Junkers EF-130 speculative drawings

[Justo Miranda]

- Junkers / DFS EF-130​

A four engine heavy bomber of ‘Uralbomber’ class designed in the autumn of 1944 to compete against the Arado E-555, the BMW ‘Strahlbomber Projekt II’, the Horten Projekt 18 (23/2/1945) and the Messerschmitt P.1108.

It had a pressurised cockpit for a crew of three, originally designed for the Junkers Ju 388, and the undercarriage of a Junkers EF-131. The wing was a DFS design with leading edge slats, flaps and ailerons.

The system used to power the rotation manoeuvre during takeoff was unknown. It may be speculated that the engines could swing with the help of some hydraulic mechanism to change the thrust direction. That would explain the odd position they are located, in the aerodynamic shadow generated by the cockpit.

The project did not pass the wind tunnel model phase, being cancelled in March 1945.

Technical data Junkers / DFS EF-130

​

Type heavy bomber

Wings wood and plywood with 34º sweep at the leading edge and 13º sweep at the trailing edge, housing fuel tanks and undercarriage main legs

Fuselage light alloy, housing the pressurised cockpit, the bomb bay, the nose leg and the engines

Engines four BMW 109-003 C turbojets rated at 1,030 kp static thrust

Armament none

Payload 4,000 kg

Wingspan 24 m

Length 10,38 m

Height 4.32 m

Wing area 120 sq m

Max. speed 950 km/h

Max. weight 38,100 kg

Range 7,500 km

Ceiling 11,500 m

 

[Grzesio]

So what is real in these EF 130 drawings and what is pure speculation?

 

[Vahe Demirjian]

So what is real in these EF 130 drawings and what is pure speculation?

A 3-view drawing of the EF 130 flying wing bomber is available at this link:

http://www.luft46.com/junkers/juef130.html

The layout of the engines is depicted correctly, only the depiction of the glazed cockpit in Miranda's drawing of the EF 130 is inaccurate.

 

[Justo Miranda]

1988 Miranda drawing also

 

[newsdeskdan]

All we have to go on for the EF 130 is two different text descriptions and a single postwar drawing.

- Junkers / DFS EF-130​

A four engine heavy bomber of ‘Uralbomber’ class designed in the autumn of 1944 to compete against the Arado E-555, the BMW ‘Strahlbomber Projekt II’, the Horten Projekt 18 (23/2/1945) and the Messerschmitt P.1108.
It had a pressurised cockpit for a crew of three, originally designed for the Junkers Ju 388, and the undercarriage of a Junkers EF-131. The wing was a DFS design with leading edge slats, flaps and ailerons.
The system used to power the rotation manoeuvre during takeoff was unknown. It may be speculated that the engines could swing with the help of some hydraulic mechanism to change the thrust direction. That would explain the odd position they are located, in the aerodynamic shadow generated by the cockpit.
The project did not pass the wind tunnel model phase, being cancelled in March 1945.

This description is, I think, entirely inaccurate.
There was a competition between Messerschmitt (P 1107), the Horten brothers (H XVIII) and Junkers (Ju 287) in January-February 1945 to create a 'Langstreckenbomber' capable of attacking Allied air bases in the UK. It was thought that a jet bomber would be largely unassailable by interceptors and could destroy the RAF and US bomber fleets on the ground - buying Germany a valuable respite from the constant bombing (although clearly by this point the bombing campaign was practically over. According to a Heinkel memo dated January 27, 1945, Hitler ordered at this time that the design of a jet bomber should be 'forced').
The Arado E 555 (worked on continuously from July 1943 to February 1944, then seemingly abandoned for eight months before a summary report was issued on October 18, 1944) was conceptual in nature, as were BMW's Strahlbomber designs. It is at least possible that the Langstreckenbomber competition came about as a result of designs such as these being shown to senior personnel, but neither design was a 'competitor'.
The winner of the Langstreckenbomber competition was Junkers - because the Ju 287 could be put into service the fastest. But the Hortens' H XVIII had proven very interesting to the competition adjudicators because it had been calculated that a flying wing bomber could carry a lot of fuel and bombs while maintaining a decent speed and altitude. The fixed undercarriage of the H XVIII, which would have resulted in unacceptable tyre wear when turning on the ground(!) and increased drag in the air, was what let it down.
Messerschmitt was apparently therefore commissioned to work on a flying wing version of the P 1107 - the P 1108 - with retractable undercarriage. But according to CIOS report XXXI-3 German High Speed Airplanes and Design Development of August 1945 by Robert W. Kluge and Charles L. Fay of the US Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee, page 89, "early in 1945 the Government decided that Messerschmitt did not have sufficient engineering manpower to handle the bomber design and turned it over to Junkers and the Horten Bros."
So Messerschmitt ceased work on the P 1108 and the flying wing project was taken on by Junkers with the Horten brothers acting as consultants.
The same report continues on p90:
"The Junkers Design Group had just [before the war ended] begun work on a jet bomber to fulfil the specifications already mentioned for the Messerschmitt bomber. Although no drawings or data were available, the following information was obtained from Mr. Gropler, Chief Designer of Junkers.
The ship was to be tailless with the vertical stabilizers located at the trailing edge of the wing at approximately the middle of the semi-span. This is similar to the Junkers EF 128 arrangement.
The wings have approximately 40-degrees sweepback, aspect ratio of 4.8, area of 1290 sq ft, span of 78.7ft. The gross weight is approximately 77000 lbs. and the maximum level flight speed approximately 620mph. The range is 3730 miles. All fuel is kept in the wings in tanks which are insulated because of the low melting point of the fuel. The tanks are not bullet proof.
The fuselage consists only of a nacelle jutting forward of the wing at its centerline. This nacelle holds the crew, nosewheel and most of the equipment.
The bomb bay is aft of the cabin and the bombs fit into the root airfoil contour. One layer of eight bombs (two rows of four) is provided for.
The 4 He 011 jet units are mounted abreast above the trailing edge of the wing (about half of the power plant extends forward of the actual trailing edge of the wing and half aft of the trailing edge). All four motors are enclosed in one nacelle and a boundary layer duct runs between the nacelle and the wing surface. The center section of the wing is the same span as the width of this nacelle and the bomb bay runs the full span of the center panel.
The main landing gear retracts forward and inboard to a location just outboard of the bomb bay. The nose wheel retracts aft.
The plane carries no armament."

There is no mention here of the number of crew, a Ju 388 cockpit, the undercarriage of an EF 131 (a project which wasn't started until after the war), any DFS involvement, nor any mention of a hydraulic system for raising the engines. Similarly there is no evidence that this new project was cancelled. The war simply ended before it could go anywhere beyond a few brief notes.

The second text description comes from the famous British report of January 1946, German Aircraft: New and Projected Types by H. F. King. This says of the EF 130:
"Of the flying-wing type this project has stabilising fins and rudders mounted on the trailing-edge of the wing approximately mid way between the wing tips and the fuselage. Landing flaps are fitted inboard of the stabilisers with ailerons outboard. The wing is of wood and the fuselage of metal. The power plant is 4 x HeS 011 jet units installed centrally. Several different designs were submitted for the EF 130 project and it was the subject of considerable controversy, particularly in the positioning of the four jet units. A retractable tricycle undercarriage is fitted. Fuel tanks are located in the wings and centre section.
Span: 78.8ft, aspect ratio: 4.8, wing area 1290sq ft, gross weight 77-84,000lb, max. speed 620mph, range 3700 miles."

This description, again, makes no mention of the number of crew, a Ju 388 cockpit, the undercarriage of an EF 131, any DFS involvement, nor any mention of a hydraulic system for raising the engines.
It does provide a little detail about the materials intended to be used for the EF 130, provides an interesting albeit brief mention of disagreements concerning the design (perhaps between Gropler's personnel at Junkers and the notoriously single-minded Hortens), and slightly conflicts with the first account over the positioning of the fuel tanks.
A rough illustration of the EF 130 is included in the report and is the only known contemporary depiction of it to be found anywhere (see below). This illustration (which I presume provided the basis for Justo's drawings) is of precisely the same style as those found in a separate report on Junkers' final design work, which includes images of the EF 126 and EF 128. We actually know what both of those designs really looked like and the postwar sketches are poor facsimiles to say the least. Therefore, I would suggest that the text descriptions actually give a better idea of how the EF 130 was supposed to look than the drawing.
Beyond these two descriptions, and this one sketch, there is no further known contemporary evidence of how the EF 130 was intended to look.

 

[Justo Miranda]

All we have to go on for the EF 130 is two different text descriptions and a single postwar drawing.

- Junkers / DFS EF-130​

A four engine heavy bomber of ‘Uralbomber’ class designed in the autumn of 1944 to compete against the Arado E-555, the BMW ‘Strahlbomber Projekt II’, the Horten Projekt 18 (23/2/1945) and the Messerschmitt P.1108.
It had a pressurised cockpit for a crew of three, originally designed for the Junkers Ju 388, and the undercarriage of a Junkers EF-131. The wing was a DFS design with leading edge slats, flaps and ailerons.
The system used to power the rotation manoeuvre during takeoff was unknown. It may be speculated that the engines could swing with the help of some hydraulic mechanism to change the thrust direction. That would explain the odd position they are located, in the aerodynamic shadow generated by the cockpit.
The project did not pass the wind tunnel model phase, being cancelled in March 1945.

This description is, I think, entirely inaccurate.
There was a competition between Messerschmitt (P 1107), the Horten brothers (H XVIII) and Junkers (Ju 287) in January-February 1945 to create a 'Langstreckenbomber' capable of attacking Allied air bases in the UK. It was thought that a jet bomber would be largely unassailable by interceptors and could destroy the RAF and US bomber fleets on the ground - buying Germany a valuable respite from the constant bombing (although clearly by this point the bombing campaign was practically over. According to a Heinkel memo dated January 27, 1945, Hitler ordered at this time that the design of a jet bomber should be 'forced').
The Arado E 555 (worked on continuously from July 1943 to February 1944, then seemingly abandoned for eight months before a summary report was issued on October 18, 1944) was conceptual in nature, as were BMW's Strahlbomber designs. It is at least possible that the Langstreckenbomber competition came about as a result of designs such as these being shown to senior personnel, but neither design was a 'competitor'.
The winner of the Langstreckenbomber competition was Junkers - because the Ju 287 could be put into service the fastest. But the Hortens' H XVIII had proven very interesting to the competition adjudicators because it had been calculated that a flying wing bomber could carry a lot of fuel and bombs while maintaining a decent speed and altitude. The fixed undercarriage of the H XVIII, which would have resulted in unacceptable tyre wear when turning on the ground(!) and increase drag in the air, was what let it down.
Messerschmitt therefore was apparently therefore commissioned to work on a flying wing version of the P 1107 - the P 1108 - with retractable undercarriage. But according to CIOS report XXXI-3 German High Speed Airplanes and Design Development of August 1945 by Robert W. Kluge and Charles L. Fay of the US Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee, page 89, "early in 1945 the Government decided that Messerschmitt did not have sufficient engineering manpower to handle the bomber design and turned it over to Junkers and the Horten Bros."
So Messerschmitt ceased work on the P 1108 and the flying wing project was taken on by Junkers with the Horten brothers acting as consultants.
The same report continues on p90:
"The Junkers Design Group had just [before the war ended] begun work on a jet bomber to fulfil the specifications already mentioned for the Messerschmitt bomber. Although no drawings or data were available, the following information was obtained from Mr. Gropler, Chief Designer of Junkers.
The ship was to be tailless with the vertical stabilizers located at the trailing edge of the wing at approximately the middle of the semi-span. This is similar to the Junkers EF 128 arrangement.
The wings have approximately 40-degrees sweepback, aspect ratio of 4.8, area of 1290 sq ft, span of 78.7ft. The gross weight is approximately 77000 lbs. and the maximum level flight speed approximately 620mph. The range is 3730 miles. All fuel is kept in the wings in tanks which are insulated because of the low melting point of the fuel. The tanks are not bullet proof.
The fuselage consists only of a nacelle jutting forward of the wing at its centerline. This nacelle holds the crew, nosewheel and most of the equipment.
The bomb bay is aft of the cabin and the bombs fit into the root airfoil contour. One layer of eight bombs (two rows of four) is provided for.
The 4 He 011 jet units are mounted abreast above the trailing edge of the wing (about half of the power plant extends forward of the actual trailing edge of the wing and half aft of the trailing edge). All four motors are enclosed in one nacelle and a boundary layer duct runs between the nacelle and the wing surface. The center section of the wing is the same span as the width of this nacelle and the bomb bay runs the full span of the center panel.
The main landing gear retracts forward and inboard to a location just outboard of the bomb bay. The nose wheel retracts aft.
The plane carries no armament."

There is no mention here of the number of crew, a Ju 388 cockpit, the undercarriage of an EF 131 (a project which wasn't started until after the war), any DFS involvement, nor any mention of a hydraulic system for raising the engines. Similarly there is no evidence that this new project was cancelled. The war simply ended before it could go anywhere beyond a few brief notes.

The second text description comes from the famous British report of January 1946, German Aircraft: New and Projected Types by H. F. King. This says of the EF 130:
"Of the flying-wing type this project has stabilising fins and rudders mounted on the trailing-edge of the wing approximately mid way between the wing tips and the fuselage. Landing flaps are fitted inboard of the stabilisers with ailerons outboard. The wing is of wood and the fuselage of metal. The power plant is 4 x HeS 011 jet units installed centrally. Several different designs were submitted for the EF 130 project and it was the subject of considerable controversy, particularly in the positioning of the four jet units. A retractable tricycle undercarriage is fitted. Fuel tanks are located in the wings and centre section.
Span: 78.8ft, aspect ratio: 4.8, wing area 1290sq ft, gross weight 77-84,000lb, max. speed 620mph, range 3700 miles."

This description, again, makes no mention of the number of crew, a Ju 388 cockpit, the undercarriage of an EF 131, any DFS involvement, nor any mention of a hydraulic system for raising the engines.
It does provide a little detail about the materials intended to be used for the EF 130, provides an interesting albeit brief mention of disagreements concerning the design (perhaps between Gropler's personnel at Junkers and the notoriously single-minded Hortens), and slightly conflicts with the first account over the positioning of the fuel tanks.
A rough illustration of the EF 130 is included in the report and is the only known contemporary depiction of it to be found anywhere (see below). This illustration (which I presume provided the basis for Justo's drawings) is of precisely the same style as those found in a separate report on Junkers' final design work, which includes images of the EF 126 and EF 128. We actually know what both of those designs really looked like and the postwar sketches are poor facsimiles to say the least. Therefore, I would suggest that the text descriptions actually give a better idea of how the EF 130 was supposed to look than the drawing.
Beyond these two descriptions, and this one sketch, there is no further known contemporary evidence of how the EF 130 was intended to look.

Speculative drawings and speculative opinion:

- On 8 July 1944 the Reich Armament Minister Speer ordered the cancellations of the heavy bomber projects, to save the available resources for the manufacturing of fighters. However, he allowed the flying tests of the existing prototypes of the BV 238, Ju 390 and Me 264.

When the Stealth properties of flying wings were discovered, a new concept of ‘unstoppable’ bomber was born. Their manufacturing did not require the use of strategic materials.

In the future, it would not be necessary to have great fleets of bombers built of aluminium that would make massive attacks at the cost of great losses, like in 1940. A reduced number of flying wings, equipped with the most advanced navigation devices, could do the work without losing dozens of well trained crew members in each raid. Besides, the flying wings could transport more weight of weapons and fuel at a greater distance than the conventional airplanes, given their large wing surface and low drag.

In autumn 1944, after a series of conferences organized by Göring between representatives of the aeronautical industry, directed towards the building of three Stealth bombers.

The first one required a twin jet ‘Schnellbomber’ able to pass through the defences of the British ‘Chain Home’ with a load of 1,000 kg of bombs, a range of 1,000 km and a speed of 1,000 km/h. The Arado Ar.I, the Focke-Wulf 1000 x 1000 x 1000, the Horten ‘Schnellkampflugzeug’ and the Lippisch P.11, were the answer to the design teams. All of them were flying wings that used composites and some kind of RAM materials for their construction.

The Focke-Wulf project was considered the most efficient, being the rest redesigned as night fighters or ‘zerstörers’.

The second one was a four engine of the ‘Uralbomber’ category, to replace the Ju 88 in strategic missions over the URSS, at a time when the Russians started to have night fighters equipped with radar. The requirement was a range of 5,000 km, a maximum speed of 800/900 km/h and a payload of 4,000 kg.

The models bidding for the contest were the Arado E-555, the BMW ‘Strahlbomber’ Projekt II, the Junkers EF-130, the Horten Projekt 18 (23/2/1945) and the Messerschmitt P.1108. By the end of March 1945 all of them had been cancelled, except the P.1108 that was the last project developed by Messerschmitt during the war.

The third one was an intercontinental ‘Amerikabomber’ able to bomb New York or Washington with impunity, operating from bases in Germany. The specification brushed the limits of the technology available at the time and the design required the collaboration of several manufacturers. Horten provided the aerodynamic solutions already tested with the Ho IX, with the turbojets positioned within the wing, and the already made calculations for the long range reconnaissance airplane Ho VIII.

Junkers contributed the Jumo 004 engines and the design of the pressurised cockpit developed for the Ju 388 and Ju 287. Messerschmitt put in its experience with long distance flights, obtained with the Me 261 and Me 264.

 

[newsdeskdan]

All we have to go on for the EF 130 is two different text descriptions and a single postwar drawing.

​

Speculative drawings and speculative opinion:
- On 8 July 1944 the Reich Armament Minister Speer ordered the cancellations of the heavy bomber projects, to save the available resources for the manufacturing of fighters. However, he allowed the flying tests of the existing prototypes of the BV 238, Ju 390 and Me 264.
When the Stealth properties of flying wings were discovered, a new concept of ‘unstoppable’ bomber was born. Their manufacturing did not require the use of strategic materials.
In the future, it would not be necessary to have great fleets of bombers built of aluminium that would make massive attacks at the cost of great losses, like in 1940. A reduced number of flying wings, equipped with the most advanced navigation devices, could do the work without losing dozens of well trained crew members in each raid. Besides, the flying wings could transport more weight of weapons and fuel at a greater distance than the conventional airplanes, given their large wing surface and low drag.
In autumn 1944, after a series of conferences organized by Göring between representatives of the aeronautical industry, directed towards the building of three Stealth bombers.
The first one required a twin jet ‘Schnellbomber’ able to pass through the defences of the British ‘Chain Home’ with a load of 1,000 kg of bombs, a range of 1,000 km and a speed of 1,000 km/h. The Arado Ar.I, the Focke-Wulf 1000 x 1000 x 1000, the Horten ‘Schnellkampflugzeug’ and the Lippisch P.11, were the answer to the design teams. All of them were flying wings that used composites and some kind of RAM materials for their construction.
The Focke-Wulf project was considered the most efficient, being the rest redesigned as night fighters or ‘zerstörers’.
The second one was a four engine of the ‘Uralbomber’ category, to replace the Ju 88 in strategic missions over the URSS, at a time when the Russians started to have night fighters equipped with radar. The requirement was a range of 5,000 km, a maximum speed of 800/900 km/h and a payload of 4,000 kg.
The models bidding for the contest were the Arado E-555, the BMW ‘Strahlbomber’ Projekt II, the Junkers EF-130, the Horten Projekt 18 (23/2/1945) and the Messerschmitt P.1108. By the end of March 1945 all of them had been cancelled, except the P.1108 that was the last project developed by Messerschmitt during the war.
The third one was an intercontinental ‘Amerikabomber’ able to bomb New York or Washington with impunity, operating from bases in Germany. The specification brushed the limits of the technology available at the time and the design required the collaboration of several manufacturers. Horten provided the aerodynamic solutions already tested with the Ho IX, with the turbojets positioned within the wing, and the already made calculations for the long range reconnaissance airplane Ho VIII.
Junkers contributed the Jumo 004 engines and the design of the pressurised cockpit developed for the Ju 388 and Ju 287. Messerschmitt put in its experience with long distance flights, obtained with the Me 261 and Me 264.

Unfortunately, this is all without any basis in historical fact. You clearly care about this subject a lot - why not go out and find the original period documents? They still exist in archives in the US, the UK and Germany. A good starting point is the footnotes to my Secret Projects of the Luftwaffe Volume 1: Jet Fighters - you can easily work out from these which archives to visit and what sort of files you should be looking for. You don't need to have a 'speculative opinion'!
It is equally unfortunate to think that there are people interested in this subject who will read what you have written above and be misled into thinking that this 'speculative opinion' is grounded in reality.
Please go out and find the period documents. I know it's hard and expensive, and frankly a lot of work, but it's worth it. And if you can demonstrate, using those documents, that anything I have written on this forum or in my books is inaccurate I will thank you for it because you will be making a genuine contribution towards our understanding of this important historical period.

 

[Justo Miranda]

All the research by Dan is based on original documents. That implies a great workload that we are grateful for. It also gives him a certain authority to question the work of other respected authors like Walter Schick, Willy Radinger or Anthony L. Kay with arguments like:

“Based on a single caption from a 1991 book”.

“There is no evidence”

“Why not go out and find the original period documents?”

“I don't know what Kay's source was but the 018 certainly did get longer over time”.

“There is no known contemporary drawing of but I'm sure that one must have existed”.

This inflexibility obviously increase the value of his own publications and I sincerely hope that serves to increase his sales.

But, from my perspective, the question is: are we going to continue publishing the old drawings once and again, or we are going to try to rebuild based on known details, like size of engines, bombs, pilots of spares of other aircraft about which there is information available?

It makes no sense to question once and again my work, I will keep on doing it for the benefit of modellers, gamers, flight simulator enthusiasts and….. understanding military historians.

How would you like Jurassic Park like a web conference of an extremely thorough paleontologist providing very accurate details of the T.Rex pelvis?

 

[Vahe Demirjian]

All the research by Dan is based on original documents. That implies a great workload that we are grateful for. It also gives him a certain authority to question the work of other respected authors like Walter Schick, Willy Radinger or Anthony L. Kay with arguments like:

“Based on a single caption from a 1991 book”.

“There is no evidence”

“Why not go out and find the original period documents?”

“I don't know what Kay's source was but the 018 certainly did get longer over time”.

“There is no known contemporary drawing of but I'm sure that one must have existed”.

This inflexibility obviously increase de value of his own publications and I sincerely hope that serves to increase his sales.

But, from my perspective, the question is: are we going to continue publishing the old drawings once and again, or we are going to try to rebuild based on known details, like size of engines, bombs, pilots of spares of other aircraft about which there is information available?

It makes no sense to question once and again my work, I will keep on doing it for the benefit of modellers, gamers, flight simulator enthusiasts and….. understanding military historians.

How would you like Jurassic Park like a web conference of an extremely thorough paleontologist providing very accurate details of the T.Rex pelvis?

The book Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Strategic Bombers 1935-1945 offers a very accurate 3-view depiction of the EF 130, if you have read this important volume. The cockpit as depicted in the EF 130 drawing in that volume differs from the way you depicted it in the drawing.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Here

 

[sienar]

There are different degrees of speculation.

Saying that bombers were continued towards the end of the war because of, lets say certain personalities, isn't that big of a leap. Saying that such programs were done to retain staff or to set the company up for the post-war era is a bigger leap that should come with some evidence to back it up.

But claiming that stealth was a central facet of continuing bomber development and that they were intended to use composite construction with RAM is a huge leap. And it is that sort of a claim, even if its pure speculation, that should have a whole bunch of evidence in-tow.

 

[Justo Miranda]

I believe this is the right time to say that the purpose of the fantastic German designs that we know today as Luft 46 was to capture the imagination of the Nazi leaders. And it was so because that is the established method among manufacturers to obtain resources in wartime.
It was just a marketing strategy to avoid being absorbed by the Messerschmitt group... or the Russian Front.

In the 50s we lived a similar situation with the spaceship designs published in the Collier's magazine.

The eyecatching of these drawings has allowed the creation of a Luft 46 subculture and its publishing success. But, from a pragmatic point of view, just a few of them would have actually flown or got into combat.

In practice, the enormous aerodynamical potential of these designs did not work well.

In my opinion, we are back to the classic debate between dreamers and pragmatic men. I believe that only the cooperation between the two types would make aerospace industry possible and, for extension, the progress of the human being.

There will always something more to say regarding Luft46... those airplanes are of the stuff dreams are made on... that stuff is named “Unobtainium” and, according to Bogart, the Maltese Falcon is made of it.

 

[sienar]

The bulk of luft '46 stuff is design studies. Its doubtful anyone from the RLM saw most of it let alone the higher up brass. Now maybe B&V showed a chart of all the variations on a theme undertaken for the 212, 213, ect but you can hardly say a design chronology like that was done just for marketing. And then there are the pure configuration studies that likely never made it outside of the draftroom it was drawn in until the end of the war.

Excluding pure design exercises there really aren't that many luft '46 designs that come totally out of left field. Most of them are tied to some sort of rfp/tender with a smaller number being unsolicited proposals. I can only think of a handful that fall firmly in the realm of a pipe dream and most of those were done by non-traditional.. uh sources(?), ie Sanger, some of the DVL/Gottingen designs.

All of the companies were trying to secure contracts because, at the end of the day, profit was what was driving them - even the partially state owned companies. Pie in the sky ideas that would never win a contract just didn't make much sense as an investment. Especially since companies were struggling to secure workers for aircraft that were currently in production or had firm orders. A cool looking design that could be proven impractical by way of some napkin math wouldn't win any company more resources from ~44 on but designs fulfilling an RLM requirement would.

And I'll also say that most of the designs that had a decent amount of work done on them were feasible, at least in theory with aqueduct resources and development time. This is especially true of the piston developments that tend to get overlooked. Now a lot of them wouldn't be ideal from an aerodynamic/structural standpoint especially with hindsight, and some may have had nasty handling deficiencies, but you can also say the same about many allied designs of the time. Most of the zanier designs were 1st pass or maybe a second and third revision. The only company that seemed wedded to being as unconventional as possible for the hell of it was B&V - and there may be some reasons for that but I'm not really going to speculate.

With regards to Colliers in the 50s I'll just say that it was marketing for public consumption not winning any military contracts. There is a similar gulf today which is why military powerpoints look like, well military powerpoints, and the northrop/lockmart ads in magazines are put together by people with graphics design degrees. I also think its a mistake to try and map the post-war US to a very different political and economic system in Germany but that is getting very off-topic...

 

[Basil]

All we have to go on for the EF 130 is two different text descriptions and a single postwar drawing.

​

Speculative drawings and speculative opinion:
- On 8 July 1944 the Reich Armament Minister Speer ordered the cancellations of the heavy bomber projects, to save the available resources for the manufacturing of fighters. However, he allowed the flying tests of the existing prototypes of the BV 238, Ju 390 and Me 264.
When the Stealth properties of flying wings were discovered, a new concept of ‘unstoppable’ bomber was born. Their manufacturing did not require the use of strategic materials.
In the future, it would not be necessary to have great fleets of bombers built of aluminium that would make massive attacks at the cost of great losses, like in 1940. A reduced number of flying wings, equipped with the most advanced navigation devices, could do the work without losing dozens of well trained crew members in each raid. Besides, the flying wings could transport more weight of weapons and fuel at a greater distance than the conventional airplanes, given their large wing surface and low drag.
In autumn 1944, after a series of conferences organized by Göring between representatives of the aeronautical industry, directed towards the building of three Stealth bombers.
The first one required a twin jet ‘Schnellbomber’ able to pass through the defences of the British ‘Chain Home’ with a load of 1,000 kg of bombs, a range of 1,000 km and a speed of 1,000 km/h. The Arado Ar.I, the Focke-Wulf 1000 x 1000 x 1000, the Horten ‘Schnellkampflugzeug’ and the Lippisch P.11, were the answer to the design teams. All of them were flying wings that used composites and some kind of RAM materials for their construction.
The Focke-Wulf project was considered the most efficient, being the rest redesigned as night fighters or ‘zerstörers’.
The second one was a four engine of the ‘Uralbomber’ category, to replace the Ju 88 in strategic missions over the URSS, at a time when the Russians started to have night fighters equipped with radar. The requirement was a range of 5,000 km, a maximum speed of 800/900 km/h and a payload of 4,000 kg.
The models bidding for the contest were the Arado E-555, the BMW ‘Strahlbomber’ Projekt II, the Junkers EF-130, the Horten Projekt 18 (23/2/1945) and the Messerschmitt P.1108. By the end of March 1945 all of them had been cancelled, except the P.1108 that was the last project developed by Messerschmitt during the war.
The third one was an intercontinental ‘Amerikabomber’ able to bomb New York or Washington with impunity, operating from bases in Germany. The specification brushed the limits of the technology available at the time and the design required the collaboration of several manufacturers. Horten provided the aerodynamic solutions already tested with the Ho IX, with the turbojets positioned within the wing, and the already made calculations for the long range reconnaissance airplane Ho VIII.
Junkers contributed the Jumo 004 engines and the design of the pressurised cockpit developed for the Ju 388 and Ju 287. Messerschmitt put in its experience with long distance flights, obtained with the Me 261 and Me 264.

Unfortunately, this is all without any basis in historical fact. You clearly care about this subject a lot - why not go out and find the original period documents? They still exist in archives in the US, the UK and Germany. A good starting point is the footnotes to my Secret Projects of the Luftwaffe Volume 1: Jet Fighters - you can easily work out from these which archives to visit and what sort of files you should be looking for. You don't need to have a 'speculative opinion'!
It is equally unfortunate to think that there are people interested in this subject who will read what you have written above and be misled into thinking that this 'speculative opinion' is grounded in reality.
Please go out and find the period documents. I know it's hard and expensive, and frankly a lot of work, but it's worth it. And if you can demonstrate, using those documents, that anything I have written on this forum or in my books is inaccurate I will thank you for it because you will be making a genuine contribution towards our understanding of this important historical period.

Dan, thank you for your input. You correctly mention a point which is really annoying. It is a pity that even in this forum people get applause for comic-like speculative drawings and technical assumptions without any historical connex.

 

[Justo Miranda]

ktden

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

This discussion is getting a bit personal. I appreciate Dan and Basil's perspective but I'd refrain from directly commenting on another author's choices.

Justo is entitled to write his own books how he wants. Personally, I prefer to see original archival research, but its harder, and more expensive to do. Plenty of authors work from mainly secondary sources, so he isn't alone here. It isn't for me, but I wouldn't criticise them.

I believe Justo's books are particularly appreciated by modellers, who are looking for clear drawings they can try to build, and for whom a bit of speculation on drawing detail isn't a problem. Many "original' drawings are distorted, semi-legible or just plain incorrect and difficult to use for this purpose.

That's a potentially different reader perhaps than for Dan's scrupulously primary source research. So long as its clear what's speculative, it isn't a problem.

We may have to agree to differ on this.

 

[newsdeskdan]

This discussion is getting a bit personal. I appreciate Dan and Basil's perspective but I'd refrain from directly commenting on another author's choices.

Justo is entitled to write his own books how he wants. Personally, I prefer to see original archival research, but its harder, and more expensive to do. Plenty of authors work from mainly secondary sources, so he isn't alone here. It isn't for me, but I wouldn't criticise them.

I believe Justo's books are particularly appreciated by modellers, who are looking for clear drawings they can try to build, and for whom a bit of speculation on drawing detail isn't a problem. Many "original' drawings are distorted, semi-legible or just plain incorrect and difficult to use for this purpose.

That's a potentially different reader perhaps than for Dan's scrupulously primary source research. So long as its clear what's speculative, it isn't a problem.

We may have to agree to differ on this.

The reason I started writing about German projects was to find out what the truth about them actually was. So many authors were advancing so many opinions and extrapolations based on the opinions and extrapolations of others that the truth was steadily sailing out of sight.
Books written before about the late 1990s were largely researched without the aid of digital photography or digital scanners. A researcher in those days would need to use a photocopier or a film camera, or to spend long hours making notes with pen and paper. It was very difficult to gather sufficient information from primary sources to write book which utilised all the sources actually available. People worked with what they had.
Today, I can go to an archive and photograph perhaps 2000 sheets of A4 documentation as well as making 80-100 scans. At the same time, I can run three reels of 30mm microfilm (1000 frames per reel) through an automatic digital scanner in a single day. So at the end of one day I have 5000 pages of German WW2 documents and 80-100 scans in 600dpi added to my collection of research material.
As much as the authors of books pre-2000 did their best to make their work accurate, they were simply unable to process the vast quantities of material that can now be collected, studied, assessed and assimilated into a cohesive narrative.

It is possible, now, to say what the actual historical truth of German WW2 projects is. What then becomes of the 'speculative opinion'? If I said that, in my speculative opinion, the English Electric Lightning was really conceived and designed by Sir Sydney Camm, ought that post to go unchallenged? Would it be okay for people who didn't know any better to like that post and believe that yes, actually, Sir Sydney Camm was the real designer of the English Electric Lightning?
You're saying that because my choice was to argue that Camm designed the Lightning, that should be respected. I could just write that and you wouldn't criticise me. Is that so? Or would you say, hang on a minute Dan, all the historical sources show that Petter designed the Lightning! You're the author of several books, some people trust and believe what you write, maybe you should check your sources and you would see that you are wrong.

 

[newsdeskdan]

I believe this is the right time to say that the purpose of the fantastic German designs that we know today as Luft 46 was to capture the imagination of the Nazi leaders. And it was so because that is the established method among manufacturers to obtain resources in wartime.
It was just a marketing strategy to avoid being absorbed by the Messerschmitt group... or the Russian Front.
In the 50s we lived a similar situation with the spaceship designs published in the Collier's magazine.
The eyecatching of these drawings has allowed the creation of a Luft 46 subculture and its publishing success. But, from a pragmatic point of view, just a few of them would have actually flown or got into combat.
In practice, the enormous aerodynamical potential of these designs did not work well.
In my opinion, we are back to the classic debate between dreamers and pragmatic men. I believe that only the cooperation between the two types would make aerospace industry possible and, for extension, the progress of the human being.
There will always something more to say regarding Luft46... those airplanes are of the stuff dreams are made on... that stuff is named “Unobtainium” and, according to Bogart, the Maltese Falcon is made of it.

Most, if not all, of the German aircraft designs produced during WW2 were intended to fulfil a particular role, to suggest a use for new technology or to examine how a particular configuration might perform. There is a full context and background to each design. They weren't a marketing strategy.
It is true that aviation companies were having their staff sent to the Russian front towards the end of the war but the way they tried to prevent that was pointing to the designs they were working on which the Nazi leadership had already given high priority. For example, there are several Heinkel memos warning that if further staff are taken away, the consequences for the He 162 programme will be dire. I doubt that Focke-Wulf could have made the same argument for the Triebfluegeljaeger. It was not a priority project and therefore carried no weight. Goering, for example, had a very low opinion of all the major aircraft manufacturers by mid-1944 (except possibly Junkers, which was state-controlled). It was very difficult for any of them to enlist his support in preventing the confiscation of their people.

 

[Basil]

This discussion is getting a bit personal. I appreciate Dan and Basil's perspective but I'd refrain from directly commenting on another author's choices.

Justo is entitled to write his own books how he wants. Personally, I prefer to see original archival research, but its harder, and more expensive to do. Plenty of authors work from mainly secondary sources, so he isn't alone here. It isn't for me, but I wouldn't criticise them.

I believe Justo's books are particularly appreciated by modellers, who are looking for clear drawings they can try to build, and for whom a bit of speculation on drawing detail isn't a problem. Many "original' drawings are distorted, semi-legible or just plain incorrect and difficult to use for this purpose.

That's a potentially different reader perhaps than for Dan's scrupulously primary source research. So long as its clear what's speculative, it isn't a problem.

We may have to agree to differ on this.

Paul,

as long as it is clear what is speculative it is absolutely fine. However, in most cases you will not find any hint about the (semi)fictional features of drawings which makes it difficult for the reader to distinguish historically acurate designs from fakes.

 

[newsdeskdan]

All the research by Dan is based on original documents. That implies a great workload that we are grateful for. It also gives him a certain authority to question the work of other respected authors like Walter Schick, Willy Radinger or Anthony L. Kay with arguments like:
“Based on a single caption from a 1991 book”.
“There is no evidence”
“Why not go out and find the original period documents?”
“I don't know what Kay's source was but the 018 certainly did get longer over time”.
“There is no known contemporary drawing of but I'm sure that one must have existed”.
This inflexibility obviously increase the value of his own publications and I sincerely hope that serves to increase his sales.
But, from my perspective, the question is: are we going to continue publishing the old drawings once and again, or we are going to try to rebuild based on known details, like size of engines, bombs, pilots of spares of other aircraft about which there is information available?
It makes no sense to question once and again my work, I will keep on doing it for the benefit of modellers, gamers, flight simulator enthusiasts and….. understanding military historians.
How would you like Jurassic Park like a web conference of an extremely thorough paleontologist providing very accurate details of the T.Rex pelvis?

There is no flexibility on historical fact. There is interpretation of the facts, certainly, but you need to be certain of what the facts are before you can interpret them. Jurassic Park - leaving aside the images, imagine a book about dinosaurs based solely on what is seen in the film Jurassic Park. That book is going to be full of errors - and without the impressive CGI and exciting storyline, it's just going to be an inaccurate dinosaur book.

 

[newsdeskdan]

Returning to the Junkers EF 130. Literally everything that is known about the way it looked is in Post #5. The attachment thereto is the only period drawing of it known to exist - and even that is a postwar drawing. I have searched high and low for more information about the EF 130 - for drawings of it, reports on it, graphs, tables, mentions in memos or meeting minutes, incidental mentions in reports about other projects, anything. And those two postwar reports are all there is. Anyone who has read Post #5 of this thread, and seen the drawing attached to it, is now in possession of all the evidence known to exist anywhere on the EF 130. If you've read about the EF 130 anywhere else, chances are the information came from those postwar reports (or else was someone's 'speculative opinion' and unrelated to any factual evidence). If you've seen any drawings of the EF 130 anywhere else, chances are they're derived from that postwar drawing (including the drawing that appears in Herwig's book).
It would be nice to think that someone out there somewhere has other primary source evidence on it. If they do, I would love to see it. But if no one else can provide any other primary source evidence on the EF 130, then we must conclude that those two reports and that one drawing is the only evidence and there will never be anything else. It was a very short-living project and its history is, as far as I can tell, precisely as related in Post #5.

NB. If I was going to speculate about the EF 130, without contradicting the established facts, I might turn my attention to the work of the Horten brothers. We know that the Hortens had been ordered to work with Junkers on the flying wing bomber project that Junkers called EF 130. I would speculate that the Hortens, being the Hortens, declined to acknowledge Junkers' nomenclature and continued to refer to 'their' project as the H XVIII. If you look at p165 of Nurfluegel - Die Geschichte der Horten-Flugzeuge 1933-1960 von Reimar Horten / Peter F. Selinger, published by H. Weishaupt Verlag in 1982 (I think - my edition is 2012 but Reimar's foreword is dated 1982), you can see a perspective drawing of a six-engine jet bomber with the engines built into the wing. It also appears to lack the fixed undercarriage of the H XVIII as it appeared in Feb 1945.
I'm told that this is actually a contemporary drawing - not a postwar artist's impression. I would speculate that this design is what the Hortens envisioned for the EF 130 (and, as I said, they would have kept referring to it as the H XVIII). I offer as (flimsy) evidence the fact that we know there were disagreements about the positioning of the EF 130's engines. Perhaps Junkers wanted them on the upper surface - nice and easy to maintain/replace etc. - while the Hortens wanted them built into the wing for aerodynamic reasons. So my speculation is that this last H XVIII and Junkers' EF 130 were actually two versions of the same thing. It is possible, I think, to offer speculation that accommodates the facts, such as they are.

 

[iverson]

There is no flexibility on historical fact.

An unfortunate statement of the kind that only a non-historian might be expected to make.

The facts of history--like all facts--are perceptions, not realities or truths. They are limited to what an observer can see from a particular viewpoint in space and time. They can only provide fragmentary, distorted insights. Real historians draw inferences from them and make links between them in order to tell a cohesive and plausible story that explains what they see in the record. This is imaginative work. So historians have no more claim to absolute truth than anyone else. They can just claim to be more plausible.

Archives are no more reliable than memoirs, political speeches, or fan art. They are not objective by any means. They are intentional objects, created for a reason and subsequently supplemented or cleaned out to tell the story that someone wants told (this should be obvious to anyone who works in a corporate environment in these days of "retention policies" and "legal holds" on documents). We can extract useful information from them only to the extent that we are conscious of and take account of the motives behind them.

Archives are never a complete record either. Things get left out, deliberately or by accident. Files get burned, land-filled, warehoused and forgotten, etc.

So anyone who creates a historical account based on evidence, archival or otherwise, has to bridge gaps--both obvious and non-obvious--with logic and imagination. The overall reasonableness and cohesion of the resulting story determines its value. Not any particular facts it recounts. Many histories are read long after salient facts in the narratives have been disproved simply because they still make the best sense of a period overall.

The bottom line is that the speculations of one distinguished member of this forum are as valid as those of any other in absolute terms--which is to say, not very. So we can each decide what seems most plausible and, perhaps, explain why--in a civil and non-confrontational manner. But please leave the spurious assertions of value and authority out of it. They aren't interesting and, if anything, they undermine the arguments that include them.

 

[Orionblamblam]

There is no flexibility on historical fact.

An unfortunate statement of the kind that only a non-historian might be expected to make.

The facts of history--like all facts--are perceptions, not realities or truths. They are limited to what an observer can see from a particular viewpoint in space and time. They can only provide fragmentary, distorted insights. Real historians draw inferences from them and make links between them in order to tell a cohesive and plausible story that explains what they see in the record. This is imaginative work. So historians have no more claim to absolute truth than anyone else. They can just claim to be more plausible.

For frak's sake. Look, this ain't some sophomore Intro To Philosophy bull session, this is "what was *actually* designed, and what was made up after the fact." Leave the "2+2 isn't always 4, sometimes it's 3 or 5, depending on whether or not you are in thrall to the cis hetero patriarchal white supremacy" bunk to the people who aren't interested in actual *facts.*

My own two cents: I often make CAD diagrams of unbuilt aircraft projects. Some of these projects were designed down to the rivets, and thus my diagrams are based on really, really good sources. Sometimes the diagrams are so-so, and sometimes they absolutely suck. Sometimes I make diagrams based on a single badly photocopied photo of an indifferently carved wooden model. Whats the difference? I let the viewer of the diagram know how trustworthy the diagrams are, that's what. I trotted out my "source grading" notion more than a dozen years ago; it could likely be greatly improved, but so far I don't think I've seen anyone really try (nor have I seen anyone else incorporate the concept) :

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/source-grading.2849/

 

[iverson]

[For frak's sake. Look, this ain't some sophomore Intro To Philosophy bull session, this is "what was *actually* designed, and what was made up after the fact." Leave the "2+2 isn't always 4, sometimes it's 3 or 5, depending on whether or not you are in thrall to the cis hetero patriarchal white supremacy" bunk to the people who aren't interested in actual *facts.*

So, I see that someone is not only not a historian, but also not a physicist or a mathematician--except, perhaps, at the sophomore level, somewhere where thinking about evidence was not required.

 

[riggerrob]

HAH!
HAH!

This has devolved into quite the "bun fight" between two of my favourite authors.
I have purchased books written by both Dan Sharp and Justo Miranda and cherish them because they fill in gaps in my knowledge of aviation history. That is the same reason that I often visit secretprojects.co.uk.
Years ago, I had read extensively on standard production airplanes and was getting bored of shallow re-hashes of "A was the best fighter of WW2," so I started visiting the luft46.com website to expand my knowledge.

As for criticizing each others old books ... even Michael Crichton corrected some of his earlier errors when he wrote "Jurrasic Park, Lost World." Many of Crichton's "errors" were merely, earlier, popular interpretations of fossils. Between his first and second books, scientists developed several new theories about dinosaur behaviour, which Crichton dutifully included in his second book.

Gentlemen, please don't waste time arguing over each others' past works. Modern readers are far more interested in new data gleaned form archives along with the ocassional speculative drawing to fill-in-the-gaps.

Most regular readers of secretprojects.co.uk are better-read than the general public. All you need to do is add the word "speculative" to any drawing to allow us the distinguish between hard data and speculative data.
20 years down the road, today's "bun fight" will look silly compared to what historians will be publishing in the future.
Hah!
Hah!

 

[Orionblamblam]

20 years down the road, today's "bun fight" will look silly compared to what historians will be publishing in the future.

History will soon be over. As soon as Deep Fake tech is capable of producing wholly believable and undiscoverable results, video won't be trusted. We're already long past the point where people can claim the existence of things like "Die Glocke" and have them believed, so it's only a few more stepps until in all areas "history" will be as malleable as MiniTru desires.

 

[Justo Miranda]

But I get on the internet and what do I find? At least one or two people on every forum that's got a bad attitude and a highly refined skill in typing/cutting people into little pieces.[/quote]

It's called "science." The marriage of creativity and skepticism. As opposed to superstition, which is the marriage of creativity with credulity.
Scott Lowther, September 20, 2010.

 

[Orionblamblam]

It's called "science." The marriage of creativity and skepticism. As opposed to superstition, which is the marriage of creativity with credulity.
Scott Lowther, September 20, 2010.

Say, that's a good line. I should steal it.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Me too

 

[newsdeskdan]

There is no flexibility on historical fact.

An unfortunate statement of the kind that only a non-historian might be expected to make.
The facts of history--like all facts--are perceptions, not realities or truths. They are limited to what an observer can see from a particular viewpoint in space and time. They can only provide fragmentary, distorted insights. Real historians draw inferences from them and make links between them in order to tell a cohesive and plausible story that explains what they see in the record. This is imaginative work. So historians have no more claim to absolute truth than anyone else. They can just claim to be more plausible.
Archives are no more reliable than memoirs, political speeches, or fan art. They are not objective by any means. They are intentional objects, created for a reason and subsequently supplemented or cleaned out to tell the story that someone wants told (this should be obvious to anyone who works in a corporate environment in these days of "retention policies" and "legal holds" on documents). We can extract useful information from them only to the extent that we are conscious of and take account of the motives behind them.
Archives are never a complete record either. Things get left out, deliberately or by accident. Files get burned, land-filled, warehoused and forgotten, etc.
So anyone who creates a historical account based on evidence, archival or otherwise, has to bridge gaps--both obvious and non-obvious--with logic and imagination. The overall reasonableness and cohesion of the resulting story determines its value. Not any particular facts it recounts. Many histories are read long after salient facts in the narratives have been disproved simply because they still make the best sense of a period overall.
The bottom line is that the speculations of one distinguished member of this forum are as valid as those of any other in absolute terms--which is to say, not very. So we can each decide what seems most plausible and, perhaps, explain why--in a civil and non-confrontational manner. But please leave the spurious assertions of value and authority out of it. They aren't interesting and, if anything, they undermine the arguments that include them.

Thanks. Now back to the EF 130. Post #1 is not marked as speculative and at the time of writing has been liked by six forum members. It says of the EF 130:
"It had a pressurised cockpit for a crew of three, originally designed for the Junkers Ju 388, and the undercarriage of a Junkers EF-131. The wing was a DFS design with leading edge slats, flaps and ailerons."
The EF 130 is only known from two period sources, both in the National Archive at Kew (DSIR 23/15214 and AIR 40/3129 - relevant pages attached below), and one period drawing (included in the latter and attached to Post #5 above). The first was produced by American intelligence officers and the second by British intelligence officers. Neither mentions the type having any of those features. How am I to believe that it did?

 

[Justo Miranda]

If you wish to undermine my argument here, please tell me the basis on which you believe that those features were part of the EF 130's design.

Why not?

 

[newsdeskdan]

If you wish to undermine my argument here, please tell me the basis on which you believe that those features were part of the EF 130's design.

Why not?

Apologies - I amended my post in the meantime to remove that line. Your attachments show the Blohm & Voss P 188 (944, 945 and 949) which appears to have dropped out of contention for the Strahlbomber competition by the end of January 1944. There are numerous letters, graphs etc. on it from November 1943-January 1944 but nothing after that that I know of. I see from the text of 944 (Griehl, I believe) it's stated that the P 188.04 was to have a cockpit taken from the Ju 488, which itself was evolved from that of the Ju 388. The Blohm & Voss construction description of the P 188 (ADRC/T-2 reel 2331, frame 475) makes no mention of this but Junkers had first presented the Ju 488 as a concept (described as a 'four-engined Ju 188') at a conference on August 10, 1943, (with the Ju 488 designation having been applied by a meeting of August 20, 1943) so it's not impossible, although I think it's a bit of a leap without any direct evidence.
946 and 948 show the Ju 287. While the caption to the pictures in 948 states that the Ju 287 was to have a cockpit similar to that of the Ju 388, it does not say that it is a Ju 388 cockpit. I don't think there is any evidence that an actual Ju 388 cockpit was specified for the Ju 287 but I would be happy to concede on that point if there is primary source evidence on it.
950 and 951 show two different designs for the Horten XVIII - both genuine period drawings. 950 is the drawing I mentioned from p165 of Nurfluegel - Die Geschichte der Horten-Flugzeuge 1933-1960 von Reimar Horten / Peter F. Selinger (which I perhaps unconvincingly speculated might be related to the EF 130).
Which of these pictures shows that the EF 130 had a pressurised cockpit for a crew of three, originally designed for the Junkers Ju 388, the undercarriage of a Junkers EF-131 and a DFS-designed wing? Would you mind explaining your line of reasoning?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

As a published aviation author and possessor of a master’s degree in English/History I feel I can comment here.

History is making a story out of historical events. In doing so, there will inevitably be times where the author uses their judgement and infers or interpolates from the data they have. You can read two very different accounts of one meeting in two primary sources. However you should always start with the best information you can find for the bedrock of your story and try to make it clear what are facts and what are your own conclusions.

 

[newsdeskdan]

As a published aviation author and possessor of a master’s degree in English/History I feel I can comment here.

History is making a story out of historical events. In doing so, there will inevitably be times where the author uses their judgement and infers or interpolates from the data they have. You can read two very different accounts of one meeting in two primary sources. However you should always start with the best information you can find for the bedrock of your story and try to make it clear what are facts and what are your own conclusions.

In modern history involving multiple large complex organisations, which would be recognisable as such today, the areas where judgement and inference become necessary are fewer and further between than at any previous point in time.
Let's take the example of the Volksjaeger comparison meeting on September 14, 1944. We have contemporary eyewitness accounts (from original German documents captured by the Allies and indiscriminately microfilmed by Allied intelligence along with millions of others) from Richard Vogt (written in October 1944) and Carl Francke (written within two days of the meeting) and an official account produced by the RLM (published the day after the meeting). All agree that the meeting took place. All agree when it took place. All agree where it took place. All agree on the topics discussed. They differ only slightly in the detail of how the subjects were discussed. Can we say that a meeting took place on September 14, 1944, with any certainty? Can we say where it took place? Can we say which topics were discussed? I believe we can. The sources for this period are, in many cases, sufficiently numerous and reliable for a reasonably accurate picture of what happened to be established.

But let's not get sidetracked. Do you believe that the EF 130 had a pressurised cockpit for a crew of three, originally designed for the Junkers Ju 388, the undercarriage of a Junkers EF-131 and a DFS-designed wing? If so, how would you reach that conclusion? If not, would you then regard the description in Post #1 as speculative, even though it is not labelled as such?

 

[hesham]

In my files,

we must to know the first purposed of EF.130 was to have a single engined,
and it was Heinkel HeS 011,also with its flying wing shape,and that happened during 1943/1944 ?.

 

[newsdeskdan]

In my files,

we must to know the first purposed of EF.130 was to have a single engined,
and it was Heinkel HeS 011,also with its flying wing shape,and that happened during 1943/1944 ?.

The EF 130 was Junkers' last project of the war - begun in 1945. As noted above, the company had only just started work on it when the war ended. You can see from Post #5 (photographs of the actual documents quoted attached to Post '#30) that there is no mention of a single engined version in the only known period documents which describe the EF 130.

 

[riggerrob]

But I get on the internet and what do I find? At least one or two people on every forum that's got a bad attitude and a highly refined skill in typing/cutting people into little pieces.

It's called "science." The marriage of creativity and skepticism. As opposed to superstition, which is the marriage of creativity with credulity.
Scott Lowther, September 20, 2010.
[/QUOTE]

Your quote reminds me of a church sermon that I wrote earlier this year "Science or Religion? What is your best guess?"

 

[Antonio]

This thread goes deep to really interesting points about historical research methodology and philosophy. I'm pleased to know and learn from the different points of view, specially when coming from talented experts. I partially agree and disagree with everyone as many of us could do and has been already expressed here. Don't need to add more.

But, as a moderator I see something should be noted about this thread:

a) there is unnecessary amount of confrontation. Please remember the forum aim is to be a place for information exchange between polite people who wants to learn and enjoy. Release your hostility at appropriate places which can be easily found on the internet.

b) quality information is always encouraged. Speculation is only allowed to some point thus should be clearly indicated, as shown in this thread tittle.
So why a general complain to all forum members about an excessive speculation tolerance is expressed in a particular post?. It received two likes...but I disagree. You're invited to visit the forum.

c) The text of the above mentioned post, goes further, this time into a personal attack to another forum member.
Since the beginning of the forum, I can't remember such a straight disqualification to someone's work. Undeserved, in my opinion, but nevertheless the post is a violation of forum rules. That kind of expressions shoudn't be admitted.

I think we all should think about it, specially those who seized the opportunity to launch hostile messages against other members.
It's supposed that we are educated people sharing a common passion.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Yes agreed. I understand the cause of Dan’s posts (he is concerned about misinformation being taken as fact, something the world is increasingly concerned with) but this is not the right way to behave on this forum.

 

[Justo Miranda]

I understand the cause of Dan’s posts

Me too