Inside The Cockpit - Heinkel He-111 H-16 (CASA 2.111)

I want to thank Stefan for sponsoring this episode she definitely one of my many patreon and channel members and it is only their support that allows me to make videos such as this one hello everyone and welcome to military aviation history we are in the flew craft schleissheim of the deutsches museum near munich now today's guests the Heinkel he 111 which was the main staple of the german bomber force during world war ii because there are only about three originals left most that you will find in museums today are in fact spanish Casas this also applies to the aircraft behind me in a previous video i already explained some of the external differences from the original to the spanish version so for today that just focused on the original design and then jump inside this one [Music] [Music] even though this is a Spanish licensed field Heinkel HD 111 with some differences the Spanish versions are based on the age 16 model which represents essentially the zenith of the Heinkel 111 design the aircraft itself was a twin-engine all-metal aircraft usually described as a medium or tactical bomber manned by a crew of four it has any length of sixteen point four meters a wingspan of twenty two point six meters and stands at four meters it weighs eight thousand seven on the kilograms and has a maximum takeoff weight of forty thousand kilograms what we see here are of course the later rolls-royce merlin engines the spanish used from around about in 1950s onwards to go back to the german designs in the HT 16th we'd have used jumo 211 FS with a maximum rating of 1,300 horsepower each the engines themselves used a yonkers various non same propeller and this allowed to plane to go to a top speed of around about 390 Cobblers an hour at 4000 meters with a standard bomb loadout the wing surface of eighty six point five square meters the wing loading at maximum takeoff weight well it's about 162 kilograms per square meters just outboard of each engine the wing tapers off from a constant short into an elliptical shape giving the plane a more refined look that you might expect from a military aircraft overall the wings gave the Heinkel some very easy flight handling characteristics and pilots essentially noted that especially on landing approach as the plane was very stable indeed alright so as we do a walk-around of the honker we're going to focus up mainly at the central fuselage simply because well as large aircraft it takes a lot of space and we can get to all the details plus and the wing is a wing you know what it looks like so as we look at the cockpit first of all on the port side we have the pilot he would just be out there where you see perhaps the control yoke on the right hand side would be the Bombardier so of course a glasshouse sort of cockpit a lot of paneling there a great all-round view really a little bit vulnerable as well and what we have up front here in that little extra glass dome that is the first defense of gunnery position is the Ashland initially we had normal seven point nine two millimeter machine gun later on that was upgraded to a 20 millimeter mg FF although the Spanish versions largely omitted this weaponry now as we move towards the center of the aircraft we find our first exciting piece we've got the bomb base so they're left left and right and these are essentially fitted to hold for 250 kilogram bombs on either side or 1650 kilogram bombs on either side what is essentially is happening there are four big boxes in here and those hold one of the bigger bombs to 2050s or four of the smaller ones of 50 kilogram bombs external stores the 88 says I could also be added for 500 kilogram bombs or a thousand kilogram bomb now if you wanted a little bit more range in your aircraft you could also completely omit the International bombing storage on the port side and add an exhilarating fuel tank there and then you would just be flying with your 250 s or your 50 km internal bombs here that of course would be required for a larger range operations or if you're actually ferrying the aircraft to another airfield and as we move along the aircraft here we come to the next piece the bathtub this is that saved on this is the third gunner position in the in the Heinkel and initially this was operated by a single crewmember with two guns one sticking out forward and one in the back the one forward facing weapon again we start out with a simple machine gun then that is later on upgraded to a 20 millimeter mg FF and then completely omitted in the later designs like the H 16 and this leaves us with a single weapon here operated in a ventral position this would also be a machine gun we'll go into more detail on that once we're in actually inside as we move towards the rear of the aircraft towards the tail I already have a video on this alluding to some of the differences when it comes to the German and the Spanish Heinkel 111 and a big difference was also the navigational radio equipment that with the aircraft has so the original dipole antenna that would have been here it's completely gone but let's have a big chat about detail wheel configuration that we have in the Heinkel it is a tail dragger which means that the tail has a separate wheel it's not a tricycle landing gear like for example in the a 20 or the B 25 then what we can have a look here is still a large elliptical horizontal stabilizer and elevator very distinguishing feature and that is of course mirrored up top as well by the vertical stabilizer that we have there plus the rudder Spanish markings of course it is a Spanish - Hank of 111 it is a Casa and then if we move on towards the port wing of course large elliptical now the Heinkel had next to the internal storage that could be added had a fuel tank on either side of the engine so that gave it as extra range but they were also self sealing which was initially in the war and novelty and became standard later on large gear of course able to take the brunt of operational conditions in the field gild the Heinkel was quite a strong it is also set directly behind the engine in one big nacelle and this of course is not the original but you can see the size there I mean it's it's a massive massive massive wheel and then luckily we also found a jumo 211 F that we have right here this would be the original engine and in fact you can even still see one of the original props here well what's left of it right here we've got the old cooler on top we can have a nice little look inside this is what the aircraft would have been flown with during the war and in fact some of the early Spanish I think age 16 also had this engine back when Germany or Nazi Germany was still around and they were got also deliveries of these engines from France after the war but it wasn't enough eventually the Rolls Royce came in and well gave them that power that was required because there were no more any spare parts okay that rounds us up on the on the walk-around and now comes the fun bit we're gonna get inside [Music] so getting into a Heinkel now we will be using the bathtub this was the way in for everyone really of the whole crew and I got a mansion before we get inside this aircraft was beautifully restored by the team of the deutsche museum inside is absolutely pristine what you're seeing is not original German specifications specs but you will see a very clean and superbly restored aircraft so getting inside how nice a fine coat to provide these hand holes right here which can also be swiveled back so they are out of the way once you're actually flying now what we're in here at the back this is just beyond aft just beyond the bomb storage really the bomb bay and we have a seat here for one of the defensive Gunners and we have a radio set all the way in the back here this is completely different than it would have been in the H 16 during World War two since like I said this was of course used by the Spanish by a transport unit apparently for what we have here as well are some additional radio sets Tomas Flags apparently apparently botellas their Mo's there you go there's that Spanish legacy and then we have another seat actually just here I can show that there's another position and a seat that can be swiveled just where my feet are now where the radio operator would spend his time and I guess he wants their honor attached could also be using the bathtub to provide some defensive fire as we move a little bit forward we're still going to go into the positions that we find here we're in some more detail later on but what we have here is what will essentially be or the bombe really it's completely empty at the moment except filiz but tell us they are mostly on these for most bottles as I squeeze my way through here this is essentially a space that I would have during World War two to the right of me bombs to the left of me bombs that is the space there is in here and now I could essentially go towards the cockpit right now it doesn't look as crammed as it might feel I just imagine that the 250 kg bombs are right beside me so moving in the space that is essentially occupied by the bombs we find ourselves facing what is the cockpit section and where the Bombardier would be sitting and as I now try to squeeze myself through here with some dignity I would also like to point out that this compartment could be closed with these two doors right one leg is flew that's good how did they just imagine that I'm wearing here as well there we go right I'm inside I can't stand up there was stuff in the way what I have here is essentially the only free space in the cockpit here is the pilot's seat over there would be the Bombardier station and right here we have a seat that he would occupy when he's not manning the gun or making the final corrections for the bombing approach what we have here actually nice quality matt baume video would essentially be lying like so as he's doing what he's meant to be doing and he would be manning the station even further up front - man the defensive gun that was right there and yeah I can feel the heat in here actually it is quite warm surprisingly warm really but there's that greenhouse effect that everybody's talking about I guess so what we're going to do now because there's absolutely no other way to do this is I have to get out my camera man has to occupy the position that I have now and then I'll try to get into the seat and I still don't know how I'm gonna do it right now generally I would believe that the pilot would get into a seat first and then the Bombardier but there is no other way to handle this otherwise to show you guys how it is actually to get inside of the seat right so we are with a little bit of practice it goes a little bit more smoothly there we go now I'm supposed to do this feet first that's essentially the only way to do this so let's try yes I go inside good as you're getting into the seat look for the fixed foot rests in front of the rudder pedals painted in yellow here these allow you to arrest and brace your feet as you get on without fear of shifting out the rudder or losing your footing done in reality is beyond me that was the most uncomfortable experience of getting into a pilot seats ever but I have to admit something once I'm inside it's really good it's very comfortable I am sitting in a very comfortable position if I could extend the rudder pedals a little bit more and move the chair a little bit further back that would be nice but once I'm in here I feel very very comfortable anyway what we have of course here is the pilot's seat we've got the control yoke in front there's a clock that reminds me of my rendezvous time so right there a lot of this stuff has changed with the Spanish essentially since the instrument board is not in the original German configuration I'll be using a digital substitute here from the aisle to simulation it's been beautifully modeled in this very accurate as you can see you can find all the instruments you need and more on this panel it's also worthwhile pointing out that this is the new instrument configuration earlier Heinkel he 111 cockpits at various different loadouts starting top left with the altimeter moving over to an artifice Rison with an integrated slip and the vertical speed indicator then the airspeed indicator repeater compass and homing indicator for radio guided navigation the Lotus a standby turn and slip button left the compass heading indicator showing the difference between the current and desired course on the autopilot an altimeter for instrument landing its range can be left at 1/2 50 meters or multiplied by a factor of 10 to 1,500 meters to the right at the autopilot course setting allowing a fine deviation measurement of the present course below it the autopilot status indicator and the pitot tube heating indicator this instrument board changed during the Age 16th production the vertical speed indicator was changed to a raised position above the instrument board while the autopilot status indicator was removed entirely on those planes using the lofted ZD bomb site and on those planes retrofitted to drop torpedoes also note how compared to the original manual the io2 simulation seems to have switched the position of the altimeter an airspeed indicator however these indicators are actually modular so some of them could be swapped around the control yoke is certainly wherever mentioned as well the clock sits in a central position to the top left there would usually be a press to transmit and to the right a small switch activating a fine coarse adjuster for the pilot that can be operated with the thumb this is called the ein hundred to Kira one-hand course that are usually abbreviated to Easton Skiba course setup it allows my new adjustments to the course or set for circle flying so on we still see the basic six essentially here we've got speed we've got altitude I've got a directional gyro of God artificial horizon we have the Vario meter and we have to turn the slip right there to the direct left of the pilot the red handles are the throttle the black ones are the prop pitch control here they are set side by side in the original configuration the pitch control would be on either side of the throttles and to the left the Magneto's the brown handle on both is for the flaps the deflection indicator somewhat hidden behind throttles here well all the way on the left you find the undercarriage the Lecter so what I can also do here is generally open the window a little bit and have a bit of fresh air and I think I won't be needing it soon and what we have up top as well is much right sure if we can loosen this but yes we do we have a curtain which we can at least get rid of the most direct sunlight but we will move that back and contort my head as I'm fixing it in place we've got forever dials up here generally this was for the for the fuel capacity again a closer look at this panel here are the fuel gauges one pair of wing this switches on either side are to rotate between the inboard and outboard wing tank surrounding the engines to right you'll find an ambient air temperature gauge the middle position would only be used if an extra fuel tank in the bomb bay was installed the Spanish have also installed a radio compass right here as well as bombast air Illya mentos in this position radio frequency huge F that we have right here so to my right hand side we also have the diodes for the engine so we've got the RPMs of the engines up top and then we have radiator the radiator temperatures carburettor temperatures from where I'm sitting this is very easy to read it's probably making the best use of the space that is available at the moment but I can tell you there is really not that much space of course the circuit wavers just to you know to my back here you can see them to the right side of the seat the red push and pull lever is an emergency hand pump for the undercarriage and the flap system next to it the rudder trim the levers in front a yellow greenish color those are for the radiator position on either engine in front of this would be a wheel for the elevator trim the oil cooler controls are set to the left of the seat surrounding the fuel all the way in the back on the left hand side the fuel tank selectors place alongside the aileron trim on top of the canopy on the outside there is a mirror of facing aft for the pilot the hu 111 also had four course visitor data that's German for course aiming strings although that's an awkward translation you can see one here typically it would be a set of four and they can also be found on our aircraft like the Heinkel HD 177 there uses a bit disputed multiple theories have been put forward my starting point are of course the official manuals here on both the Heinkel 111 and also the hike of 177 and the Luftwaffe training manuals for bombing and there is absolutely no information on how they are to be used in practice except they are to be used on the final approach to a target considering this I believe what is meant to happen is that the pilot if he has a visual on the target flies the plane so that the target always remains within the cone of the strings he diver does this manually or better by minimal adjustments to the autopilot this way he will always remain on course as the plane lines up for its drop compassed down low as well between my feet that's a little bit annoying to watch look at yeah that doesn't work properly and oh I forgot my hand rest right there that gives me a little bit more a little bit more comfort I gotta say although I'm sitting comfortably now having sat in it a little bit longer I have hit my arm quite often on the the levers that are to my left which I guess could be annoying but I what I would presume is the pilot sort of start leaning towards their right as they're flying the machine and just moved to the left when they actually need to operate some of the some of the levers there so you might wonder how to get out of this aircraft in case of an emergency well there is a canopy jettison up top which would essentially completely get rid of the top part of the greenhouse that we have here which is kind of nice allows the Bombardier and the pilot to get out relatively quickly shall we say while the person's offers the person's Manning the rear station of the aircraft will get out of the bathtub that you've seen earlier the ash stunt was just right here like I said initially we have a defensive gun which is a seven point nine two millimeter gun mg 15 which was used there and then later on it was upgraded to a 20 millimeter mg FF the forward firing firepower of this aircraft with a 20 millimeter cannon might sound quite vicious however this cannon was supplied with a 60 round ammo drum and you couldn't store that many in here even if you wanted to so generally the manual says a loadout of three to five depending on which manual you look at three to five or sixty rounds drums of course crews could carry more if they wanted to maybe store them somewhere in the back but yeah you'd have to reload this weapon multiple times in an engagement and that's a little bit awkward so now as we're getting out of this we will move to the back and I'll talk a little bit more about the positions that we have right there let's go oh not bad eh not bad indeed med kit actually the view from up here isn't all that half bad try sitting on this and see what it gives us that's not too mad so welcome back to the bee stunts of the Heinkel 111 this is essentially the top of the dorsal defensive gunner and he would be sitting on this seat right here which we can deploy by just pulling on this latch and then it falls down and two-way action there we go the seat is ready it looks a little bit different than it would have in World War two but there you go a lot of the equipment that would be here and here is gone Spanish obviously didn't eat them but we get into this position now what we would have is essentially the view that the defensive gunner has right here the weapon would be stored here initially again 7.92 millimeter mauser with an mg 15 and what the defensive gunner would do is open up the whole section here with the two latches that exist and that falls back or slides back depending on the variant and then he can use the gun to try to keep off the enemy fighters in the age 16 the gun was upgraded to a 13 millimeter mg 141 and that would be supplied instead of the mg 15 worth 2 double snake drums of 75 rounds with a thousand rounds on a belt which so that means that he didn't have to read out which was very good for the crew I can't tell you first of all the added firepower of the 13 millimeter round over the 7.92 and then of course having to reload every 75 rounds is a little bit inconvenient and you actually do have pictures from the inside of this aircraft from the rear hand side where a lot of these global snare drums were stored all around here and they were just going through them like nothing anyway let's reposition again wake close up the seat before I have to unlatch that again here we go move that out of the way there we go there we go now it's holding and I'm off a little bit further down now in the bathtub that we have right here like I said there is a seat that's essentially here and were a person operating the radio and at least in Spanish Plaza could sit in relative comfort like I said all of this which general be ammunition supply in some of the earlier hein cause whereas in the one that we have right here on the bottom we would have an mg 81 Zed now the mg 81 said is not a caliber upgrade over the mg 15 that was mounted rearwards earlier it's still a 7.9 12 millimeter round however what it is is two guns started essentially in extra judder it's a twin gun design and the mg 81 has a blistering fire rate which makes it very very good to just get hammered as many rounds as possible in a tight and small small amount of time as possible which is required because the gun angle that you have from down there isn't very good anyway I think we can't be the closest up now I can't really show you how we were going to be lying in here but if you look also in the back as I said the Spanish converted this from a bomber into a transport plane they opened up more space in the back to store stuff and yeah that really brings us sort of to the close on it's a stunt what we would have in World War 2 them is an additional gun position using these windows that we have right there now if you paid attention we have the our stunt we have to base don't and we have that's a stunt so now guess what these are called and if you're a guess is they stunt then you're thinking logically but you're not thinking like the Germans in World War two because this is the own sight and stunt yeah not that they stunt don't ask me why anyway a gun could be mounted there again it would ever be an mg 15 early on or an mg 81 this time not a Z version a single mg 81 that would be supplied here now the question you might now be asking is how do I operate the side facing guns in case this saved and is being operated because you can't really stand on the guy can you well sometimes it was the same crew member doing these two tasks I've heard a renfro gun or the side gun however in case there was a fifth crew member he would be doing some acrobatics so he would essentially be standing on the side and it's something like this it would look probably slightly different with do love without this radio and this is essentially how he would operate a gun you know firing to the port side and then the starboard side it's not actually all that great of a position to fire from but if you have nothing else to fend off you know attacking Spitfires or yaks well you're gonna make you I guess but yeah I'm definitely going to step down and get Terra Firma back under my feet so I'll just get out getting outside of the aircraft you just sort of have to make a little leap of faith onto the ladder and there we go we're out well that was quite an experience I hope you guys enjoyed this video I want to thank my patrons and channel members because the list air support that allows me to make this sort of content which is fairly unique if you enjoy what you saw today please consider supporting me why our patrons all wire channel memberships however is that's not possible for you I understand you can also support a channel by for example sharing this video with your friends or on the internet and of course by subscribing and hitting that Bell button so you are notified when a new video goes live as always I wish all of you a great day and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 783,584

Keywords: Heinkel, He 111, Luftwaffe, Bomber, Cockpit, He, 111, H-16, CASA, 2.111, History, Education, Military Aviation History, Inside The Cockpit

Id: 5Kuz7jtet5Q

Length: 29min 33sec (1773 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Clay_Pigeon]

These are really interesting, thank you.