Top 5 Weird WW2 German Prototypes That Actually Flew

during World War two four Germans built many planes some we're familiar with like to be of 109 they only built around 34,000 of them it's one of the most built planes of all time the Germans also built roller planes - like the Blohm & Voss BV one three eight of which they built around 300 off this video is going to be focusing on German prototypes which if you pardon the pun didn't take off either due to other choices in design direction or lack of resources to build more planes these are my top 5 weird German prototypes - actually flew Fordyce list there are only two rules the plane had to exist and that it had to have completed a flight so that means no paper blueprint planes or no prefabricated models or mock-ups without further ado let's get on with the list number five the Blohm & Voss BV 40 this little glider doesn't look too aggressive it doesn't look out of place as a recreational glider perhaps something that one would take out on the weekend on a nice warm summer's day what separates the bv 40 from a standard glider is a set of twinned 30 millimeter autocannons each one equipped with 35 rounds bringing the BV forties maximum ammunition up to 70 rounds I can't emphasize how odd it is to have guns on a glider the BV 40 is the only glider fighter ever made in history this is further emphasized by the fact that the guns are twin 30 millimeter cannons look at this comparison between a 30 millimeter shell and a browning 50 Cal round the reason that the BV 40 needed as firepower was for its role as a bomber interceptor Germany needed a plane which will be able to take on Bombers tower attacking deep within the German heartland the BV 40 was intended to be an alternate direction of design for the ffensive planes that were being designed at this time during 1944 Germany was looking into all sorts of different planes such as jet planes like the me-262 and the horton 2 to 9 it was also looking at rocket planes such as the bakkum ba 3 4 9 and the me-163 rocket and jet planes even the simpler designs are expensive and complicated to make they involve precision engineering and rare metals both for which Germany was running low on manufacturing workshops were under threat of attack as day and night bombing raids destroyed German industrial centres this resulted in very high competition for designers to secure the limited manufacturing changes but BV 40 was a cheaper alternative to jet and rocket planes it was cheap puted three main factors its lack of complexity so unskilled labor would be able to assemble most of it its tiny form very few resources had to be used to produce one it's wood design the airframe was mostly made of wood which could be sourced within Germany the ideal combat mission was that two BV 40s could be towed by a single BF 109 would be of 109 being a single-engine German fighter after takeoff the BB 40 would jettison its takeoff dolly for 109 would tow the gliders to a height above the attacking allied bomber formation at height the BV 40 were detached a tow line and glide freely to the bomber formation but glider could reach speeds as high as 900 kilometres per hour in a dive it was fought that the pilot should be able to get two passes on the bomber formation before running our potential energy and ammunition per glider would then head back to the landing strip landing on its fixed skid another odd thing about this glider is that the pilot had to lie on his or her belly in a prone position to operate the glider this photo is of a German Crone pilot for another plane it can't have been nice to fly the plane like that flights wouldn't have been too long so it shouldn't have been too much of a problem the reason for the prone pilot was to reduce the size of the glider as well as the advantages we talked about earlier there are further advantages to making the glide a small one of them is less drag due to the small surface area it allows for two gliders to be told by one single-engine fighter another advantage is that the small form makes the glider very hard to hit defensive Gunners would struggle to hit such a tiny plane the first test flight was done in May 1944 Blohm & Voss received in order for nineteen prototypes with a further order of 200 for production the program was later dropped with only seven prototypes that were built all the prototypes built are currently not accounted for no one's quite sure what happened to them at the end of the wall number four for Heinkel he1 xi z this plane looks like some sort of bad photoshop for kind of plane you see in a thumbnail with some sort clickbait title for a Qi 111 Z is exactly what it looks like it's 2 hg 111 bombers joined together busy in the designation stands for swilling meaning twin in german each side of the Heinkel 111 z was crude the main pilot flew on the left side along with a mechanic a defensive gunner and arrayed your navigator for copilot flew on the white side along with another flight engineer and a defensive gunner 12 z variants were built the hey chief 111 z wasn't the only experimental twin fuselage aircraft made by germany there was also an experimental twin BF 109 called the bf 109 Z remember that the C stands for twin 4 prototype was destroyed by an allied attack and the project abandoned other countries also had their own experimental twin fuselage planes Russia made the DB LK only one of those were built Italy had the SM 92 only one was built an America they had f82 twin Mustang only 270 were built for f82 was built to be a bomber escort there was a two-man crew one in each hole the pilots would take turns during long flights controlling the plane to reduce the fatigue that sets in after flight for long periods of time and finally after almost 60 years in 2017 we have the newest twin fuselage plane first rato launched a plane designed to launch rockets into space from high altitude its wingspan broke for last world record and is a staggering 117 meters long that's almost twice as big as a 747 for Heinkel 111 z was designed not to be a fighter plane or to be a bomber it was designed to be a tug plane side note it did see some use as a light transport to evacuate wounded troops but for true purpose of the hey Chi 111 Z was to be a tow plane for the Emmy three two one also known as the G ant due to its size for me3 two one was a cargo glider for world's biggest cargo glider for internal volume of the GN was similar to a standard German railway car its lifting capacity was huge at 23 tons the large internal space and lifting capacity allowed for the transportation of heavy items such as oil supplies vehicles light tanks and artillery pieces it can even be used to carry 120 fully equipped troops there are several wastes again Emme through to one into the air a ju 90 could be used to tow the me3 - one into the air but it struggled and wasn't really capable of doing the task the second way to do it was with a Heinkel 111 z the third way was to use a trio of BF 110 to tow ropes to tow the me3 - one up to eight externally attached rocket boosters could be used with the Emmylou to one to assist for takeoff the rockets will be jettisoned after the fuel in them was spent around 200 mi fruity ones were built none of the methods for towing though were really that good for ju 90 could barely climb for Heinkel 111 z wasn't really too much more powerful in the ju nighty either for free towing bf 110s was an extremely dangerous setup one wrong move by any of the pilots turn the aircraft and the glider could end up in disaster which it did there was a case of a m efreeti one crashing shortly after takeoff to make matters worse the flight was configured for carrying troops between the four aircraft there were 129 deaths later the MU fruity one was redesigned with six engines and landing gear this redesign was called the ME free - free for Heinkel he1 xi z was no longer needed now as the cargo glider now cargo plane could fly itself under its own power there was no longer a need to bother with complicated tow aircraft or rocket boosters to assist with take off only for after 12 hate she 111 Z's survived the war the other eight were destroyed seven from strafing runs for Allied aircraft and one was shot down during a towing mission sadly the surviving four have been scrapped number three the fees Allah if I won o free are Reichenberg this is a manned v1 the same v1 that was being launched at England from launch sites in northern France for those of you that don't know what the v1 was it was the world's first cruise missile but missile was powered by a pulse jet which will propel the v1 at speeds up to 550 km/h on the way to its target it had a basic autopilot which removed the control surfaces in flight to stabilize the missile in a straight line around 30,000 V ones were made during the war desperate times call for desperate measures which is where the FI one of we are comes in unlike the primitive guidance system a manned missile would be able to hit a target very accurately for guidance system would make the missile land within 10 miles around the designated target a human will be able to steer the missile straight into an allied ship even if it was at sea and moving but fi 103 would be carried under the wing of a heavy German bomber to a point very near the target before being dropped the pilot would then do their best to steer the 103 are onto target it was suggested that pilots would be able to bail out before impact but in practice it was near impossible for pilots cockpit was very cramped and adding to the difficulty is that even if the pilot could wedge themselves out there's a poster right behind them so unless you could somehow bail out without whacking yourself on the jet engine you were right our lock oh and you're also flying at 650 kilometers per hour in a dive whilst this is happening it was estimated that the chance of surviving a bailout was 1% even so people volunteered to pilot this plane knowing that flying would lead to certain death a training program and testing of the plane begun with 70 students on a program to learn how to fly the plane there were modified glider variants of the 103 are and also two-seater variants for training purposes the program didn't get off to a good start as there were several accidents causing injury and death during testing of flight characteristics in time the program was abandoned as it was decided suicide missions were not part of German warrior tradition interestingly the project was abandoned in favour of the missed L project long story short you piggyback a smaller plane onto a bigger plane he filled the big Plane full of explosives the small plane flies the big plane and steers the big plane into a target the small plane detaches before impact and flies back home under 200 f5 103 ours were built and none of them were ever used against an enemy target several of these planes have been preserved as several museums around the world before we move on to the next plane on this list let's take a moment to have a look at the Pacific Theatre at war over here we have the Japanese ochre cherry blossom another suicide plane but this one was actually used in combat for oka appropriately named by the Americans as backer meaning idiot in Japanese but oka would be carried by Japanese heavy bomber near to Allied ships when in range to oka would detach from the bomber and glide most little way to the target close to impact the pilot would activate rocket boosters which will propel the ocher to approximately 800 kilometers per hour at that speed it will be almost impossible to shoot down with anti-aircraft weapons the payload was a 1200 kilogram explosive the main disadvantage of the oka was its limited range it had a smaller operational range than the 103 are the delivery system of the oka was his biggest disadvantage American warships expanded their defense of aircraft screens to account for the range that the oka could travel with the skies over allied ships controlled for Japanese bombers couldn't get close enough to drop the oka in range of American ships 850 oka were built and many are on display around the world number two the sack is 6 the sack is 6 while not a fighter plane is remarkable enough to earn its place on this list it was developed as a proof of concept for circular winged aircraft it resembles a bad Photoshop of like a German UFO the kind that the old history channel was so fond of before it became the logging and pawn shop channel the sack a s6 is named after its designer off a sack his weird circling design was first seen when he entered a contest of competing remote control planes with combustion agents his first model with the circular wing design was the a s1 which was just over 1 metre long sadly for a s1 was unable to take off under its own power it did however achieve 100 meters of stable flight after being thrown into the air by off a sack for current air Minister for Germany who was attending the competition was interested by the circular in shape and gave sak funding to continue research into his design sak went on to make formal models each one larger than the first design the as6 was the first design by offer intended to be piloted by human rather than being radio-controlled the first test flight happened in early 1944 during which several flaws were found in the design one being that the a s6 was underpowered a more powerful engine would have been able to give better flight performance for a s6 was using a BF 108 agent which was are designed from the early 1930s and due to wartime shortages more powerful engines were not available for the prototype after several more flight tests the plane was proven to be a failure with its inability to barely get off the runway there were proposed plans to take the plane to the next stage with the ME 600 the proposed ME 600 would have enlarged the circular wing considerably it would also have the latest engine design complete with fuel injection and a four bladed propeller there also be other features such as improving control surface responsiveness repositioning the landing gear and redesigning the tail unit there will also be an addition of a 30 millimeter gun added the ME 600 would have been able to achieve 800 km/h in flight this plan was never followed food and it was nothing more than a basic prototype design for a s6 was destroyed so wouldn't fall into allied hands the wood was broken up into pieces and the miscellaneous metal parts were thrown into an aircraft salvage area when the Allies arrived at the airfield the plane was already destroyed and so was not recorded on the inventor seized items for ao6 wasn't the first circular wing aircraft invented nor the last one of the first circular wing aircraft invented was the umbrella play form its design it's easy to see why they called it a umbrella with its large wing located above the main body of the plane another circular wing aircraft that was being produced in the end of World War 2 by America was the vault X f5u or by its nickname the flying flapjack unlike the as6 the flight characteristics of the flapjack were actually very good it was capable of high speed flight and was able to be armed with quad 20 millimeter cannons I could also carry bombs the most attractive quality of this plane was his low stall speed which made it easy to take off and land on an aircraft carriers deck the Navy was considering mass producing this aircraft but chose not to as they saw the future of aviation was in jet propulsion and not in old fashioned propellers number 1 Fedor Nia doe 3 3 5 also called Fierro but doe 355 was one of the fauces piston aircraft of world war ii its top speed and level flight is said to be around 850 km/h although that speed was recorded under perfect conditions for normal crew speed was around 750 kilometers per hour still though this is very impressive for a single seater heavy fighter plane the key for achieving this kind of speed was by having two ancients in one fuselage one engine was pulling and the other one was pushing I'll go over the more technical side in a bit for aero was originally designed as a fast bomber but was redesigned during the emergency fighter program to become a fighter for first prototype took to the skies in late 1943 with production models being manufactured in early 1944 for armament of the first production variant was - 15 millimeter machine guns with 200 rounds each there was also a single 30 millimeter cannon with 70 rounds fired through the propeller hub if needed a small internal Bombay could carry up to 500 kilogram bombs and there were also external pylons which could be attached further bombs surprisingly for such a large and heavy plane it was said by the pilots that flew it they had good handling maneuverability a tight turning circle and good acceleration it is unusual for a heavy plane to have those characteristics and when I say this was a heavy plane I do mean it was heavy each engine alone weight one tonne producing 1750 horsepower total weight of the arrow was seven and a half tons and that isn't with the addition of bombs put it like this it weighed more than a BF 110 or a Beaufighter but it didn't suffer from the mobility issues that those planes had for arrow had a couple more interesting features that made it unique from other fighters at the time one of these features is that it was the first plane to have an ejector seat it was more out of necessity than a luxury due to the situation with the ver papilla bailing out normally is a very risky experience bailing out when there's a massive spinning propeller probably means you're not gonna escape injury to help further increase the pilots chance of surviving a bailout explosive bolts were fitted to the ver propeller and also upper tail fin before rejecting the pilot could detonate these bolts this would then remove the tail fin and jettisoned the propeller another interesting feature is tricycle landing gear which was a new concept at the time tricycle landing gear is somewhat taken for granted in modern aviation the reason for the development of tricycle landing gear was so that the repeller wouldn't strike the ground during landing at takeoff most planes around the period in 1943 were taildraggers meaning that the tail was resting on the ground be kind of difficult to have a propeller at the back of the plane if the tail was meant to be resting on the ground an additional benefit of the try landing gear is that the pilot can see forward when taxiing with her tail dragger it's a lot more difficult to taxi as the engine is blocking your forward view all right we're taxi in this come out here for takeoff this is my first time in a taildragger so this is a pretty exciting check the other the other thing I need to tell you to Steve I can't see out the window yeah I see that it's so I have to s turn the airplane to see ahead sorry folks the wheel on the stripe go back to the right the wheel described and repeat the way we don't run anybody over okay now let's visit the technical bit or why this plane was one of the fastest propeller planes of World War two its secret was by having two engines in the main body of the plane by doing this it was possible to avoid problems that faced most classic twin-engine plane designs normally twin-engine planes have increased drag produced by the addition of engines in the wings they increased drag effects speed and roving negatively another advantage of having two engines sharing the same frost line is that if one engine fails it wouldn't pull the plane to one side the plane would be flying relatively normal but the only change being the less speed both four propellers were set up to spin opposite ways standard practice on any twin-engine plane this is done to counter engine talk fighter planes at the time had very powerful ages for how much they weighed if 100% power was applied at takeoff an inexperienced pilot may find the plane sharply turning to one side basically rolling on his axis the result being that the plane would end up upside down in a ditch and the pilot will be the laughingstock of the air base this is due to propeller talk effect a skilled pilot would slowly increase the power while balancing out the pool to one side by using his control surfaces in the plane under high stress situations such as during aerial combat a pilot may panic and increase power to maximum and forget to counter the pool twin-engine planes aren't affected by engine talk because both engines spin in opposite directions balancing the forces out it wasn't all vain bows and sparkles with the arrow this plane didn't come about his faults one teething problem was that the landing gear wasn't too strong meaning that there was a danger of it collapsing during a landing another issue was that visibility of the cockpit was rather poor this issue was further not helped by the addition of the massive nose that the plane had Ferraro was a very expensive plane to operate with its two very fuel hungry engines and lots of maintenance needed all the extra upkeep cost for plane that was only a bit better than the Fokker Wolff ta one five two four ta 152 was a German late war fighter plane its speed and performance were only a bit worse than the Aero it was also a lot more simple to produce compared to the Aero four Aero did see some use over the skies in Germany although it's disputed if it ever actually engaged enemy planes or ground targets one recollection from a French fighter ace was over arrow flying at low level he and his wingmen chose to engage in the Hawker tempest they were unable to catch up to the arrow to enter engagement range production of the arrow was stopped due to complications in manufacturing late in the war only 38 were produced this was a mixture of different variants of the arrow some of which were two-seater training aircraft the two-seater had the nickname anteater another variant was a night fighter it had a second seat and radar equipment they only built one of those remember those twin fuselage aircraft we were talking about earlier they wanted to give the Aero the same treatment there was a plan to build a twin fuselage version of the arrow the Dornier dou 635 the purpose of which was long-range reconnaissance that variant was never built only one arrow survives today and it's at a zero Varian currently on display in the National Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport in the US well there you have it those are my top five weird German prototypes that actually flew feel free to leave a comment on what you think should have been on this list I'm gonna recommend two vids to you one of which is my top 5 weird Nazi Wonder weapon planes that actually flew that video focuses on late war German jet and rocket planes all of which actually flew the other video is top 5 weird Soviet planes - actually flew that video focuses on weird Russian planes that you most likely wouldn't have heard about before anyway thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed it

Channel: The Iron Armenian aka G.I. Haigs

Views: 4,185,344

Rating: 4.7962298 out of 5

Keywords: Plane, flying, Bv-40, Blohm & Voss BV-40, Bf-108, Bf-109, He-111Z, He-111, Bf-110, prototypes, prototype, Secret, German, Glider, Fighter, DB-LK, Belyayev, SM.92, F-92, Twin Mustang, Mustang, Stratolaunch, Ju-90, Me-321, Me-323, Bf-109Z, Fi-103R, Fieseler, Reichenberg, 103R, Mistel, V1, Mistletoe, cruise missile, WW2, Piggyback, Ohka, Baka, Yokosuka, MXY7, AS-6, circular wing, Me-600, Nemeth Umbrella Plane, Vought, XF5U, FlapJack, Do-335, Top 5, Top 10, Dornier, Arrow, Weird, strange, strangest, thing, military airplanes, aircraft

Id: 7epN283-yo4

Length: 23min 49sec (1429 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2017