America bomber

The America bomber project was an initiative of the Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) to develop a long-range bomber for the Air Force that was able to attack the United States from Europe .

Conventional projects

The Air Ministry was working on plans starting around 1937. This followed the Amerika Bomber study designs and prototypes with the internal name Ural bomber . Design applications were submitted to the major German aircraft manufacturers as early as 1937, long before the start of World War II - and well before the USA entered the war. The most promising candidates were based on conventional principles of aircraft design and would have been very similar in appearance, construction and performance to the heavy Allied bombers of the time:

Heinkel He 277 (based on He 177 )
Messerschmitt Me 264 (a completely new design)
Focke-Wulf Fw 300 (based on the Fw 200 )
Focke-Wulf Ta 400 (a completely new design)
Junkers Ju 390 (based on the Ju 290 )

Prototypes of the Me 264 were built, but it was the Ju 390 that was selected for production. Only two prototypes were constructed before the program was discontinued.

The strategy was to launch the heavy bombers from the Azores . From there it is approximately 4,000 km to New York City . The German Empire tried to lease a base in the Azores from neutral Portugal . Ultimately, the Portuguese leader António de Oliveira Salazar came to an agreement with the British in 1944.

Piggyback project

An unconventional project was planned as an alternative. The plan was to "tow" the Dornier Do 217 , equipped with a Lorin ramjet engine , with a Heinkel He 177 bomber across the Atlantic until the Do 217 could reach the east coast of the USA on its own ( parasite- Fighter concept). Then the Do 217 should disengage and the He 177 should return to the starting point. Thanks to the ramjet engine, the Do 217 could have avoided all interceptors in the USA at that time with its high speed. However, the do have 217 after deployment in the Atlantic ditch must. The crew should have been rescued by a German submarine . Ultimately, the project was abandoned.

Other Projects

The other candidates were much more exotic jet and rocket powered models. The best-known of these is probably Eugen Sanger's " Silbervogel ", a suborbital glider . Work on it was discontinued in 1941 as the necessary resources flowed into other projects.

A little more conventional was the Horten H XVIII , a flying wing aircraft that was powered by six turbo jets and was supposed to build on the experience with the H IX . The Arado company also proposed a flying wing with six jet engines, the Arado E.555 . Neither draft got beyond the planning stage.

literature

James P. Duffy: Target America: Hitler's Plan to Attack the United States . Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-59228-934-9
Robert Forsyth: Messerschmitt Me 264 America Bomber: The Luftwaffe's Lost Transatlantic Bomber . London: Ian Allen Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-903223-65-2
Dieter Herwig / Heinz Rode: Luftwaffe Secret Projects - Strategic Bombers 1935–45 . Hinckley, UK: Midland Publishing Ltd., 2000. ISBN 1-85780-092-3
Richard Overy : From "Uralbomber" to "Amerikabomber": The Luftwaffe and Strategic Bombing , in: The Journal of Strategic Studies , 1/1978, pp. 169–170
“America bomber” versus “large capacity transporter”, 2 unequal competitors. Messerschmitt Me 264 & Junkers Ju 390. LAUTEC Software und Medien GmbH, Siegen 2004, ( Luftfahrt history 4, ZDB -ID 2209511-1 ), link .

Individual evidence

^ Alan Axelrod: Title Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London , Verlag St. Martin's Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4668-7912-6 , p. 146 [1]
^ ^A ^b Alan Axelrod: Encyclopedia of World War II, Volume 1 , Verlag HW Fowler, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-6022-1 , p. 52 [2]
^ Alan Axelrod: Title Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London , Verlag St. Martin's Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4668-7912-6 , pp. 146–147 [3]
^ Stanley G. Payne : Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II , Yale University Press , 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-12282-4 , p. 204 [4]
^ ^A ^b Alan Axelrod: Title Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London , Verlag St. Martin's Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4668-7912-6 , p. 147 [5]
^ Brian J Ford: Secret Weapons: Death Rays, Doodlebugs and Churchill's Golden Goose Verlag Osprey Publishing , 2013 ISBN 978-1-84908-874-9 , p. 59 [6]

[1] Alan Axelrod: Title Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London , Verlag St. Martin's Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4668-7912-6 , p. 146 [1]

[Axelrod_Encyclopedia_S52-2] A ^b Alan Axelrod: Encyclopedia of World War II, Volume 1 , Verlag HW Fowler, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-6022-1 , p. 52 [2]

[3] Alan Axelrod: Title Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London , Verlag St. Martin's Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4668-7912-6 , pp. 146–147 [3]

[4] Stanley G. Payne : Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II , Yale University Press , 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-12282-4 , p. 204 [4]

[Axelrod_Destiny_S147-5] A ^b Alan Axelrod: Title Lost Destiny: Joe Kennedy Jr. and the Doomed WWII Mission to Save London , Verlag St. Martin's Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4668-7912-6 , p. 147 [5]

[6] Brian J Ford: Secret Weapons: Death Rays, Doodlebugs and Churchill's Golden Goose Verlag Osprey Publishing , 2013 ISBN 978-1-84908-874-9 , p. 59 [6]