“I took off in this thing, which was the early tail-dragging model, and the original engines were underpowered for the weight, but this would later be corrected with using Jumos. I was moving the throttles forward to increase my takeoff speed, and I was perhaps only fifty meters off the deck when both engines just blew out. There was no strange sound, just a ‘whoosh’ sound and then a sudden silence; and I found myself in a very heavy glider. I managed to set the aircraft down on the nacelles, sliding across down the airstrip. The damage to the aircraft was minimal, and I was impressed with how survivable the airframe was in such an emergency landing.”{10}
These engines were finally abandoned in favor of the Jumo design, and this engine later underwent intensive tests through early 1943. The results proved worthwhile, as the Jumo 004B was given an upgraded and more reliable compressor, and the improved blades that were designed for the compressor proved to be more heat tolerant. The previous hollow blades, designed for lighter weight, had consistently failed after cracking, so the solid blade was introduced, proving to be satisfactory.
The next phase was to determine how many hours the blades and compressors would last before repair or replacement were required. Full production began in the summer of 1943 at both the Junkers facility in Leipzig and at the Opelwerke at Russelsheim. These two locations alone were to prove problematic, as Allied bombing plans targeted those cities with devastating effect. Allied intelligence did not choose their targets at random; they knew what the Germans were working on to a large degree. They simply did not know how far the Germans had come in their research and development.
CHAPTER 5
Competition and Innovation
I think it was the correct decision, as future jet bomber development was taken over by Arado, and that proved successful.
Since 1939, the Allies had an Enigma code machine, and later in 1941, they had a complete unit with the code books, captured on U-110. The wizards at Bletchley Park broke the code, the Ultra Project, and kept it secret. In July 1944, when the U-505 was captured with an updated Enigma machine, the British were reading everything as soon as the Germans sent it. However, electronic code breaking, as valuable as it was, was only as good as the hard data to support the traffic received. Aerial photoreconnaissance was a valuable tool, but hands-on intelligence was even better.
Top-secret plans on many German designs, including the Me 262, Me 163, He 178, He 280, Ar 234, and the V-1 project, were in British hands courtesy of a Swiss agent passing them on to the British RAF Air Attaché in Bern in 1943. Also received were the German developments in the creation of new and synthetic fuels, production facility locations, numbers of workers, and information of that nature. Perhaps of even greater interest were the projected dates of these weapons being operational and deployed to forward units. Even during the early days, the British received information that kept them concerned. However, this was not the first collection of valuable intelligence gathered by the British on German aviation developments.
In 1939, Ernst Heinkel had the first successful flight of the He 178 when Erich Warsitz lifted off in the aircraft, which was powered by the turbojet engine designed by Hans von Ohain. Little support was initially forthcoming from the RLM from either Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch or Hermann Göring. Both were open to new ideas, but both also had to answer to Adolf Hitler, who watched every mark and pfennig in a financial micromanagerial method that would cripple many ingenious designs and concepts.
One of the great “what-ifs” in history is the possible development and mass production of other jets; the He 280 could have become the first operational jet aircraft, if not a fighter, instead of the Me 262. The Heinkel company began the development on the He 280 project after the He 178 had been met without enthusiasm from the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM). The chief designer, Robert Lusser, began the project under the initial designation He 180 in late 1939. The design had a typical Heinkel fighter-styled fuselage, elliptically shaped wings, and a dihedral tail plane with twin fins and rudders. The landing gear was the retractable tricycle configuration with very little ground clearance. One major design innovation was the inclusion of the compressed air–powered ejection seat, the first aircraft to ever be so equipped.
The first He 180 (280) prototype was completed in June 1940, but the He S8 turbojet engine intended to be the powerplant had mechanical difficulties. On September 22, 1940, while work on the engine problems continued, the first prototype started glider tests with adjusted ballast replacing the missing engines to provide an accurate aerodynamic test. It would be another six months before Flugkapitän Fritz Schäfer would be able to take the second prototype into the air under its own power on March 30, 1941. The self-propelled prototype was then demonstrated to Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Udet, then head of RLM’s development wing on April 5. However, Udet, a Pour le Mérite sixty-four-victory ace from World War I and stunt pilot and barnstormer between the wars, was less than impressed.
This is where history took a strange course. Had Udet been impressed enough to approve continued development, Heinkel would have received the extra funding they needed. This infusion of capital and political support would likely have led to the firm solving all of the problems they were having with the engines. This situation was true concerning all jet engine development in Germany. If there was no government funding, ideas tended to die on the vine.
A contest flight to demonstrate the new design was organized in 1941, comparing the He 280 with the Fw 190A to determine if the cost of continued research, development, and production was worth the effort. The Fw 190 had effectively replaced the Me 109 series in the West as the mainstay fighter with the intentions of being the premier anti-bomber fighter, given its armament, armor plating, and radial air-cooled engine. Ernst Heinkel designed a smaller jet fighter airframe for the He 280 that was well matched to the lower-thrust jet engines available in 1941.
During the demonstration, the He 280 completed four laps on the oval circuit course before the Fw 190 could complete three. The maximum weight displacement of the He 280 was 4,296 kilograms (9,470 pounds) compared with 7,130 kilograms (15,720 pounds) for the Me 262. The He 280 could have gone into production by late 1941 and maintained the air superiority, which the Fw 190 had been designed and built for. The initial teething problems experienced with the He S8 engine would have plenty of time to be ironed out just as production of the fighter airframe had begun.
The major factor that Heinkel pushed was the fact that the He 280 jet engines could burn kerosene, which was much cheaper, more readily available, and much safer with a higher flash point than the high-octane fuel used by piston-engine aircraft. This argument was not inconsiderable, although Messerschmitt had the same argument.
The He 280 may have had a better chance at a contract—and thus a more important entry in the aviation history books—had the company pushed the aircraft as an anti-shipping fighter-bomber. This would have then allowed the Kriegsmarine to join the Luftwaffe in supporting the design, as it would complement the Fw 200 Condor anti-shipping aircraft, working with the U-boat force against the Allied trans-Atlantic convoys. It was not a highly maneuverable jet, but it had the speed and the power to lift ratio to carry a respectable bomb load for such work.