From 1933 until the end of the Second World War, German Aviation led the world in aerodynamic design and technical innovation. Long before the outbreak of hostilities, German industry produced an Armada of technically superior warplanes. When war broke out, the Luftwaffe quickly overwhelmed some of Europe's most vaunted air forces. Classic designs like the Bf 109 Fighter and Ju 88 proved to be superior fighting machines, while others like the Blohm & Voss BV 141 became one of Aviations true oddities. Germany's plan for war in Europe called for an Air Force that was to be used in direct support of its ground forces. The Luftwaffe's task was to sweep the skies clear of enemy fighters. Then destroy enemy troops and installations. Key to the Luftwaffe's success were ground attack aircraft like the Henschel 123 and Ju 87 dive bomber. Ordered in 1934. The Henshel 123 proved to be a rugged and reliable aircraft. It would cease service well into 1944. Ground attack was only effective when good battlefield observation and reconnaissance could locate enemy targets. That job was given to the Henshel 126. With its excellent low speed short field characteristics an outstanding all round view. The HS 126 proved a great success in the early campaigns of 1939 and 1940. The HS 126 would see action on every front. But by 1941, its limited performance was beginning to show, and a new battlefield reconnaissance aircraft was needed. This led to some of the Wars's most unusual designs. The Blohm & Voss company was one of the first to respond with their BV 141. Designed around the concept of maximum all round view. The BV 141 was in many ways a problem looking for a solution. The unorthodox design featured an asymmetric layout. With the radial engine installed at the front end of a portside tail boom. And then extensively glazed cruna cell mounted to starboard. Unusual and radical in design, the BV 141 performed surprisingly well. But in the end it was considered too unconventional and it was cancelled in 1943. Yes, in my meandering strike Germany, just after the capitulation, I was looking for unusual of advanced technology aircraft and the 141 intrigued me a little bit. I had heard that there were at an airfield called Großenhain. Which was quite near Meissen. Um there was a big reconnaissance unit which had many reconnaissance types of aircraft. And I thought maybe the 141 will appear there. So I flew there and um. There's no sign of one, but I asked if I could speak to some of the POW. 's. Who were in the cage there. And um then one of the chaps told me that um a 141 had indeed been there, but the last year remembered of it was not too long ago it had had an engine problem while flying nearby and had landed on an emergency strip. East of. Halle Großheide So I flew over in that direction looking for this strip. But it wasn't really a strip I found it was a small airfield, and uh, it was, by this time had moved into the Russian occupation zone and I decided to land there because I had already found that that stage. After the war, the Russians were still very amenable to the Brits because we had come into the early stages. Of the war. To help them. Anyway, when I landed. There wasn't a lot of aircraft there, and um there was a Russian commissar and with an interpreter and I asked if there was a 141 there. He didn't really know things like the aircraft numbers and but he said there were one or two aircraft left, but his people had been had examined, the field taken away what they wanted, and the rest was left for destruction. So I said could I have a look around and see if there was? He said, well, yes, why not? Because it's all going to be destroyed anyway. And in one hangar there was indeed a 141. It had regularly had its engines run up by a felt vebo. who was available. And I said to him, was the aircraft flyable, and he, he declared, Oh, yes it was. I, for honest, suspected his motive, so I wasn't too sure of what he was saying or believing what he was saying, because I think he had hoped I would fly him out of there and out of the Russian zone. But the Russians were obviously not going to play with that. Anyway. I thought, I'll take his word for it, and have a go at this, and then the commissar didn't object, he said. As long as I stayed within sight of the airfield and I'd only have enough fuel to do that. He didn't mind because um. It was due for destruction anyway, and uh so he let me fly that and I had about. 30 to 40 minutes in it to try out this theory that it flew very nicely and in a straight line when. At on an angle of bank of 90 degrees. And uh. After about. Two or three goes at this at various speeds and heights. I had trouble with the engine. So I had to return to base. And um. So I formed an impression. That probably did what it said could do , but its real reason for failing in my opinion was. It's certainly. Wasn't an aircraft in the same. Category of handling as the Focke-Wulf-189 which I had already flown and was its competitor. Another odd looking aircraft was the Focke-Wulf 189. The completely glazed central nacelle. Twin engines and tail booms were considered too radical for conservative Luftwaffe officials. Performance, however, won the day. Known as the Flying Eye, the FW 189 proved supremely versatile. Universally popular and one of the most reliable aircraft ever to see Luftwaffe service. During combat operations, the FW 189 surpassed all expectations. Despite flying low over the battlefield. And taking large amounts of damage. It had the ability to absorb punishments and fight another day. So I think that killed it more than the theory that um it gave to the gunner a wonderful field of fire by having no um. Starboard half of the tailplane and. Being asymmetrically offset to give a few a clear field of fire to the gunner. So that was my experience of it. Not very impressive, ah, but um. Interesting. Their other 234. was a beautiful looking airplane and aesthetically it was very clean and looked dynamic aerodynamically. Very attractive and um the cockpit was unusual. It was a glass cockpit right at the nose and it reminded me when I got into it, rather like being in a helicopter. You were stuck right out in the front there with completely clear vision round you. On the other hand, you were sitting pretty close to the accident if it had to happen too and um. My first meeting with the 234 wasn't very happy event because this was up at Grove in Denmark where we found a number of 234s and I had one prepared for a flight by the German crew because we obviously didn't have the expertise to deal with it at that stage and um. I taxied it out to the end of the. Runway. I was well aware, of course, that the zoomo 004 engines. to fit it to it. Had. A scrap life total scrap life of 25 hours. So one really needed to know the service history of the engines they were flying. Now the Germans were very very adept at destroying documentation and we could find no service records however. I taxied out to the end of the runway at Grove. And um revved up to full power, ready for takeoff and then just about to release the brakes when the starboard engine. Exploded and totally disintegrated, taking most of the starboard wing with it and um. This of course, could mean one of two things. Either the crew had sabotaged it, or it was an engine with 24 hours and. 50 minutes on it. We never got to the bottom of what caused it. But let's suffice it to say that. I must have flown something like 3 to 400 hours on the zummo 004 and various aircraft and never had another problem with it after that. So it did not give me a poor impression in the 234. On the contrary, when I flew it, it was very nice after handle. and a very fast turn of speed. It was it could fly at and Cruise and no, it's top speed was 474 miles an hour, which was very high. And of course it relied on this speed for its survival because it had no guns fitted to it and was purely a reconnaissance bomber as such. But as I say, it handled beautifully. It was straight wing, was not swept wing and um. Made a very good impression. The Junkers Ju 52, affectionately known by those who flew her as Iron Annie or Auntie U or simply Auntie. The trimotor transport, which also served as a bomber, was to become a legend not only for her longevity but also for her. Flexibility. She was in fact as much a symbol of the Luftwaffe as the Stuka and the 109. The JU 52 was like the DC-2 and 3. I would say an iconic aircraft because it's reliability three engined aircraft. Very Very reliable. And one wonders why they weren't more frequently used. in. The UK and the USA three engine layout, because it was very common in Italy, was used quite widely in Germany and but you just have rare cases of it in the states like the Trimotor Ford uh. But it's a great solution. The JU 52 was constructed with the same corrugated material that the Junkers company was relied upon for over 2 decades, going back almost to the Great War. During this period. Aircraft much larger than the 52, such as the behemoth Junker G 38, also used the same cladding. However, as the 30's came to a close, Juncker's corrugated hallmark was starting to look a little tired, especially compared with other foreign types like the American DC-2 and DC-3. Nevertheless, Auntie still stayed in service. The Junker's company had in fact designed a replacement for Auntie prior to the start of World War II. Although they still wanted to retain its trimotor configuration, it was in most other respects a totally new aircraft. The JU 252 . It was a distinct difference from the very famous Ju 52. It had a smooth stressed wings and a very large cargo fuselage capacity. One of the main features about it was it had a wonderful loading map. Which was operated hydraulically at the back end of the airplane. Now this was a tailwheel airplane, but after landing um the wrap could be operated and would come down and raise the aircraft's tail, and it was. Absolutely top notch. And the incredible thing about it was we actually did experiments to see how this thing would react on the airplane in flight. And. At the large Edam aircraft exhibition in October of 1945 we flew this aircraft with the ramp fully open and as a gimmick we had. A chap sitting on one of the lower steps on the ramp, obviously with a harness attached, but he was sitting there pretending to smoke a cigarette. Well, it appealed very heavily to the crowds and it was quite surprising that this aircraft had this tremendous range of central gravity and was very summable in that situation. The JU 252 had a stablemate, the JU 352, which was made largely of wood to reduce the use of aluminum. The JU 352 proved less successful, although they were the first transport types to use a tailgate ramp that provided a flat surface for loading. Between the two models, only 65 examples were actually produced. When Germany was attacked on two fronts in 1944, they went out of production as the priority was more fighters to defend the Fatherland. Another military transport which used a rare ramp, also came from the drafting boards of Junkers. The JU 290 evolved from the four engine Junkers 90 airliner, which showed great promise as an advanced design just before the war. The Ju 90 airliner, like most other aircraft of the time, was a tail dragger, so when Junkers created a transport version, they employed the same lifting tailgate developed for the earlier 252. For the time, the JU 290 transport was a large aircraft when it first came into service in August of 1942. When I flew to JU 290, I was very. Impressed with it in the sense that it had a lovely cockpit layout. A very comfortable layout. It was obviously a civil aircraft adapted to a military role. Rather like the Focke-Wulf 200, it was almost similarly armed. Not quite so heavily armed as the Focke-Wulf 200, but um. Flew very nicely and. I think it would have made a comfortable with a little adaptation, a comfortable transatlantic um. Piston engine aircraft in the early days. In fact after the war, of course the Americans, they had a group. Like I had uh retrieving aircraft, German aircraft. After the war they were called Whatson's Whizzers. And Colonel Whatson actually flew the Ju 290 back to America via Bermuda and um. He was very impressed with it, as indeed I was too. It was certainly the largest land based powered aircraft in the Luftwaffe inventory. The type was eight foot longer than the airliner version, had more powerful engines and a very considerable range. It had been claimed, although never proven, that it made direct flights between Germany and Japan. There was also a need for smaller transports, even smaller than Auntie U. This need was filled by the conversion of a medium sized glider into a powered aircraft. The Goethe 244 became available in 1943. Created by the simple addition of two small radial engines to a standard production glider. The radials were actually made in occupied France and as such had little impact on German war production. About 130 of the type were made and proved useful in moving small numbers of troops or light vehicles over short distances. Using the same glider to power plane conversion, the massive Messerschmitt 323 was another attempt to maximize the Luftwaffe's airborne assets. The Gigant, I saw. The four engine version and the six engine version of the Gigant. In fact, I taxied uh the six engine version, it wasn't air worthy but I taxied it just as a matter of interest. It was a vast airplane called right of course, and the one I taxied was the the D model. And they had six known Rhône engines. And uh the four engine one had proved difficult, an adequate number of engines and still had to have some assisted takeoff such as JATO or rocket uh assistance on takeoff. Has huge gliders towed by. aircraft like the Heinkel 111Z. And they were a failure in my opinion though um, you had three Heinkel aircraft playing around with this or all the large Z and all of them, the whole thing was a very dicey operation indeed. But once you got the six engine version going, it was practicable. But of course. It was a large sluggish airplane. Because of its great size and slow speed, the ME323 was a sitting duck and many were destroyed by the allies. But when escorted by fighters, its ability to carry large loads was much valued by the Wehrmacht, especially in the mayhem that became the Eastern Front. Blohm and Voss built another remarkable transport aircraft, a long range flying boat named the Wiking. The BV 222 story is not unlike the Ju 90s. It was originally ordered as a commercial flying boat. However, as the war approached, the Wiking evolved into a large military transport which also performed some patrol duties. Six powerful engines propelled the Wiking. At first they were fueled with gasoline, but the BV 222 was intended to be refueled at sea by submarines. Since U boats are driven by diesel, the practical solution was to convert the Wiking to diesel engines. Blohm and Voss had another prototype flying boat that was even more advanced. The BV 238 was designed to cope with harsher sea conditions than the Wiking could handle. Working only with U boats, it was expected to go on very lengthy missions. It was designed to be almost self supporting and able to deal with many types of heavy cargo. To assist in loading the 238 it was equipped with a massive forward waterproof door in the bow. This could be employed in a similar manner to landing craft on a beachhead. What you see here is only a service hatch set within the waterproof door. To assist in handling cargo, there were derricks and winches located on the hull, making the BV 238 more like a merchant ship than an aircraft. There was also a tunnel which ran the length of both wings, providing internal access to the six engines even when the flying boat was in the air. Only one, BV 238 was completed. It was destroyed by Allied fighters just before the end of the war. The final example of Luftwaffe gigantism came in the form of the Junkers 390. A stretch 290 with a very capacious 110 feet long fuselage. Propelling this enormous aircraft would require two more engines than the JU 290 and a much greater wing over 160 feet in span. The extra wing length actually required an additional set of wheels on each side to support the craft as it landed. Only two Junkers 390s were ever built, but even these required enormous resources both in labour and material. After the war, only one of the JU 390s was ever accounted for. This led to speculation as to what happened to the other aircraft, as the type had more range than any other German plane. When they already had a proven workhorse in the Ju 52, why did the Third Reich become so preoccupied with limited numbers of large transport aircraft? One possibility was that Germany had not prepared for a long war. The premise of Blitzkrieg was achieving quick victory by lightning attacks. The English Channel stymied blitzkrieg against Britain. With the rapid fall of France, crossing the channel became the Wehrmacht's primary objective. This could partially be achieved by gliders, which led to large transport planes like the Gigant. Often overlooked, there was one other design that evolved in the Fatherland during those turbulent years, the Arado 232, sometimes called the millipede. Just after Germany invaded Poland, the Air Ministry issued a request for a replacement for the JU 52. It must be equipped with a rare entry ramp. And would employ two of the recently developed BMW 801 radial engines. Arado designers quickly came up with a brilliant design that embraced all the latest thinking in transport aircraft. It had a rare loading ramp, but unlike most other medium sized transports of the time, it used a tricycle undercarriage. This type of wheel arrangement would not usually work in rough terrain, however, Arado engineers solved the problem by placing a row of small rollers under each side of the fuselage. If necessary, the main gear could be adjusted to kneel the plane down. The 232 would then simply crawl over obstacles on its many rollers, which led to its nickname, the Millipede. At the end of World War Two, we well of course, interested in bringing quite a lot of heavy stuff back from Germany. Like wind tunnel gear and even aeroplanes. And uh we were looking for cargo planes. We used a German aircraft called the Arado 232 and known as the millipede because of the large number of bogie wheels that it had and as uh part of its undercarriage layout. And uh this was a most effective uh system of operating on grass airfields which abounded in Germany in the early stages. And uh where traction was very difficult to find under adverse weather conditions. The millipedes level loading ramp made it ideal for all types of cargo, but the Arado 232 had a major problem. It came in the form of this plane, the very successful Focke Wulf 190, known as the Butcher Bird. The 190 used the same BMW 801 radial engines envisioned for the new Arado transport. After the German failure at the Battle of Britain. There was no doubt that the new FW90 had priority for the BMW engines. The Arado would have to look elsewhere for suitable power plants, but there were none with the same power as the BMW 801. To solve this problem, A four engined millipede was proposed with a larger wing. This change led to delays. The end result was that possibly the best military transport of the Second World War was limited to a production run of less than 20 examples, leaving Auntie to soldier on alone. Eventually almost five thousand JU 52s were made. Many continue to fly around the world for a number of years after the war, including some with the RAF. But Auntie was not their only Luftwaffe transport. Two Arado 232 millipedes were also flown by the Royal Air Force. During the course of World War Two, German aircraft designers embraced many unusual concepts. Some worked, but not all. The Blohm & Voss P 163A product of the mind of Richard Vogt, a German aircraft designer who conceived of many weird and wonderful designs during World War Two. At a time when the shortage of aluminum was starting to affect aircraft production, the P 163 concept offered a way of partially utilizing steel as an alternative, at least in a limited way. Of course, there would be a weight penalty. However, the additional strength of steel might allow the wings to support a crew gondola and each wing tip, thereby allowing much more free space than the main fuselage for engines, weapons and fuel. Each of the gondolas would have weighed about one ton. Vogt predicted that they would actually improve flight performance by reducing both bending in the wings and turbulence from their outer edges. The Project 163 was envisioned as a high speed bomber fulfilling some of the multiple roles performed by the famous Junkers Ju 88. The Junkers's plane was clearly in the fast bomber class. It had a crew of three or four grouped together to improve morale and enable better communication. However, the aircraft was lightly armed and relied mainly on speed for survival against enemy fighters. In contrast, the design of Blohm and Voss's new proposal necessitated having two separate crew seating positions separated by at least 60 feet. The 163 was manned by a crew of four with two men in each gondola. There would be a single pilot who would have a spectacular view not disrupted by turning propellers. More significantly, the pilot sat back-to-back with his navigator and part-time gunner, who was in an excellent position to cover the rear and left flank of the aircraft. To balance the architecture, Project 163's other gondola had two Gunners, one facing aft, the other forward. At least in theory, this high speed bomber would have been very well protected. Not surprisingly, there were serious concerns about the actual control of such a revolutionary layout. How would a pilot react to being at the very tip of an aircraft rather than the center? To test the impact of this position on the pilot, an early asymmetric folk design was modified. An additional gondola was added to the BV-141 port wing and tested. Another major advantage of the wing tip cockpit was that it would leave the 163's main fuselage less cluttered, leaving space for a power plant that consisted of two engines coupled together driving counter rotating propellers in a centerline thrust. At about the same time that Project 163 was being developed, the centerline thrust approach was also being explored in the South of Germany by the Dornier Company. Their DO 335 arrow heavy fighter bomber design was also based on the principle of centerline thrust. One engine set in the traditional nose position and another placed in the centre of the fuselage, driving a propeller at the very back of the aircraft. In the United States, another company's Douglas aircraft were also engrossed in another centerline thrust project, which was just as revolutionary. The XB-42, or mixed master, was designed as a fast long range bomber. It employed 2 engines mounted near the middle of the airframe, driving separate propellers grouped together at the rear. The-42's layout, like that of the DO 335, resulted in extremely clean flying surfaces that made for increased speed and maneuverability. Both aircraft were finally made and with testing so advanced, they probably would have gone into production if the war had continued. Meanwhile, back in Germany, the war was not going well and the benefits of all new aircraft projects were being seriously reappraised. Although it was reasonable to assume that Blohm & Voss had a design that would be the equal of the Junkers Ju 88 in speed range, and it would also have offered considerably more defensive gunnery, there was still caution about the practicality of the crew positions. How would pilots feel about such an unusual design? The acid test would be the adapted 141 asymmetric plane. The standard BV 141 actually worked quite well. The addition of yet another gondola at the very tip of one wing made the aircraft even more bizarre looking, but it served its purpose and apparently proved that the wingtip cockpit arrangement was workable. However workable just wasn't enough. Project 163 was cancelled before a prototype was built. There would be no armadas. Of this unusual looking aircraft flying over enemy targets and the addition of another gondola at the very tip of one wing did not turn it into a swan, but it served its purpose and apparently proved the wingtip cockpit arrangement was acceptable. Another factor behind the decision to cancel the 163 was its performance. It simply did not offer any major improvement on what was already proven and available. But performance was not Richard Vogts primary objective in designing the 163. His goal was to find a way of substituting steel for aluminum, which at the time was in short supply. But as the war progressed, not only aluminum but all materials in Germany were in short supply. But Richard Vogts revolutionary concept would later be vindicated by the United States Air Force. In 1949, the Northrop F-89 Scorpion was finally selected by Air Defence Command as its mainstay all weather interceptor. It was armed with cannons, but the A B and C models displayed structural problems in the wings and there were some losses. In 1954 the D Model ended service. This had a much strengthened wing and a huge pod mounted on both wing tips. Each pod contained 52 mighty mouse rockets. The F-89D became the main production version of the Scorpion and perhaps supported Vogts theory on wing bending and turbulence. The post war B-17 clearly demonstrated the benefits of Vogts wingtip theory. But we had a B-17 there that had a prove position on the right wing tip. The reason they did that was to develop a central gun control. So they had this on the V29. However, it wasn't on the wing tip, but that was what the airplane was built for. However the war was over and everybody. forgot about that except the aeromed people thought ohh, what a wonderful thing to find out what it is like to roll an aeroplane if you're not on the roll axis. Everybody said I'm going to make any difference but they insisted on doing it and they built a cockpit in that position out there using the formation stick, which was a work through the autopilot and you could fly the airplane from this position out on the wing tips. I I got, I got to fly it. The one thing you did learn was, you know when you're in turbulent. air you keep seeing the wings flap up and down. That's not exactly what's happening. The wings are more tips are more or less steady. It's the fuselage that's moving up and down. And you could sit out there on that wing tip and jiggle it formation, stick longitudinally and make the people in the airplane sick, and you were hardly moving, but you didn't do it too much because they get mad at you and get even with you later. In recognition of his genius, Richard Vogt was invited immediately after the war to work in America. He contributed to many designs, including the ambitious tiptoe project and its many variants. If you enjoyed this video, Please remember to like and subscribe. And as always. Thank you for watching.
