Heinkel He 177/277/274 Variants and Projects

[hesham]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

 

[airman]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

 

[Antonio]

Found it

Flugzeug Classic

Flugzeug Classic ist das einzige, monatlich erscheinende deutschsprachige Magazin für historische Luftfahrt. Als Einzelheft oder im Abonnement.

flugzeugclassic.de

"Antrieb NK-12: Deutsche Gene" Pg 26

No idea how to get to that page on a German language site.

I’m sorry, my indication is about the page on the paper magazine, not a webpage

 

[Foo Fighter]

Thank you, Sir. Much appreciated.

 

[newsdeskdan]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

 

[airman]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

I haven't found any info about 6 x DB603 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_277

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

ok , and 6 BMW 801E for competition Amerika Bomber . Surely options for 6 engines were only proposals without a defined designs .

 

[newsdeskdan]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

I haven't found any info about 6 x DB603 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_277

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

ok , and 6 BMW 801E for competition Amerika Bomber . Surely options for 6 engines were only proposals without a defined designs .

Why would you look for information on the He 277 on Wikipedia? Better to go to NASM and search for it on the ADRC/T-2 microfilm reels, which is where the RLM data sheet in post #62 comes from. As you can see from the data sheet, 6 x BMW 801 was not an option for the 277 because that arrangement would not fit.

Also worth mentioning that the 277 wasn't really being considered as an Amerika bomber - neither was the Ta 400. Their purpose would have been to attack shipping in the Atlantic.

 

[airman]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

I haven't found any info about 6 x DB603 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_277

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

I believe that Heinkel 277 six engined was simply a typo : i have seen this configuration just on alternate-history anime called " Deep Blue Fleet ". Ta-400 was a six engined bomber of Focke Wulf .

See reply #62. It's not a typo. There were two engine options for the 277 in December 1943 - 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603. So few of Heinkel's project documents survive that we know very little about the planning and development of the 277. But we do know that much.

ok , and 6 BMW 801E for competition Amerika Bomber . Surely options for 6 engines were only proposals without a defined designs .

Why would you look for information on the He 277 on Wikipedia? Better to go to NASM and search for it on the ADRC/T-2 microfilm reels, which is where the RLM data sheet in post #62 comes from. As you can see from the data sheet, 6 x BMW 801 was not an option for the 277 because that arrangement would not fit.

Also worth mentioning that the 277 wasn't really being considered as an Amerika bomber - neither was the Ta 400. Their purpose would have been to attack shipping in the Atlantic.

Informations about Six Engines was on Book of Manfred Greihl . So i don't why you despise wikipedia english .

 

[hesham]

Hi,

there was two versions of Heinkel He.277 with six engined,and not one ?.

The source; Secret Luftwaffe Projects of the Nazi Era From Arado to Zeppelin with Contemporary Drawings

 

[newsdeskdan]

nformations about Six Engines was on Book of Manfred Greihl . So i don't why you despise wikipedia english .

Wikipedia is not a primary source - it is composed of material from a variety of secondary sources, most of which fail to cite their primary sources. I don't 'despise' it - I simply regard it as wholly unreliable.
Unfortunately, the study of German wartime projects has become clouded, particularly over the last few decades, by writers who have wanted to publish on the subject of 'German secret projects' but who have had no access to primary sources.
They have tended to pick and choose bits and pieces from older secondary sources in order to cobble together their project descriptions. Some writers in the field seem, regretably, to have used 'guesswork' rather than primary source research to fill in the gaps in their histories. In other words, making things up as they go along.

Hesham's reference to 'Secret Luftwaffe Projects of the Nazi Era From Arado to Zeppelin with Contemporary Drawings' is very helpful, because it clearly identifies the source of the information on the BMW 801 x 6 for the He 277. This information comes from British intelligence report A.I.2(G) Report No. 2383 German Aircraft New and Projected Types of January 1946, compiled by Horace Frederick 'Rex' King (Secret Luftwaffe Projects of the Nazi Era From Arado to Zeppelin with Contemporary Drawings by Walter Meyer, an Amazon ebook, is basically a reprint of that report).
For years, King's report has been one of the key pieces of near-primary source evidence on the He 277, since he compiled it from a mixture of captured German documents and Allied documents written about and sometimes containing sections of captured German documents.
Griehl would have got his information on the He 277 from that report too.
Having spent years searching through the hundreds of thousands of pages of captured German documents still held at archives around the world, I can tell you that information on the He 277 from actual primary sources - German documents produced during WW2 - is extremely rare. We don't know exactly what happened to Heinkel's projects documents. They may have been destroyed in an air raid or a fire or captured by the Soviets. Whatever the case, they were not available in any form to the Allies immediately after the war in the way that many documents by Focke-Wulf, Messerschmitt, Gotha, Blohm & Voss and Arado (and to a lesser extent Dornier) were. The project work of Heinkel, Henschel, Siebel and Fieseler was lost. The work of Junkers appears to have been captured by an American team led by Charles Lindburgh but then never seen again (except for a number of photo albums showing wind tunnel models).

So, A.I.2(G) Report No. 2383 German Aircraft: New and Projected Types by H. F. King does indeed feature that table showing the He 277 with four Jumo 222 engines in either long or short span form, and with six BMW 801 E engines in long or short span forms (see attachment of p73 of that report).

But it doesn't tell us what document that information comes from, or when it was created. We don't know if this information is the absolute last word on the He 277 or the very earliest data table on it.

Some of the documents used by King to compile his report can be found in archives relatively easily. For example, most of the data he includes on Arado types he mentions are easily found elsewhere. But there are a handful of snippets which are thoroughly elusive (such as the sources of his He 277 data and the source of the Henschel P 122 project data).

We simply cannot verify King's He 277 data using a known primary source. But we do have the primary source I've shown in reply #62, which shows 4 x Jumo 222 or 6 x DB 603 - because the BMW 801 won't fit. It could be inferred from this that the 801 was indeed projected for the 277 at one stage but subsequent work has shown that, in fact, the 801 is unsuitable for the 277. The only verifiable information we have concerns the 4 x Jumo 222 and 6 x DB 603.

 

[iverson]

I don't 'despise' it - I simply regard it as wholly unreliable.

As always, I appreciate the single-minded and interesting scholarship.

But I do not think it is fair to say Wikipedia is "wholly unreliable". It is simply not always or entirely reliable--no source ever is, even if some are better for some purposes than others.

First, as I've said before, even primary sources are apt to be misleading if unmoderated by secondary studies and opinions. No researcher is without blind spots that fellow workers can criticize and thus fill. Sources are facts not knowledge. Knowledge comes from judgment not from collection--from weighing of each fact against all other available facts and sources. A critical reader can find plenty of value in Wikipedia, Fox News, RT, or a UFO blog. Even lies are full of useful information if you think about them rather than listening passively.

Second, Wikipedia is not intended to be a primary or secondary source. It is an encyclopedia, a tertiary source. Primary and specialized secondary sources are less than useful to non-specialist researchers who do not have a broad and deep background in the subject and its history. For them, encyclopedias serve as convenient introductions or quick references. What encyclopedias lose in authority they make up by being, all-inclusive, exhaustively cross-referenced, and, above all, interesting. Wikipedia's great advantage over traditional tertiary sources is that it is a wiki. Wiki's crowd-source the authoring and editing, which means that inaccuracies in subjects that are frequently checked by knowledgeable readers tend to get fixed quickly. Where knowledgeable contributors and editors take the trouble, Wikipedia topics can thus be quite well researched, with comprehensive cites (at least in fields where I still recognize the authoritative sources and know some of the authors cited).

So I suggest that, if Wikipedia's aviation-related topics are problematic, those who know better should correct them, thus spreading the good word to the less well-informed masses. Your knowledge will go much farther than denigration and may perhaps spark some interest outside the confines of a forum like this one, where you are "preaching to the choir" (as my dear Father used to say).

 

[airman]

I only suppose that Heinkel 277 in six engines configuration could been appeared very similar to Focke Wulf Ta-400 (Fw300).

 

[newsdeskdan]

I don't 'despise' it - I simply regard it as wholly unreliable.

As always, I appreciate the single-minded and interesting scholarship.

But I do not think it is fair to say Wikipedia is "wholly unreliable". It is simply not always or entirely reliable--no source ever is, even if some are better for some purposes than others.

First, as I've said before, even primary sources are apt to be misleading if unmoderated by secondary studies and opinions. No researcher is without blind spots that fellow workers can criticize and thus fill. Sources are facts not knowledge. Knowledge comes from judgment not from collection--from weighing of each fact against all other available facts and sources. A critical reader can find plenty of value in Wikipedia, Fox News, RT, or a UFO blog. Even lies are full of useful information if you think about them rather than listening passively.

Second, Wikipedia is not intended to be a primary or secondary source. It is an encyclopedia, a tertiary source. Primary and specialized secondary sources are less than useful to non-specialist researchers who do not have a broad and deep background in the subject and its history. For them, encyclopedias serve as convenient introductions or quick references. What encyclopedias lose in authority they make up by being, all-inclusive, exhaustively cross-referenced, and, above all, interesting. Wikipedia's great advantage over traditional tertiary sources is that it is a wiki. Wiki's crowd-source the authoring and editing, which means that inaccuracies in subjects that are frequently checked by knowledgeable readers tend to get fixed quickly. Where knowledgeable contributors and editors take the trouble, Wikipedia topics can thus be quite well researched, with comprehensive cites (at least in fields where I still recognize the authoritative sources and know some of the authors cited).

So I suggest that, if Wikipedia's aviation-related topics are problematic, those who know better should correct them, thus spreading the good word to the less well-informed masses. Your knowledge will go much farther than denigration and may perhaps spark some interest outside the confines of a forum like this one, where you are "preaching to the choir" (as my dear Father used to say).

I understand what Wikipedia is and I have no interest in trying to correct it.

I only suppose that Heinkel 277 in six engines configuration could been appeared very similar to Focke Wulf Ta-400 (Fw300).

There are no surviving drawings of that configuration as far as I know, just as there are no surviving drawings of numerous other Heinkel projects (incidentally, as I've noted elsewhere, the Fw 300 was a transport aircraft project akin to the Fw 200 which reached something like 80% completion in France before being cancelled. The 'Fw 300 A' was Focke-Wulf's 'camouflage name' for the Ta 400, a completely different aircraft, when it too was being worked on in France by French subcontractors).
There is really so much we don't know about Heinkel's projects work. For example, the first He 343 prototype had reached an advanced stage of completion but no known photos of it survive, nor do construction blueprints. Similarly, a manned sub-scale P 1068 flight demonstrator was constructed - but no photos of that survive either. Until relatively recently, we didn't even have a single photo of the famous He 178 EDIT: I meant He 176.
The He 277 exists today only in the barest scraps of evidence - despite at one stage being a very important development which was regularly discussed at GL meetings and with Goering.
The fate of Heinkel's projects documents must have been known to Allied investigators at the time; the Americans even sat Guenter and his colleagues down at Penzing and had them recreate documents and drawings describing their most recent projects - so they must've known that the Heinkel projects documents were never going to be recovered from whatever fate had befallen them. But no one seems to have taken the trouble to actually record what happened. I've asked numerous archive keepers, famous historians of German WW2 aviation etc. and no one has been able to tell me what happened to those documents.
It's almost impossible to believe that those who did know the fate of Heinkel's archive - German, British, American, French etc. just never recorded it for posterity, but apparently they didn't.

 

[newsdeskdan]

Moderators - could the above posts on Wikipedia be moved to the Bar? Interesting though the discussion is, it does not directly concern the topic at hand: Heinkel He 177/277/274 Variants and Projects.

 

[Jemiba]

Done, to be found now here:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/aviation-historical-themes-on-wikipedia.37698/
If there are other posts in this thread, you want to be moved there, too, please tell me.

 

[airman]

Die Deutsche Luftrüstung, 1933-1945
there were six variants with six configurations:
B3 - 4 Bmw 801E
B-5 /R1 and B5/R2 4 DB603A
B-6/R1 and B7 4 Jumo 213
B7/6 - 6 BMW 801

 

[newsdeskdan]

Die Deutsche Luftrüstung, 1933-1945
there were six variants with six configurations:
B3 - 4 Bmw 801E
B-5 /R1 and B5/R2 4 DB603A
B-6/R1 and B7 4 Jumo 213
B7/6 - 6 BMW 801

The engine options may be real but those designations are almost certainly bogus. Generally speaking, German aircraft types that had not even reached prototype stage were not given series production sub-designations, i.e. A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2 etc.

 

[airman]

Die Deutsche Luftrüstung, 1933-1945
there were six variants with six configurations:
B3 - 4 Bmw 801E
B-5 /R1 and B5/R2 4 DB603A
B-6/R1 and B7 4 Jumo 213
B7/6 - 6 BMW 801

The engine options may be real but those designations are almost certainly bogus. Generally speaking, German aircraft types that had not even reached prototype stage were not given series production sub-designations, i.e. A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2 etc.

When we speak about projects the designations are almost speculatives.

 

[hesham]

From Aviation magazine 1974.

 

[hesham]

I want to check from this Info about Heinkel He.177's competition ;

The aircraft was supposed to reach a maximum speed of up to 500 km/h and have a maximum range of 5000 km. For this it was proposed to use the following types of engines:
• Argus-421 (24-cylinder air-cooled)
• BMW-139 (14-cylinder air-cooled)
• DB-601 (liquid-cooled 12-cylinder)
• Jumo-206 (6-cylinder liquid-cooled)
• Jumo-211 (liquid-cooled 12-cylinder)
• SAM-329 (14-cylinder air-cooled)

 

[Archibald]

When was the He-274 last flight in France ? 1953 ? and I suppose they were scrapped (sigh).

 

[VictorXL188]

When was the He-274 last flight in France ? 1953 ? and I suppose they were scrapped (sigh).

Yes Archibald the pair of AAS 01s, as the French had re-designated them, were scrapped in late 1953 following their use as mother ships

 

[airman]

I want to check from this Info about Heinkel He.177's competition ;

The aircraft was supposed to reach a maximum speed of up to 500 km/h and have a maximum range of 5000 km. For this it was proposed to use the following types of engines:
• Argus-421 (24-cylinder air-cooled)
• BMW-139 (14-cylinder air-cooled)
• DB-601 (liquid-cooled 12-cylinder)
• Jumo-206 (6-cylinder liquid-cooled)
• Jumo-211 (liquid-cooled 12-cylinder)
• SAM-329 (14-cylinder air-cooled)

Sam-329 or Bramo 329 , on Argus-421 i haven't seen any info . I suppose that Argus-421 is a typo for Argus 412 engine 24 cilinders 1000 hp.

 

[famvburg]

Sorry if I overlooked the answer elsewhere, but most airplanes with counter-rotating props, they rotate inward so neither engine is critical, the P-38 being an exception for buffeting issues, IIRC. I recently realized the He177 props rotate outward. What was the reason they rotated outward instead of inward?

 

[topspeed3]

Was there any good features in it ?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldp3vgUYT0U

 

[HoHun]

Hi,

Was there any good features in it ?

After the bugs were worked out, I would say it was in fact quite a good aircraft. The problem was that it took so long, but overall, I wouldn't blame the RLM for that but (mostly) the Ernst Heinkel AG.

Heinkel in his (ghost-written) auto biography "Stürmisches Leben" unsurprisingly points to people other than himself for the responsibility, and that probably has influenced public opinion to this day.

I only checked the above video only briefly, and wouldn't take it to seriously ... for example, the "Uralbomber" doesn't seem to have been called that contemporarily (minor thing, but the video author uses this name as a rant trigger), and the specification that lead to the "Ural bombers" Do 19 and Ju 89 was actually recognized as failure by Wever himself before his death.

Here's an article that casts an interesting light on aircraft design "failures":

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/barnaby-wainfan-7-sins-of-aircraft-design.35340/

And I hasten to add that I'm not promoting simple mono-causal explanations ... Wolfgang Dallach, a German aircraft designer once said (quoting from memory), "If you chop off your fingers with a buzzsaw, which tooth of the sawblade did the cutting?"

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[ACResearcher]

I must completely agree with newsdeskdan's assertion that Wikipedia is VERY unreliable.

Any statement about ANY aircraft project that doesn't quote a specific, available and original source must be looked at with a degree of distrust for its accuracy.

Sadly, there are too many "researchers" who use only secondary sources whose veracity is often in question and even more often should probably be ignored as total bunk - and that includes on here, one of the better researched sites.

If there is no statement of origin for information one should consider it questionable at best.

AlanG

 

[iverson]

I must completely agree with newsdeskdan's assertion that Wikipedia is VERY unreliable.

Any statement about ANY aircraft project that doesn't quote a specific, available and original source must be looked at with a degree of distrust for its accuracy.

Sadly, there are too many "researchers" who use only secondary sources whose veracity is often in question and even more often should probably be ignored as total bunk - and that includes on here, one of the better researched sites.

If there is no statement of origin for information one should consider it questionable at best.

AlanG

Perhaps you would do better to supply specific examples of inaccuracy in an He177 article on Wikipedia. Cite your sources, and save the unsupported editorializing.

Simplistic assertions about the supposed superiority of primary sources distort historical methodology and are, at best, every bit as misleading as the claims of any encyclopedia.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Iverson,

Perhaps you would do better to supply specific examples of inaccuracy in an He177 article on Wikipedia.

That's not how it works. If you want to claim the Wikipedia article does not contain inaccuracies, then you're the one who has to prove it, statement by statement.

I'm not sure if you mean to imply that the Wikipedia is universally reliable ... I've never seen anyone claim that before, and I'd be quite surprised to see it being made in earnest.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[iverson]

Hi Iverson,

Perhaps you would do better to supply specific examples of inaccuracy in an He177 article on Wikipedia.

That's not how it works. If you want to claim the Wikipedia article does not contain inaccuracies, then you're the one who has to prove it, statement by statement.

I'm not sure if you mean to imply that the Wikipedia is universally reliable ... I've never seen anyone claim that before, and I'd be quite surprised to see it being made in earnest.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

That's neither what I said or implied. Read more carefully.

I said that vague, unsupported, general assertions about the reliability of a published source are no more than one person's opinion--and thus less reliable, in fact, than an encyclopedia article that has, at least, been reviewed and edited by more than one person. Without facts you have no case.

While primary sources are hardly the end-all and be-all of serious, non-amateur historical study value.viewed as authotitative. In general, Wikipedia has been checked and found to be at least as accurate as any enyclopedia on the planet--often more so, because of its larger number of reviewers and editors.

So again, unless a case is made that demonstrates that specifics of the He 177 Wikipedia article (or any other publication) contradict other, better founded sources, assertions about reliability are just personal impressions and of no wider value.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Iverson,

That's neither what I said or implied. Read more carefully.

As a foreign speaker, I'll admit that I noticed that your writing style confused me quite a bit.

You might have missed the "I'm not sure if you to imply" summary I gave you ... that was an attempt to resolve this.

I'll try to sum up your newest post: I get the vague impression that you're trying to suggest that the Wikipedia is as good as source as any.

Did I understand that correctly?

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[hesham]

Hi,

is that any confirm about Heinkel He.275,a four engined heavy bomber project ?.

 

[fightingirish]

Hi,

is that any confirm about Heinkel He.275,a four engined heavy bomber project ?.

The Heinkel He 274 and the Heinkel He 277 were four separate engined bomber projects of the Heinkel He 177.
Maybe the Heinkel He 275 is just a Typo or an internal, not official, RLM designation.
Source : Heinz J. Nowarra - Die Deutsche Luftrüstung 1933-45 - Band 2

 

[HoHun]

Hi again,

I'll try to sum up your newest post: I get the vague impression that you're trying to suggest that the Wikipedia is as good as source as any.

By the way, I launched a poll on this forum, and it showed that 67% of the members who responded distrust the Wikipedia based on not more than suspicion alone (some of these actually even without suspicion or out of principle).

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/how-much-trust-do-you-put-in-wikipedia.41678/

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[iverson]

Hi again,



By the way, I launched a poll on this forum, and it showed that 67% of the members who responded distrust the Wikipedia based on not more than suspicion alone (some of these actually even without suspicion or out of principle).

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/how-much-trust-do-you-put-in-wikipedia.41678/

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

This whole discussion blindly perpetuates serious misunderstandings of historical method. So I will try to explain this one last time. I do not make this stuff up--it is the standard way that materials are classified in historical research.

Encyclopedia articles are, by design, tertiary (third-level) sources. They depend on secondary sources, which are previously published studies that are, in turn, based on primary sources (contemporary historical documents).

Each kind of source has a role to play.

Primary materials are just that--they are the facts/data that constitute the raw material of historical knowledge. They are random bits and pieces that just happen to have survived the ages. Primary sources are thus, at best, a partial, fragmentary record of the past as it really was. They are are always suspect, because we can never know for sure if the bits that we have are representative of the whole or if the process or persons that preserved them was unbiased. So, in and of themselves, primary sources are meaningless in historical terms--something that amateur historians miss when they talk about the supposed perfectionof primary sources.

Secondary sources make primary sources meaningful. Historians study, collate, analyze, and reconcile the fullest possible range of available facts, assess their relative value, resolve contradictions, adjust for biases, and synthesize the results into coherent theories that explain what the past was probably like. Writing secondary sources is the core activity of serious historical work and the end to which research is the means.

Tertiary sources like text books and encyclopedias (and enthusiast websites) provide overviews of the available range of secondary studies. They assess the relative value of the works, address contradictions and biases, and synthesize the results into coherent overviews of the state of and conclusions of the available sources. They provide a survey of the secondary literature and are thus a starting point for research.

Encyclopedia articles are thus to be judged by the number and quality of the secondary sources that they cite. Most encyclopedias discourage both original statements based on primary research and citations of other tertiary sources. The articles in any given encyclopedia tend to vary in quality depending on the author's familiarity with the secondary scholarship and on the availability of secondary studies in the subject-matter area (an article on the Curtiss P-40 will, in general, have more material to work from than an article on the He274, and an article on US Constitution or the EU will have more source material still).

When judged as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is probably as good as any. It stacks up well against the Britannica, for example. While it cannot guarantee that its authors are experts in their field,it subjects their work to far more editorial review than any commercial encyclopedia ever could--everyone in the world can review it and suggest edits. It also covers far more subjects than traditional encyclopedias could or would--subjects like the He274.

So instead of carping on alleged "inaccuracy", check the cites--that's what they are for. Look for precise citations of reputable, reliable secondary documents. Forexample, a Wikipedia article cited in another thread turned out to have only four citations, three of which were to another tertiary source. The one citation of a secondary source was to an entire USAAF historical study rather than to a speciisfic page. So I would not rely on the claims of that article. But I might look up the USAAF hiistory.

Ultimately, no historical work is accurate or reliable in any absolute sense. We know the past indirectly, via fragmentary and biased record. Historical work is only accurate and reliable relative to:

• the the source material available to the historian at a given point in time and
• the historian's judgment, logic, and skill at fitting a narrative around the available material.

The latter point is especially crucial. Like scientific experiments, really good histories predict the discovery of facts not in evidence at the time they were written. They tell later writers what to look for.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Iverson,

This whole discussion blindly perpetuates serious misunderstandings of historical method.

Well, well .... I fear you've missed my point: The poll I posted treats Wikipedia as a black box, the lack of trust respondents put into the Wikipedia is one of the results, *regardless* of whatever methods Wikipedia might be using.

67% of the responding forum members no not trust the results of the Wikipedia. And the "results" are the articles of the Wikipedia.

So when someone posts stuff from the Wikipedia here, "I don't trust its truthfulness simply because of it's just text taken from Wikipedia" is a reply perfectly consistent with the consensus of the majority of forum users.

That's what the poll confirms ... if someone posts stuff from the Wikipedia, it's *not* the normal reaction to assume it's all "correct unless disproven". The normal reaction of the majority of the users is "I don't really trust this", especially if they think they smell something fishy.

When judged as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is probably as good as any. It stacks up well against the Britannica, for example.

We're talking about aircraft-type related articles here. If anyone ever assessed the relative (un-)reliability of different encyclopedias in that field, which would surprise me, I'd certainly be interested in seeing the assessment.

Since the Encyclopedia Britannica almost never pop ups in the threads on this forum while the Wikipedia is not less than ubiquitious, I don't believe general assessments as done in the (distant?) past carry over into our field of interest.

Ultimately, no historical work is accurate or reliable in any absolute sense. We know the past indirectly, via fragmentary and biased record. Historical work is only accurate and reliable relative to:

• the the source material available to the historian at a given point in time and
• the historian's judgment, logic, and skill at fitting a narrative around the available material.

The latter point is especially crucial.

The latter point is indeed especially crucial, especially if you add the "historian's motivation and bias" that is just as critical as his abilities.

And that's where the Wikipedia is ... problematic. Not only is it effectively an "author-less" encyclopedia, it's also an "editor-less" encyclopedia as well since there's no mechanism in place to ensure what might be well-written articles aren't fouled up by people editing a footnoted statement to claim something the source doesn't actually support.

That's something that can happen even to the statements added to an article by diligent and well-intentioned authors, and I've seen enough authors who are utterly biased and not interested in any kind of actual research at all. (Of course, this happens on forums too, but much less frequently, and people doing so will quickly lose their credibility since their name is always directly associated with their posts.)

Here's an old-ish article that highlights some of the Wikipedia's problems ...

Backstage with the Wikipedians: Inner Workings of Global Encyclopedia 'Better than a Soap Opera'

Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia, is a massive project, where human knowledge is collected and edited by ordinary users. But behind the scenes of the German-language version of this intellectual utopia is a group of small and dedicated volunteers. Their passion for truth at times...

www.spiegel.de

Note that an author clinging to a dubious interpretation of his favourite source is a central theme there, and there wasn't even any kind of national pride involved in his motiviation, just his mostly imaginary expertise, coupled with a condescending attitude towards anyone disagreeing with him ... something that is fortunately much rarer on forums like ours than it is on the Wikipedia, in my experience.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[HoHun]

Hi Tomo,

I believe you semi-recently asked for this:



Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[hesham]

Also from this report,here is a hint for Heinkel He.278 ?!.