Heinkel He 162

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinkel He 162

Description
Role	Fighter
Crew	One, pilot
First Flight	6 December 1944
Manufacturer	Heinkel
Dimensions
Length	9.05 m	29 ft 8 in
Wingspan	7.2 m	23 ft 7 in
Height	2.6 m	8 ft 6 in
Wing area	14.5 m²	156 ft²
Weights
Empty	1,660 kg	3,660 lb
Loaded
Maximum takeoff	2,800 kg	6,180 lb
Powerplant
Engines	1x BMW 003E-1 or E-2 turbojet
Thrust	800 kgf (7.85 kN	1,760 lbf
Performance
Maximum speed	900 km/h	562 mph
Maximum range	975 km	606 miles
Service ceiling	12,000 m	39,400 ft
Rate of climb	1405 m/min	4615 ft/min
Armament
Guns	2x 20 mm MG 151, 120 rounds each

The Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger ("People's Fighter") was the second jet engined fighter aircraft to be fielded by the Luftwaffe in WWII. It was the fastest of the first generation of Axis and Allied jets. Volksjäger was the RLM's official name for the He 162. Other names given to the plane include Salamander, which was the codename of its construction program, and Spatz ("Sparrow") which was the name given to the plane by Heinkel. Much of the plane was made of wood, as metals were in very short supply at this time and typically allocated to current front line combat aircraft.

1 Development
2 Design
3 Operations
4 Variants
5 Trivia
6 Survivors
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Development

When the US 8th Air Force re-opened the bombing campaign on Germany in early 1944, with the Big Week offensive, the bombers returned to the skies along with the P-51 Mustang in escort. This changed the nature of the air war entirely; formerly German fighter units could form up for attack on the bombers unmolested, but with escort they were soon spending more time avoiding the US patrols than attacking the bombers. Changes made over the previous year to improve the fighter's bomber-killing abilities with heavy cannons and armour had the side effect of turning them into deathtraps as opposed to the lighter Mustangs, which could outperform the bomber-killers with ease.

The US now had both superior numbers and technology, and by the end of April the backbone of the Luftwaffe fighter groups had been broken. With few planes coming up to fight, the US fighters were let loose on the German airbases, railways and truck traffic. Logistics soon became a serious problem, maintaining aircraft in fighting condition almost impossible, and having enough fuel for a complete mission profile was even more difficult.

What to do about this was a considerable problem for the Luftwaffe. Two camps quickly developed, both demanding the immediate introduction of large numbers of jet aircraft.

One group, led by General der Jäger (General of Fighters) Adolf Galland, reasoned that superior numbers had to be countered with superior technology, and demanded that all possible effort be put into increasing the production of the Messerschmitt Me 262, even if that meant reducing production of other aircraft in the meantime.

Another camp pointed out that this would likely do little to address the problem; the Me 262 was notoriously unreliable, and the existing logistics problems would mean there would simply be more of them sitting on the ground waiting for parts that would never arrive, or for fuel that simply wasn't available. Instead they suggested that a new design be built, one so inexpensive that if it did break it could simply be thrown away. The concept was derided by most fighter pilots, but gained significant political backing.

The argument eventually came down to Galland and other Luftwaffe senior officers on one side expressing nothing short of vehement opposition to the idea, and Reichsmarshall Goering and Armaments Minister Albert Speer fully supporting the light weight fighter idea. Unsurprisingly, a contract tender for a single-engined jet fighter that was suited for cheap and rapid mass production was established under the name Volksjäger ("People's Fighter").

The official RLM requirement specified a single-seat fighter, powered by a single BMW 003. The jet was to use cheap and unsophisticated parts made of wood and other non-critical materials and more importantly could be assembled by low-skilled and non-skilled labor. Specifications included a weight of no more than two tonnes (4,400 pounds), when most fighters of the era were twice that. Maximum speed was specified as 750 km/h (466 mph) at sea level, operational endurance at least a half hour, and the takeoff run no more than 500 meters (1,640 feet). Armament was specified as either two 20 mm MG 151/20's with 100 rounds per gun, or two 30 mm MK 108 with 50 rounds per gun. More importantly the Volksjäger needed to be easy to fly. Some suggested that even glider or student pilots should be able to fly the jet effectively in combat.

The requirement was issued 10 September 1944, with basic designs to be returned within 10 days and to start large scale production by January 1st of 1945.

[edit] Design

Because the winner of the new lightweight fighter design would be building huge numbers of the planes, nearly every German aircraft manufacturer expressed interest in the project. However, Heinkel had already been working on a series of "paper projects" for light single-engine fighters over the last year under the designation P.1073, and had gone so far as to build and test several models and conduct some wind tunnel testing. Although some of the competing designs were technically superior, with Heinkel's head start the outcome was largely a forgone conclusion. The results of the competition were announced in October 1944, only three weeks after being announced, and to no-one's surprise the Heinkel entry was selected for production.

Heinkel had designed a neat, sporty-looking little aircraft, with a sleek, streamlined fuselage, a BMW 003 engine carried in a nacelle on the back of the aircraft, twin tailfins allowing the vertical tailplanes to clear the jet exhaust, a high-mounted straight wing with a shallow dihedral, an ejection seat for the pilot, and tricycle landing gear that retracted into the fuselage. The plane was in the air within an astoundingly short period of time: the design was chosen on 25 September and first flew on December 6, less than 90 days later.

The first flight of the He 162V1, by test pilot Gotthard Peter, was fairly successful, but during a high-speed run at 840 km/h the highly acidic replacement glue (the Tego-Film adhesive originally specified was no longer available as the sole factory procucing it had been bombed) holding the nose gear cover on failed and the pilot was forced to land. Other problems were noted as well, notably a pitch instability and problems with slideslip due to the rudder design. Neither was considered important. On a second flight on 10 December in front of various Nazi officials the glue failed again, this time on the wing. This allowed the aileron to separate, and the plane slowly rolled over and crashed, killing the pilot.

An investigation into the failure revealed that the wing structure had to be re-stressed and redesigned for more strength, as the glue bonding required for the wood parts was in many cases defective, but the schedule was so tight that testing was forced to continue with the current design. Speeds were limited to 500 km/h when the second prototype flew on 22 December. This time the stability problems proved to be more serious, and were tracked to Dutch roll which could be solved by reducing the dihedral. However, with the plane supposed to enter production within weeks, there was no time to change the design. A number of small changes were done, including adding lead ballast to the nose to move the center of gravity more to the front of the plane, and slightly increasing the size of the tail surfaces.

Two prototypes with the strengthened wings flew on 16 January. These versions also included small aluminum wing tip droops in an attempt to cure the stability problems via decreased dihedral. Both were equipped with two MK 108s in the He 162A-1 bomber hunter version, but in testing the recoil proved to be too much for the lightweight fuselage to handle, and plans for production turned to the A-2 fighter with two MG 151/20s instead while a redesign for added strength started as the A-3.

Various changes had raised the weight over the original 2 tonne limit, but even at 2800 kg the aircraft was still the fastest jet aircraft in the air at 890 km/h (553 mph) at sea level, and even faster at 905 km/h (562 mph) at 6,000 meters (20,000 feet).

[edit] Operations

In January 1945, the Luftwaffe formed a "Erprobungskommando 162" (Test Unit 162) evaluation group to which the first 46 aircraft were delivered. The group was based at the Luftwaffe test center at Rechlin and it is frequently stated that this unit was under the command of Heinz Bär. Bär, an experienced combat pilot credited with more than 200 kills gained 16 of his victories with Me 262 as commander of operational training unit III./EJG 2. However Bär's personal documents do not confirm his presence at Erprobungskommando 162 or ever flew He 162s.

February saw deliveries of the He 162 to its first operational unit, I./JG1 (1st Staffel Group of [[Jagdgeschwader]] 1 {1st Squadron, 1st Fighter Wing}), which had previously flown the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. I./JG1 was transferred to Parchim, near the Heinkel factory at Marienehe, where the pilots could pick up their new jets and start intensive training beginning in March, all while the transportation network and fuel supply of the Third Reich was collapsing under the pressure of Allied air attacks. On April 7, the USAAF bombed the field at Parchim with 134 B-17 Flying Fortresses, inflicting serious losses and damage to the infrastructure. Two days later, I./JG1 moved to an airfield at nearby Ludwigslust and, less than a week later, moved again to an airfield at Leck, near the Danish border. In the meantime, on April 8 II./JG1 moved to Marienehe and started converting from Fw 190s to He 162s. The III./JG1 was also scheduled to convert to the He 162, but the Staffel disbanded on April 24 and its personnel used to fill in the vacancies in other units.

The He-162 finally saw combat in mid-April. On April 19, a captured Royal Air Force fighter pilot informed his Germans interrogators that he had been shot down by a jet fighter matching the description of a He 162. The Heinkel and its pilot were lost as well, shot down by a RAF Hawker Tempest while on approach. Though still in training, I./JG1 had scored a number of kills beginning in mid-April, but had also lost thirteen He 162s and ten pilots. Ten of the aircraft were operational losses, such as flameouts and sporadic structural failures: just two were shot down. The He 162's 30-minute fuel capacity also caused problems, as at least two of JG 1's pilots were killed attempting emergency landings after exhausting their fuel.

In the last days of April, as the Soviet troops approached, II./JG 1 evacuated from Marienhe and on May 2 joined the I./JG-1 at Leck. On May 3, all of JG 1's surviving He 162s were restructured into two groups, I. Einsatz (Combat) and II. Sammel (Replacement). All JG1's aircraft where grounded May 5 when General Admiral von Friedeburg signed the surrender of all German armed forces in Holland, Northwest Germany and Denmark. On May 6 when the British reached their airfields, JG 1 turned their He 162s over to the Allies, and examples were shipped to the U.S., Britain, France, and the USSR for further evaluation. Erprobungskommando 162 fighters, which had been passed on to JV 44, an elite jet unit under Adolf Galland a few weeks earlier, were all destroyed by their crews to keep them from falling into Allied hands. By the time of the German unconditional surrender May 8, 1945, 120 He 162s had been delivered; a further 200 had been completed and were awaiting collection or flight-testing; about 600 more were in various stages of production.

The difficulties experienced by the He 162 were caused mainly by its rush into production, not by any inherent design flaws. One experienced Luftwaffe pilot who flew it called it a "first-class combat aircraft." Though an RAF pilot was killed in November 1945 when one of the tailfins broke off during the Farnborough air show, a British pilot who evaluated the He 162 praised it.

[edit] Variants

A-0 - first ten pre-production aircraft.
A-1 - armed with 2 × 30 mm MK 108 cannons, 50 rounds each.
A-2 - armed with 2 × 20 mm MG 151/20 cannons, 120 rounds each.
A-3 - proposed upgrade with reinforced nose mounting twin 30 mm MK 108 cannons.
A-8 - proposed upgrade with the more powerful Jumo 004D-4 engine.
B-1 - a proposed follow on planned for 1946, to include more powerful Heinkel-Hirth 011A turbojet, a stretched fuselage to provide more fuel and endurance as well as increased wingspan, with proper dihedral and discarding the anhedral wingtip extensions. To be armed with twin 30 mm MK 108 cannon.
He 162B airframe was also used as the basis for possible designs powered by one or two Argus As-044 pulsejet engines.
C - proposed upgrade featuring the B-series fuselage, Heinkel-Hirth 011A engine, swept wing, a new V shaped tail assembly, and twin MK 108 cannon featuring a Schräge Musik weapons assembly.
D - proposed upgrade with a configuration similar to C-series but a forward-swept wing.
E - He 162A fitted with the BMW 003R mixed power plant, a BMW 003A turbojet with an integrated BMW 718 liquid-fuel rocket engine for boost power. At least one prototype was built and flight-tested for a short time.
S - two-seat training glider.

[edit] Trivia

The He-162 was originally built with the intention of being flown by the Hitler Youth, as the Luftwaffe was fast running out of pilots. However the aircraft was far too complicated for anything but a highly experienced pilot.

[edit] Survivors

He-162A-2 (Werk Number 120227) of JG1 is on display at the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon.
An He-162A-2 (Werk Number 120077) is currently owned by Planes of Fame and on static display Chino, California. Rumor has it this aircraft was for sale and was purchased by a German museum.
An He-162A-2 (Werk Number 120230), thought to have been flown by Oberst Herbert Ihlefeld of 1/JG 1, is currently owned by the National Air and Space Museum. This He-162 is currently fitted with the tail unit from Werk Number 120222
Two He-162A-2s (Werk Number 120086 and 120076) are currently owned by National Aviation Museum of Canada, both disassebled and only accessible to the public on a limited basis.
An He-162A-1 (Werk Number 120235) is displayed hanging from the ceiling of the The Imperal War Museum in London
An He-162A-2 (Werk Number 120015) formerly of III./JG1, is currently on display at the Musee de l'Air, in Paris, France.