Secret Weapons by Brian Ford Read Free Book Online

numbers than any other German plane during the early years of the war. It took part in the Battle of Britain, but the superiority of the British fighters proved that its time had passed. It had poor manoeuvrability, limited operating speed, and its armaments were inferior. However, it could often remain flying even when badly damaged and so was eventually employed on many fronts during the war. As well as serving as a bomber it was useful as a transport aircraft on the Eastern, Western, Mediterranean, Middle East and North African Fronts, and was successfully used to drop torpedoes in the North Atlantic campaign. As the war ended, the He-111 re-emerged in a different guise, ensuring the design remained in use for many years. It was produced in Spain under licence by Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA, and the first of these planes flew before the war ended in May 1945. After the war, since it was no longer possible for the manufacturers to obtain the Junkers engines, they installed the Rolls-Royce Merlin 500 instead. Over 170 Merlin engines were ordered in 1953 alone. A nine-passenger transport aircraft, the 2.111T8, was to follow. Many of these planes found a use in movies about World War II, repainted to look like the original Heinkels. The Spanish planes continued in daily use until they were finally withdrawn from service in 1973.
    The strangest version of the He-111 was the top-secret heavy-duty version designed to tow gliders filled with tanks, artillery and troops. It was manufactured as a pair of conjoined He-111 aircraft with a common wing upon which a fifth engine was mounted. The entire wingspan was some 125ft (38m) and the pilot flew the plane from a cockpit in the left-hand fuselage using identical, linked control levers. Towing a glider of over 35 tons, this twin aircraft was said to have flown to 30,000ft (9,100m) in 1942. The large numbers of these vast tow-trucks that would have been necessary for large-scale invasions were never produced. Certainly the handling and aerodynamics of this bastard giant would have been intimidating at the very least.
    Following the success of the He-111 came the He-115, a seaplane comparable to the Sunderland Flying Boat that was produced in large numbers by the British. The He-116 was designed for long-distance cargo transportation and was used for flights to Japan; the He-117 and He-118 were tactical developments that never got off the ground and the He-119 – which could travel up to 375mph (600km/h) and was to be powered by two DB-603 engines – was never put into production.
    A revolutionary high-altitude bomber was proposed as the He-274, intended to be a four-engined bomber with a number of advanced features. Development began in October 1941 and the prototypes of the new bomber were contracted for construction in France by the Société Anonyme des Usines Farman (SAUF) firm in Suresnes, near Paris. The He-274 dispensed with twin coupled engines and instead featured four independent DB-603 A-2 engines with a greater wingspan and a lengthened fuselage. The cockpit would be double-glazed and pressurized to maintain an air pressure for the crew equivalent to an altitude of 8,200ft (2,500m). The aircraft was designed to fly up to 47,000ft (14,300m), far higher than any Allied fighter. In 1937 a Bristol Type 138 high altitude monoplane had reached a world record altitude of 49,967ft (15,230m) but this was an experimental aircraft; the highest a Spitfire XIX ever flew was 44,000ft (13,400m).
    As a consequence, the He-274 would require little defensive armament and the plane was designed to carry a forward-firing 13mm (0.51in) MG 131 machine gun with a further two pairs of these guns in turrets. Work on manufacture of the prototypes did not start until 1943 and the advance of Allied forces on Paris in July 1944 forced the evacuation of the German employees before the first flight had taken place. Here too, the German technology pointed to the future. After the war, the French Air