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HITLER’S ‘WONDER WEAPON’ AIRCRAFT PROJECTS
rare drawin
g
and photos s
300
More than
ME 163 TESTED
WITH CANARDS
ROCKET-POWERED
GOTHA TANK BUSTER
Dan Sharp
FLYING TRIANGLE
JET BOMBER
NEW ARCHIVE
DISCOVERIES
CLASSIFIED GERMAN WW2 AVIATION DESIGNS REVEALED IN DETAIL
ISBN: 978-1-911276-62-3
£6.99
19
Preface
f
T
hroughout the Second World War, but
especially during its closing stages,
Germany’s aircraft designers came up with
unusual solutions to some very specific problems.
In particular, the urgent need to strike at bomber
a
bases in Britain, shoot down the bombers coming
r
from Britain, gain air superiority over the likes of the
p
Spitfire and Mustang, make do with fewer material
e
resources and do all of the above as quickly as possible,
e
seems to have inspired some very creative thinking.
The first three parts of my Luftwaffe: Secret
e
series each focused on a particular thread of
i
aircraft development in Nazi Germany during
h
the war years – jet fighters, bombers and tailless
i
aircraft. In each case, rather than relying on
x
existing works by other authors, I endeavoured
o
to base my work on original source material –
German documents captured by the Allies in 1945
and reports made by the Allies of interrogations
and other contemporary intelligence work.
The result has, hopefully, been a somewhat
clearer picture of the framework of requirements,
competitions and contracts surrounding the
development of some of Germany’s most famous, or
perhaps infamous, ‘secret project’ aircraft. I was by no
means the first to attempt this – quite the reverse. Ever
since the end of the Second World War and the Allies’
diligent efforts to haul away huge quantities of ‘secret’
documents from Germany, there have been writers
and historians who sought to piece together details of
x
exactly what aircraft designs, advanced or otherwise,
h
the German aircraft companies had been working on.
With this in mind, I had thought that every
k
sketch, every drawing, every crumpled piece of
doodled-on scrap paper from every designer’s
wastebasket (the ubiquitous and in some cases
n
infamous ‘napkin waffe’) had already been found
and published years ago. But it seems I was wrong
– there was and is still more to be discovered.
As I went about my research among the ‘usual
u
suspects’, I would frequently happen upon drawings
and documents that were wholly unexpected –
seemingly unheard-of versions of well-known German
wartime aircraft, clear drawings of aircraft proposals
whose existence had been the stuff of mere hints
and rumours, straightforward reports which offered
explanations of previously inexplicable designs.
Indeed, while researching each of the first three
titles in this series I discovered some ‘projects’ which
appeared to be previously unknown and some which,
though known, appeared to be little understood.
In some cases, the designs exist only as drawings
or even sketches. In others, they exist only as textual
descriptions – the associated drawings having
apparently been lost or destroyed. For still others,
h
there are full reports which seem simply never to
have previously been reported on. This time there
is no broader narrative linking the featured designs
together other than the fact of their obscurity.
At the end of each previous Luftwaffe: Secret title,
I included a section called ‘Unknown!’ – a not-so-subtle
reference to the old Reichdreams Dossiers created
by Justo Miranda and Paula Mercado during the late
1990s and early 2000s. But whereas Miranda and
Mercado used their five volumes of ‘Unknown!’ as a
clearing house for a jumble of British, Italian, French,
American and even a few German projects, I subtitled
mine ‘Postwar discoveries, misinterpretations and
mysteries’ and used it to critically examine some of
the dubious or little-known German projects referred
to by various historians over the last 70 years or so.
I examined designs such as the so-called Blohm
& Voss Ae 607, the Heinkel VTOL fighters and
the Messerschmitt ‘animal names’ types but also
managed to include a few of my own discoveries –
such as a Henschel P 135 looking very different to
how the design is usually seen, and the Swaty S.8.
Even before I started this section, I knew I had
far too many entries for it. In fact, I had intended to
include 20 pages of ‘Unknown!’ in Luftwaffe: Secret
Wings until I realised that this would leave too little
room for the eponymous ‘wings’. And so I conceived
this title as a means of drawing together a collection
of both entirely new discoveries and details of known
projects I had not seen published anywhere else.
In writing this publication, I wanted to be candid
about the status of the ‘projects’ I was presenting.
Where very little information was available, I
wanted to try and make that as clear as possible.
Y should not expect, therefore, to find all the
ou
answers concerning everything you see within
this volume. Neither will you find any ambiguous
‘re-draws’ or unlabelled ‘speculative’ drawings,
which may or may not represent the features of
an original drawing (you will not find them in any
of my previous Luftwaffe: Secret titles either).
The modern colour artwork commissioned for and
included in Luftwaffe: Secret Designs is intended to
stick as closely to those original designs as possible
and is clearly labelled as artwork. Where it has been
necessary to ‘speculate’ about the features of these
designs, particularly where the original exists only
as a single-view drawing or undetailed sketch, I have
attempted to explain the nature of that speculation.
My aim here then, rather than to offer a
broad narrative, is to showcase and comment
on material which has lain largely undisturbed
for the best part of a century and which might
otherwise have continued to languish in the
shadows for many decades yet to come.
There can be no greater thrill for the dedicated
researcher than the discovery of something
‘new’ – and I hope I can share a little of that
feeling with you as you read this publication.
•
Luftwaffe: Secret Designs of the Third Reich
003
0
006
Known unknowns
008
Arado ‘Dreieck’
012
Arado ÜS-Flugzeug
014
Arado E 208
018
Arado Ar 233
024
Blohm & Voss BV 138, projects P 81, P 84, P 85, P 86, P 94,
P 110, P 111, P 112, P 144, P 145 and BV 238 Seefernaufklärer,
Dornier P 93/Do 214 and P 173/Do 216, Heinkel He 120
P 252 and triple jet fighter
042
Dornier P 144, P 149, P 150, P 151, P 153, P 155,
P 222, P 223, Do 317 and Do 417
052
DVL jet fighter
056
Focke-Wulf Grosstransporter
062
Gotha P-60.007
066
Gotha oddities
072
Guided weapons
076
Heinkel P 1076
082
Henschel P 75, P 87, P 90, P 108, P 122, P 130,
P 135, P 136 and Hs 132
036
Dornier P 209, P 215, P 231, P 232, P 238,
004
Luftwaffe: Secret Designs of the Third Reich
Contents
o
HITLER’S ‘WONDER WEAPON’ AIRCRAFT PROJECTS
rare drawin
gs
and photos
300
More than
FRONT COVER:
Zeppelin pulsejet fighter
shoots down a Soviet Lend-
Lease Bell P-63 Kingcobra
east of Berlin. Art by Ronnie
y
Olsthoorn
INSIDE COVER:
Dornier P 144 (top) and
Do 317. Drawing circa
1939/40.
ME 163 TESTED
WITH CANARDS
ROCKET-POWERED
GOTHA TANK BUSTER
Dan Sharp
FLYING TRIANGLE
JET BOMBER
NEW ARCHIVE
DISCOVERIES
CLASSIFIED GERMAN WW2 AVIATION DESIGNS REVEALED IN DETAIL
AUTHOR: Dan Sharp
DESIGN: Lucy Carnell - atg-media.com
m a
REPROGRAPHICS: Jonathan Schofield, Paul Fincham and
h
Angie Sisestean
PRODUCTION EDITOR: Pauline Hawkins
PUBLISHER: Steve O’Hara
ADVERTISING MANAGER: Sue Keily, skeily@mortons.co.uk
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Dan Savage
MARKETING MANAGER: Charlotte Park
COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR: Nigel Hole
PUBLISHED BY: Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre,
Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6JR.
Tel. 01507 529529
THANKS TO: Steven Coates, Zoltán Csombó, Calum
Douglas, Chris Elwell, Hamza Fouatih, Dan Johnson,
Luca Landino, Paul Martell-Mead, Ronnie Olsthoorn,
Alexander Power, Kay Stout, Daniel Uhr, Stephen Walton
and Tony Wilson
PRINTED BY: William Gibbons and Sons, Wolverhampton
ABOVE: Messerschmitt P 1079/17 attacking a
USAAF Manta Aircraft Corp fighter.
Art by Ronnie Olsthoorn
ISBN: 978-1-911276-62-3
© 2018 Mortons Media Group Ltd. All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing
from the publisher.
094
Junkers EF 116
100
Lippisch P 15 Diana
108
Messerschmitt Me 109 Zw, Me 309 Zw and Me 609
116
Messerschmitt Me 163 with canards
118
Messerschmitt P 1079
124
Messerschmitt Schnellstflugzeug
128
Zippermayr’s Pfeil Flugzeug
130
Zeppelin pulsejet fighter
Luftwaffe: Secret Designs of the Third Reich
005
ISBN: 978-1-911276-62-3
£6.99
19

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