The Asymmetrical Plane That Actually Flew - Blohm & Voss BV 141

in the lead up to and during the second world war the development of military aircraft led to some truly innovative designs and some rather terrifying ones as well in the ever-constant race to find some new advantage over their opponents nations gave their top boffins an often frightening degree of freedom when it came to designs and prototypes some of which even made into mainline production built as a tactical reconnaissance aircraft the bloom and vos 141 was indeed a weird one in 1937 the german air ministry issued a specification for a single-seat reconnaissance aircraft with optimal visual characteristics germany was in the process of planning a rapid expansion into other european territories and its current crop of scouting and reconnaissance aircraft whilst good for the moment would not have the speed or range to cover the vast swathes of european countryside that the army planned to steamroll the preferred contractor was erado with the ar-198 but the prototype eventually proved to be unsuccessful as it was slow and suffered from instability on all axes at said slow speeds the eventual winner was fuckerwolf with the fw189 which can be seen as a little odd as their production of a twin boom design using only two small engines went against the requirements set out initially by the german air ministry velom and vos whose aircraft design branch was at the time named this had not even been invited to tender a proposal for the contract but not to be deterred by such foibles they embarked on a private venture to build something far more radical and build it they did usually when designing an aircraft symmetry is important this is for multiple reasons to keep aerodynamic forces equal along the airframe to maintain stability and to make the aircraft easy to both build and then maintain clearly the chief designer dr richard vogt had been absent on the day these important points were raised as the bv1 for one's most notable feature was a completely asymmetrical structural design despite appearances symmetry was actually at the core of this aircraft's development in a normal aircraft the pilots are given a poor vantage point having a good portion of their view being obstructed by a large noisy engine and the aircraft's wing assembly in some aircraft this can make takeoff and landing particularly dangerous the engine would of course produce a lot of torque which depending on the prop shaft rotation would make the aircraft prefer the left or the right in terms of movement on the ground and in flight the central location of the engine also presented another problem the fast-moving circular air generated by the propeller is thrust back towards the tail and rudder surfaces which sometimes produced less than desired results in the wrong circumstances it's one of the reasons many aircraft designers looked at pusher propeller concepts around this period to get around to this particular problem so despite appearances of symmetry most aircraft of the day did anything but behave symmetrically blowman voss's design aimed to circumvent these issues by creating an asymmetrical design that would actually result in symmetrical performance and handling voct submitted this proposal to the air ministry but at the time erado had already begun construction of the ar198 which at the time still showed promise so the air ministry initially showed little interest in the weird project submitted by blohm and voss however ernst udet newly appointed chief of the development section encouraged vox to persevere and the first bv141 prototype designated ha-1410 flew on february the 25th 1938. the unorthodox plane was found to be generally without problems and it was easy to handle the only exceptions being some over sensitivity of the control surfaces and some minor undercarriage oscillation ernst udette himself then flight tested the prototype and after this an official contract was placed for three more at the time the existing prototype was not covered by the contract but after some drawn-out talks between bv and the air ministry it was finally agreed to accept the machine as one of the three which had been contracted provision was made for two fixed forward firing 7.9 millimeter machine guns and two handheld rear guns of similar caliber although the first aircraft actually to feature set armament was the bv141v3 prototype and underwing ranks were fixed to provide for four 110 pound bombs so that the one for one could also perform light bombing operations the crew complement was three a pilot observer and a rear gunner all of whom were housed in the cramped plexiglas gondola that was mounted on the wing the bv141v1 which was the second prototype weighed 6812 pounds empty and 8441 pounds in normal loaded condition and began flight trials in september of 1938. early on in this test program problems with the aircraft's hydraulic systems were soon encountered this culminated in an unfortunate incident where on october the 5th 1938 the prototype bv141 was forced to make an impromptu landing in a farmer's field with the main wheel legs only half extended the landing was not exactly soft and the starboard wing suffered heavy damage and i imagine the owner of the plowed field wasn't too happy about it either fortunately the v3 prototype was ready and available to participate in the flight test program so there was no lengthy delay in this evaluation process to improve stability the v3s fuselage had been lengthened and the overall wingspan was increased the wheel track was also widened from 16 feet to 1 inches to 16 feet 10 inches to improve ground stability the arrangement of the crew was also adjusted the crew compartment had the pilot seated to port with the observer seated starboard the observer's seat was attached to a track that allowed the observer to be pushed forward and aft this enabled the observer to both operate the forward bomb site and radio equipment that was located aft not to be kept idle the observer also operated a reconnaissance camera and in a combat situation within an almost completely exposed plexiglas coffin would operate the upper aft firing machine gun as well the crew compartment could not be called spacious it measured three feet 11 inches wide 4 feet 11 inches tall and terminated at the rear in a pointed cone housing for one of the machine guns which could be rotated through 360 degrees the gunner would lie in a prone position over the wing trailing edge which would offer an uncomfortable albeit clear view of everything behind above and below him the german air ministry which had from the outset viewed the bv141 with a high degree of suspicion was forced to admit that despite its highly unusual design the aircraft possessed very favorable handling characteristics and fully met the original specifications set out by their contract with some lingering reserve they placed an order for a pre-series of five aircraft whilst this was done the prototypes were still suffering from a rather stubborn issue with the hydraulic system this time the prototype v4 suffered an accident on landing where one of the landing gear remained in the locked up position which of course resulted in a fair amount of damage to the aircraft as this particular prototype was intended for trials at the luftwaffe's testing ground in wrestling there was an inevitable delay in the initiation of the official evaluation program the remaining four of the pre-series aircraft were completed to schedule the official flight test program was completed at richland with the bv 141v5 in january of 1940 and the pilot's reports were generally favorable for low level bombing a special bomb site had been developed and installed in the v5 and 13 bombing trials were undertaken a total of 58 bombs being dropped from various altitudes unfortunately the bv141 would not go on to be produced in large numbers despite some promising results the luftwaffe's high command displayed little enthusiasm for this oddity and on april the 4th 1940 they succeeded in persuading the ministry to cancel its plans for large-scale production of the bv 141a in total only 20 of these weird aircraft were ever built the first production run of three prototypes and five bv141as were found to exceed their design requirements but they were too underpowered with their current engines 12 bv141bs were also built and they were equipped with the more powerful bmw 801 radial engines but it had come too little too late the german air ministry had already put the fokkerwolf 189 into production and there was a great need for the bmw engines to be used in the new focal wolf 190 fighters on top of that blowman voss found their factories being relegated to the production of other aircraft such as the fog wolf 200 condor as the allies had rather rudely bombed the factories owned by fokkerwolf themselves [Music] you

Channel: Rex's Hangar

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Keywords: bv 141, bv 141 documentary, aviation, ww2, blohm & voss, blohm & voss bv 141, luftwaffe, fw 189, p factor, asymmetrical, experimental, experimental ww2 planes, weird ww2 planes, secret ww2 planes, documentaries, flight, germany, planes, ww2 airplane, strange, richard vogt, reconnaissance, aerial combat, ww2 spy plane, spy plane, bv-141, blohm & voss bv, ww2 documentary, aviation documentary, military aviation

Id: gn3LEbTKpzE

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021