Heinkel He 162

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Heinkel He 162
Heinkel He 162 during the follow-up flight in the USA
Heinkel He 162 during follow-up in the United States
Type: Jet-powered fighter aircraft
Design country:

German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire

Manufacturer:

Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke AG

First flight:

December 6, 1944

Production time:

1944-1945

Number of pieces:

about 170

The Heinkel He 162 (also called Volksjäger , Salamander or Spatz ) is a German fighter plane in a shoulder-wing arrangement . It was developed in a very short time towards the end of the Second World War .

history

On September 8, 1944, the tender was issued for a fighter aircraft that was easy to fly and inexpensive to produce (according to the tender and the requirements of the hunter emergency program as a so-called "Volksjäger"). It should achieve good flight performance, weigh no more than two tons, be able to stay in the air for at least 30 minutes and require a runway of no more than 500 m.

After initial drafts as Project P 1073, Heinkel received the building contract on September 15, 1944 - exactly 69 days later - the first flight took place at the Schwechat-Heidfeld air base , today 's Vienna-Schwechat Airport Test pilot, flight captain Gotthold Peter, has already achieved a speed of more than 800 km / h. On December 10, 1944 Gotthold Peter had a fatal accident on the official demonstration flight at Vienna-Schwechat airport at a speed of around 700 km / h. From film recordings of the flight it can be seen that the crash was triggered by the breakage of the right wing nose  - followed by the detachment of the right aileron  . In the accident report, an incorrectly glued wing nose is stated as the cause of the crash, and weaknesses in the strength are pointed out. It is possible that the aircraft was also overstrained by the test pilot when intercepting it from the incline flight .

More and more attempts were made to replace metal with wood. Finally, a speed limit was imposed and the sparrow was only allowed to fly faster than 600 km / h in exceptional situations until a new adhesive was found later. During a flight test at Heinkel, a speed of 960 km / h was reached at an altitude of 4 km.

Construction and equipment

Underground production of Heinkel He 162 in the Tarthun salt mine

The wings and a few parts of the fuselage were made of wood. Only simple technology was used in favor of faster production. To achieve still attractive flight performance, the He 162 was by a BMW 003 - jet engine driven. Like the Heinkel He 219 and the Arado Ar 234, the aircraft was equipped with an ejection seat to enable the pilot to be rescued in the event of an engine failure or a material breakage. If the ejection seat was released, the belts were first tightened, then the canopy with a small explosive charge was removed and the seat was catapulted out of the aircraft with a slightly larger charge.

The armament consisted of two MG 151/20 with 120 rounds each. The original objective was to defend against allied bomber groups . At the same time, the escorting squadrons of hunters were to be decimated, but this only happened in isolated cases due to the war situation with the war nearing end. The first combat mission took place on April 26, 1945. But there was only one unconfirmed kill. Later statements by the pilot of the downed machine describe the shape of the He 162. A unit of glider pilots of the Hitler Youth was hastily trained and sent into action after ten hours of flight with the He 162. However, since the aircraft still had defects that could not be eliminated due to the time pressure, more German pilots died from defects than from enemy action. The flight time was about 45 to 60 minutes. Errors in the navigation almost inevitably led to a loss, since the machine could hardly be landed without a drive.

He 162 p

The development of this high-speed glider with the designation "Heinkel 162 S" for instructors and flight students was necessary because numerous crash landings were recorded due to the high landing speed of the He 162 of up to 200 km / h and the insufficient training of the partly young pilots were. The production of the glider training aircraft was realized by the National Socialist Aviation Corps (NSFK) in cooperation with the " Organization Heyn " (OH), which was founded in 1943 by the Reich Ministry of Aviation for the use of wood in aircraft construction , in Dresden and various locations in Saxony. After the air raids on Dresden in February 1945, the production facility for the aircraft fuselage was relocated to Olbernhau in the Ore Mountains in the Otto Weinhold jr art furniture factory that had been confiscated by the NSFK . By April 1945 only one glider had been completed and successfully flown at Trebbin airfield by pilot Hanna Reitsch, among others ; only the paintwork was missing on six other machines. Before the arrival of the Soviet troops in Olbernhau on May 8, 1945, all gliders and technical documents were checked by the technical manager and employees of Otto Weinhold jr. destroyed.

commitment

The flight performance of the He 162 was higher than that of the Allied fighters. In addition, there was an extraordinary maneuverability, but there was only a small amount of armor. Although the aircraft was designed to be easy to fly, the engine mounted on the fuselage made it very sensitive, which the poorly trained pilots could not cope with. In spite of everything, only two He 162s were shot down by P-51 Mustangs . The number of losses due to structural failure and engine problems was significantly higher - all in all, an indication of the too short development time and the poor material and supply situation in the entire “Jäger Emergency Program”. During operations of I./JG 1, two enemy machines are said to have been shot down on April 26, 1945 by NCO Rechenbach († April 26, 1945) and on May 4, 1945 by Lieutenant Rudi Schmitt. However, these kills were no longer officially confirmed. From May 5, 1945 the at least 15 operational He 162s of JG 1 remained on the ground and were later handed over to the Allied military authorities by the commodore of JG 1, Colonel Herbert Ihlefeld , after the armistice or the surrender of the German Wehrmacht . The advancing British Army units found a total of 31 or even 50 He 162s on the Leck Air Base in Schleswig-Holstein, which were set up along the runway. At least eleven planes were transported to England, where five of them were flown for testing at the Royal Aircraft Establishment .

As a replacement for the He 162, a new aircraft with a Heinkel HeS-011 jet engine was tendered by the OKL towards the end of the war . At the end of 1944, the designs Messerschmitt P.1110 , Heinkel P. 1078 , Focke-Wulf Ta 183 , Blohm & Voss P 212 and the official winner of the tender, the Junkers EF 128 were submitted .

Technical specifications

Side view He 162 A-1
Three-sided tear

Category: Jet Airplane / Air Superiority Fighter

The technical data calculated on September 12, 1944 with a weight of 2500 kg were:

  • Span: 7.20 m (7.00 m / 8.20 m)
  • the calculations still played with the 7 m and 8.20 m variants
  • Length: 8.00 m
  • Area: 10.00 m²
  • Weight: 2525 kg (with a MK 108 )
  • Weight: 2635 kg (with two MK 108)
  • Top speed: 850 km / h
  • Landing speed: 154 km / h
  • Climb rate: near the ground 17 m / s, at 9800 m altitude 4 m / s
  • Range: 610 km
  • Flight time: 22 min
  • Take-off distance: 570 m

Preserved copies

Heinkel He 162 salamander or sparrow
Heinkel He 162 (replica) on August 13, 2007 on the Bückeburg-Weinberg glider airfield

See also

literature

  • Ulrich Albrecht : Artifacts of Fanaticism - Technology and National Socialist Ideology in the Final Phase of the Third Reich . In: Science and Peace eV (Ed.): W&F Science and Peace . No. 4 . BdWi-Verlag, Marburg 1989 ( article on W&F [accessed December 15, 2019]).
  • Manfred Griehl: Heinkel jet aircraft He 162 "Volksjäger". Stedinger Verlag, Lemwerder 2007, ISBN 978-3-927697-50-8 .
  • Alfred Hiller: Heinkel He 162 "Volksjäger" - development, production, use. Alfred Hiller publishing house, Vienna 1984.
  • Fabian Hümer: The 'Volksjäger' Heinkel He 162. Forced resource mobilization in the face of defeat , 2013, Master's thesis at the University of Vienna ( online )
  • Karl-Heinz Ludwig: Technology and Engineers in the Third Reich. Athenäum-Verlag, Königstein / Ts., 1979, ISBN 3-7610-7219-8 .
  • Peter Müller: Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger - Last attempt by the Luftwaffe. Müller History Facts, Andelfingen 2006, ISBN 3-9522968-0-5 .
  • Heinz J. Nowarra : The "Volksjäger" He 162. Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg 1984, ISBN 3-7909-0216-0 .
  • Wolfgang Peter-Michel: Flight experiences with the Heinkel He 162 - test pilots report. BOD-Verlag, Norderstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8423-7048-7 .
  • Peter Petrick: The training aircraft for the last contingent. JET & PROP, No. 4, 1994.
  • Wolfgang Weinhold: The Salamander - An airplane from the carpenter's workshop. Holz-Zentralblatt, issue 35 from March 21, 1984.
  • Siegfried A. Weinhold : Otto Weinhold Jr .: Art furniture factory 1879–1972, Olbernhau / Erzgebirge. Jülich 2005, ISBN 3-00-015706-9 .
  • Wolfgang Wollenweber: The Reichsadler - Documentation about the operations with the Me 110 and the He 162. Helios Verlag, Aachen, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86933-080-8 .
  • Dresden State Archives: Deutsche Werkstätten AG, Dresden, Organization Heyn. Holdings 11764, No. 723–725.
  • German Museum of Technology Foundation Berlin. Archive.
  • Federal Archives-Military Archives Freiburg: The Reich Minister for Armaments, Armaments Staff. Collective report from October 21, 1944.

Web links

Commons : Heinkel He 162  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Griehl: Heinkel He 162 "Volksjäger" - development, production and use. Stedinger Verlag, ISBN 978-3-927697-50-8 .
  2. ^ Bredow Web: He 162
  3. ↑ a b H. Dieter Köhler: Ernst Heinkel - pioneer of high-speed aircraft. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1999.
  4. ↑ About the accident of the aircraft 8-162 V1 on December 10th, 1944. Status of the investigation on December 20, 1944. Printed in Luftfahrtlexikon (1978) p. 3733 ff. As original. Publishing house E. S Mittler & Sohn
  5. ↑ Ulrich Albrecht: Artifacts of Fanaticism . In: W&F - Information Service Science and Peace. 4, 1989.
  6. ↑ Shooting with He 162 - yes or no ?, AIRCRAFT No. 1 1989, p. 49 ff.
  7. ↑ HEINKEL He162A-2 W / NR.120227 / AIR MIN 65 / VN679 / 8472MMUSEUM ACCESSION NUMBER 1990/0697 / A , RAF Museum website, accessed on November 2, 2019
  8. ↑ Peter Müller: Heinkel He 162 "Volksjäger" - last attempt by the Luftwaffe. Müller History Facts, Andelfingen 2006, ISBN 3-9522968-0-5 .
  9. ↑ Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace: Heinkel He 162 A “Volksjäger” , accessed on September 1, 2014
  10. ↑ LuftArchiv.de: He 162 A-2, WkNr. 120077, Rote 1 'Nervenklau' der 2./JG 1, accessed on September 1, 2014
  11. ↑ Planes of Fame: Heinkel He-162A-1 Volksjager, accessed on September 1, 2014
  12. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htcaPzZzWjs History of and How Jet Engines Work (full documentary) HD, youtube.com, April 1, 2015, 10: 03-10: 13, accessed September 9 2015. (English)
  13. ↑ RAF Museum Aircraft Collection: INDIVIDUAL HISTORY HEINKEL He162A-2 W / NR.120227 , accessed on September 1, 2014
  14. ^ Imperial War Museum London: Heinkel He 162 'Yellow 6' , accessed on September 1, 2014