in WW1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linke-Hofmann_R.I

 

Didn't work too well:

Quote

Cellon [cellulose acetate] was used with the intention of making the aircraft partially transparent and so less visible; however, the Cellon reflected sunlight, making the aircraft more visible, before quickly yellowing due to the effect of ultra violet radiation. It also shrank and stretched due to in-flight temperature changes, with detrimental effect on trim.

 

Edit: Found a Soviet one. The Kozlov PS, a modified Yakovlev AIR-4 (a 1920s high-winged monoplane):

Quote

After a preliminary experiment using a Polikarpov U-2, Professor Sergei Grigorevich Kozlov, of the Nikolai Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy, modified a Yakovlev AIR-4, in 1935, to produce the Kozlov PS (Prozrachnyy Samolyot — transparent aircraft). Fabric covering on the fuselage and wings was replaced with a transparent plastic material, called ''Cellon'' or ''Rhodoid'', and the opaque structure was painted with a white paint mixed with aluminium powder. Trials with ground and airborne observations confirmed Kozlov's theories, with the bonus of excellent visibility for the crew. After the initial success, the film was found to become opaque through dirt collection and the effects of the sun, diminishing the ''invisibility effect''.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_AIR-3

Edited August 23, 2018 by AndyJWest

[Heliopause]

Pusher-puller type like Do 335 flew a few years before the Dornier.  The Fokker D.23

 

 

[AndyJWest]

Propeller at the front? Propeller at the back? You're all getting it wrong. The propeller goes in the middle: Vive la France!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPAD_S.A

[Bremspropeller]

2 hours ago, Heliopause said:

Pusher-puller type like Do 335 flew a few years before the Dornier.  The Fokker D.23

 

 

 

There had been several other push-pull examples way before that.

One is the Savoia Marchetti S 55, another is the Do X.

[AndyJWest]

I'm not sure when the first push-pull aircraft was built, but German Riesenflugzeuge designs must have been amongst the early ones. From Wikipedia:

Quote

A Riesenflugzeug (plural Riesenflugzeuge, German for "giant aircraft"), sometimes colloquially referred to in English as an R-plane, was a large World War I German bomber, possessing at least three aircraft engines, more usually being powered by four or more engines, sometimes of more than one make, model or power level. These were large multi-engine aircraft capable of flying several hours with larger bomb loads than the smaller Grossflugzeug bombers such as the Gotha G.V. Some of the earliest Riesenflugzeuge were given G-type designations before being redesignated, but a major distinction was that the requirements for the R-type specified that the engines had to be serviceable in flight. As a result, designs fell into two groups - those with the engines mounted centrally inside the fuselage using gearboxes and driveshafts to transfer the power to propellers mounted between the wings, and those with conventional powerplant installations mounted in large nacelles or the nose of the aircraft where engineers would be stationed for each group of engines. The transmission of power from the centrally mounted engines to the remote, most often wing-mounted propellers proved troublesome in practice and most operational examples of Riesenflugzeug-class aircraft were of the second type, as with the all-direct-drive Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riesenflugzeug

 

A Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI.

 

Quote

With four direct-drive engines in a tandem push-pull arrangement, and a fully enclosed cockpit, the R.VI design required none of the complex gearboxes of other R-types. Each R.VI bomber cost 557,000 marks and required the support of a 50-man ground crew. The R.VI required a complex 18-wheel undercarriage consisting of twin nosewheels and a quartet of four-wheeled groupings for its main gear to support its weight, and carried two mechanics in flight, seated between the engines in open niches cut in the center of each nacelle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin-Staaken_R.VI

Edited August 25, 2018 by AndyJWest

[Feathered_IV]

After much thought, I always find myself coming back to the Bachem Ba-349.  An operational flight in one of those would have been a very crowded few minutes.

 

Edited August 29, 2018 by Feathered_IV