Messerschmitt P 1107 and P 1108 long range jet bombers

[Stargazer]

In the autumn of 1944, Reichsmarschall Göring requested that Junkers, Arado and Messerschmitt design and produce very long range high speed bombers capable of carrying 4-ton bomb payloads. The goal was to be able to attack distant maritime convoys and strategic targets in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

In November 1944, Messerschmitt submitted a swept-wing four-jet bomber project designated P 1107. The four engines were mounted in nacelles by pairs under the wings. Though one of the variants considered had a V-tail, the other proposal was equipped with one of the earliest T-tail designs, so as to clear the tail surfaces from the exhaust of the turbojets. As for Junkers, they elected to work at improving their Ju 287 forward-swept wing design, which didn't go without some technical challenges despite the improvements it represented in both aerodynamics and construction.

Simultaneously, the Messerschmitt engineers worked on flying wing bomber designs designated P.1108/1 et P.1108/2. According to their calculations, these various bombers could carry the required payload over a distance of 7,800 kilometers at a speed of about 900 km/h. The range could even be extended to 9,600 kilometers for strategic reconnaissance versions. Junkers also worked — jointly with the DFS sailwing institute — on their own four-jet flying wing proposal, the EF 130.

In January 1945, the RLM examined the proposals made by all three manufacturers. Its experts notified in their report that the Messerschmitt P.1107/1 and /2 offered the highest speeds, but in terms of operational range, Horten's proposals were greatly superior to those of both Messerschmitt and Junkers. Not only was their construction easier, but the use of steel tubing and wood in the fabrication of Horten's wings was a decisive factor that led to that company being selected for that bomber program.

Despite the increasing damage caused by Allied bombings, the Messerschmitt design bureau continued to submit variants of their P.1108 flying wing proposal, but at the end of March 1945, Junkers and Messerschmitt were both ordered by the RLM to cease all development on long range bomber designs. Only the Horten brothers continued work on their Ho XVIII B-2 by personal request of Göring. Some unconfirmed RLM reports suggest that the production of the Ho XVIII B-2 had started on April 1st, 1945 at the Kahia underground factory in Thuringe, but no trace of that prototype — if ever it existed — has survived.

The beautiful and rare Messerschmitt P 1107 company document posted below was reproduced by the Air Documents Division of the the USAF's T-2 AMC Technical Intelligence service at Wright Field, Ohio. It was finally declassified in 1961 and appeared some time ago on eBay.

 

[Stargazer]

The Messerschmitt P 1108 flying wing:

 

[redstar72]

The P.1107 and P.1108 have the size of medium bombers. They are pretty close to EE Canberra or Ilyushin Il-28 in size, even B-45 Tornado is much larger. HOW could they be long-range strategic bombers, with 7800 km range?? This look nonsence, isn't it?

As for me, the data from http://www.luft46.com/mess/mess.html (http://www.luft46.com/mess/mep1108i.html for example) look much more plausible...

 

[Avimimus]

At the risk of getting off topic - are the ranges quoted for the Ar E.555-11 (14) and Ho XVIII B plausible?

 

[lark]

The advantage of the flying wing is that drag has been reduced to a minimun.
As a result , the performance of the flying wing is unequalled in speed , range
and operating economy.

You can in fact ,not compare a flying wing concept with conventional designs as the Il-28 , Canberra and the B-45...

 

[Antonio]

7,000 Km with four thirsty first generation jet engines?...simply unrealistic. As many of Luft 46 German projects. A serious examination of most III Reich long range / heavy bombers will show you how deceptive are. The Me 264 Amerika Bomber seems a toy plane compared with its American counterpart, the XB-36 "Germania Bomber". The Me 264 was even smaller than the B-29. So describing P 1107 and P 1108 is, in my opinion, a fantasy.

 

[Jemiba]

The flying wing layout may have bettered the possible range, although with hindsight,
we could speculate about flight control and handling problems in those pre-computer
era. But a range of about 7,000 km was predicted for the conventional layouts, too.
Here a number of facts may have played a part:
- Over optimistic predictions for fuel consumption of the still untested BMW 018 jet
- Over optimistic predictions for the aerodynamic efficiency of those new designs,
especially maybe the flying wing types
- And, above all to my opinion, the general demand then to exxagerate performances
of new designs, just to prevent them from being cancelled !

 

[redstar72]

The advantage of the flying wing is that drag has been reduced to a minimun.
As a result , the performance of the flying wing is unequalled in speed , range
and operating economy.

You can in fact ,not compare a flying wing concept with conventional designs as the Il-28 , Canberra and the B-45...

But there were also conventional designs among P.1107 and 1108 concepts. And such a range was proclaimed for them, too.

OK, maybe they weren't fully conventional - but nothing more peculiar than, for example, British V-bombers. And the V-bombers actually had similar range characteristics of about 7000 km... but were more than 1.5x larger than these Messerschmitt projects. Also, the Avro Vulcan flying wing didn't have any significal advantage in range againts its conventional rivals and wasn't much smaller in size.

And tne Northrop YB-49, which was a true flying wing and a much larger and heavier aircraft than Messerschmitt designs (52.4 m span, 88 tons maximum takeoff weight!), had only 4000 miles (6436 km) range with 4500 kg bomb load.

 

[hesham]

From, Die Deutsche Luftruestung 1933-1945 - Vol.3 - Henschel-Messerschmitt (Bernard&Graefe),

was that a real Project ?,

I hope to re-open this topic;

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/various-messerschmitt-projects.29902/

 

[Jemiba]

....

I hope to re-open this topic;

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/various-messerschmitt-projects.29902/

Honestly, I hope not, as we are trying to avoid such generic topics for years !

 

[Vahe Demirjian]

From, Die Deutsche Luftruestung 1933-1945 - Vol.3 - Henschel-Messerschmitt (Bernard&Graefe),

was that a real Project ?,

Yes, the aircraft shown in its drawing was a real project, bearing the drawing numbers P.1101/XVIII-104 and P.1101/XVIII-105.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

I'd speculate that these very late-war German bomber and such jet designs were predicated on little more than wishful thinking. They often were to use powerplants that were either on a drawing board or in the earliest stages of testing. Range and speed were, as with the Allies, often little more than guesses.

Flying wings in particular were highly suspect as to not only range and speed based on the engines to be used, but on stability and flight control as the Northrop designs that actually were tested at higher speeds proved. It is extremely unlikely that the Germans could have gotten their flying wing designs to work any better.

This isn't to dis the German designs, but rather point out that any high speed, near sonic, or transonic, flying wing was going to face serious stability issues in a period where fly-by-wire and computer control didn't exist. These were simply beyond the extant technology.

 

[sienar]

The entire reason so many late-war german designs were flying wings was to avoid stability and control problems. Without an all moving tail there really isn't any clear way to go trans/supersonic besides a flying wing.

 

[topspeed3]

Boeing 707 was eventually result of the this bomber.

 

[gawebster]

In the autumn of 1944, Reichsmarschall Göring requested that Junkers, Arado and Messerschmitt design and produce very long range high speed bombers capable of carrying 4-ton bomb payloads. The goal was to be able to attack distant maritime convoys and strategic targets in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

In November 1944, Messerschmitt submitted a swept-wing four-jet bomber project designated P 1107. The four engines were mounted in nacelles by pairs under the wings. Though one of the variants considered had a V-tail, the other proposal was equipped with one of the earliest T-tail designs, so as to clear the tail surfaces from the exhaust of the turbojets. As for Junkers, they elected to work at improving their Ju 287 forward-swept wing design, which didn't go without some technical challenges despite the improvements it represented in both aerodynamics and construction.

Simultaneously, the Messerschmitt engineers worked on flying wing bomber designs designated P.1108/1 et P.1108/2. According to their calculations, these various bombers could carry the required payload over a distance of 7,800 kilometers at a speed of about 900 km/h. The range could even be extended to 9,600 kilometers for strategic reconnaissance versions. Junkers also worked — jointly with the DFS sailwing institute — on their own four-jet flying wing proposal, the EF 130.

In January 1945, the RLM examined the proposals made by all three manufacturers. Its experts notified in their report that the Messerschmitt P.1107/1 and /2 offered the highest speeds, but in terms of operational range, Horten's proposals were greatly superior to those of both Messerschmitt and Junkers. Not only was their construction easier, but the use of steel tubing and wood in the fabrication of Horten's wings was a decisive factor that led to that company being selected for that bomber program.

Despite the increasing damage caused by Allied bombings, the Messerschmitt design bureau continued to submit variants of their P.1108 flying wing proposal, but at the end of March 1945, Junkers and Messerschmitt were both ordered by the RLM to cease all development on long range bomber designs. Only the Horten brothers continued work on their Ho XVIII B-2 by personal request of Göring. Some unconfirmed RLM reports suggest that the production of the Ho XVIII B-2 had started on April 1st, 1945 at the Kahia underground factory in Thuringe, but no trace of that prototype — if ever it existed — has survived.

The beautiful and rare Messerschmitt P 1107 company document posted below was reproduced by the Air Documents Division of the the USAF's T-2 AMC Technical Intelligence service at Wright Field, Ohio. It was finally declassified in 1961 and appeared some time ago on eBay.

 

[Jemiba]

Posts discussing frontal area vs, drag, ond so on were moved to a dedicated thread here:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/frontal-area-vs-drag-vs-wetted-area-vs.38869/

 

[Nicknick]

Posts discussing frontal area vs, drag, ond so on were moved to a dedicated thread here:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/frontal-area-vs-drag-vs-wetted-area-vs.38869/

fine, but I miss some of my postings, could you please copy the missing ones? Thank you

 

[hesham]

From Aviation magazine 1986.

 

[BAROBA]

The flying wing layout may have bettered the possible range, although with hindsight,
we could speculate about flight control and handling problems in those pre-computer
era. But a range of about 7,000 km was predicted for the conventional layouts, too.
Here a number of facts may have played a part:
- Over optimistic predictions for fuel consumption of the still untested BMW 018 jet
- Over optimistic predictions for the aerodynamic efficiency of those new designs,
especially maybe the flying wing types
- And, above all to my opinion, the general demand then to exxagerate performances
of new designs, just to prevent them from being cancelled !

( And in my opinion) To prevent any designer or technician to be send to the front...
Milch in his biography suspected that the was the case with many of the designs that were made during the war.
Just to keep people busy and to give the High Command the idea that all those people were doing something valuable to the war-cause.

 

[Nicknick]

I'd speculate that these very late-war German bomber and such jet designs were predicated on little more than wishful thinking. They often were to use powerplants that were either on a drawing board or in the earliest stages of testing. Range and speed were, as with the Allies, often little more than guesses.

Flying wings in particular were highly suspect as to not only range and speed based on the engines to be used, but on stability and flight control as the Northrop designs that actually were tested at higher speeds proved. It is extremely unlikely that the Germans could have gotten their flying wing designs to work any better.

This isn't to dis the German designs, but rather point out that any high speed, near sonic, or transonic, flying wing was going to face serious stability issues in a period where fly-by-wire and computer control didn't exist. These were simply beyond the extant technology.

Horton was well ahead of Northrop (i know there is somewhere an other link to this guy in this form, but I couldnt find it):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6oVXPkTnss&ab_channel=ScienceAcceleratorOUTOFTHEBOX


Still, I also don t believe in the feasablility of 7000 km range of this planes....

 

[Tonton-42]

I'd speculate that these very late-war German bomber and such jet designs were predicated on little more than wishful thinking. They often were to use powerplants that were either on a drawing board or in the earliest stages of testing. Range and speed were, as with the Allies, often little more than guesses.

Flying wings in particular were highly suspect as to not only range and speed based on the engines to be used, but on stability and flight control as the Northrop designs that actually were tested at higher speeds proved. It is extremely unlikely that the Germans could have gotten their flying wing designs to work any better.

This isn't to dis the German designs, but rather point out that any high speed, near sonic, or transonic, flying wing was going to face serious stability issues in a period where fly-by-wire and computer control didn't exist. These were simply beyond the extant technology.

Horton was well ahead of Northrop (i know there is somewhere an other link to this guy in this form, but I couldnt find it):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6oVXPkTnss&ab_channel=ScienceAcceleratorOUTOFTHEBOX


Still, I also don t believe in the feasablility of 7000 km range of this planes....

The quote of Saint-Ex at the end of the video is totally apocriphe !
The exact form in Citadelle, a posthumous and unfinished work by Saint-Exupéry, published in 1948 by Gallimard is :
“To create the ship is not to weave the webs, to forge the nails, to read the stars, but to give the taste of the sea which is one, and in the light of which there is no longer anything that is contradictory but community in love.”

Tonton

 

[Tonton-42]

I prefer this another of our great Saint-Ex :

" It is good that I compel you to build, a sailboat that will go on the sea, the hull, the decks and the mast, then that in a beautiful day, like a wedding day, I will make you dress it with sails and offer it to the sea. Then the sound of your hammers will be song, your sweat and ahans will be fervor. And your launch from the ship will be a miraculous gesture because you will have blossomed the waters"

 

[Dagger]

Posts discussing frontal area vs, drag, ond so on were moved to a dedicated thread here:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/frontal-area-vs-drag-vs-wetted-area-vs.38869/

That link does not work.
Apparently it should be: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/frontal-area-vs-drag-vs-wetted-area-vs.38868
So with an 8 at the end instead of a 9

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The flying wing layout may have bettered the possible range, although with hindsight,
we could speculate about flight control and handling problems in those pre-computer
era. But a range of about 7,000 km was predicted for the conventional layouts, too.
Here a number of facts may have played a part:
- Over optimistic predictions for fuel consumption of the still untested BMW 018 jet
- Over optimistic predictions for the aerodynamic efficiency of those new designs,
especially maybe the flying wing types
- And, above all to my opinion, the general demand then to exxagerate performances
of new designs, just to prevent them from being cancelled !

( And in my opinion) To prevent any designer or technician to be send to the front...
Milch in his biography suspected that the was the case with many of the designs that were made during the war.
Just to keep people busy and to give the High Command the idea that all those people were doing something valuable to the war-cause.

Very much true! The LFA for example created a proposal for a surface-to-air missile that became Feuerlille. The missile was given specifications that included a warhead and guidance system on paper. But the scientists and engineers wanted to develop it as a sounding rocket for research on supersonic flight and high altitude research. It was never fitted with any sort of warhead or guidance, and likely would have never made it as a SAM, but it kept the funding coming and the people involved doing "important" stuff rather than being drafted.

But, then again, all countries did this sort of thing either officially or unofficially. The US, for example, often inducted skilled technicians, engineers, and scientists to keep them from being drafted and then gave them automatic promotions to ranks that were commensurate with their civilian pay and authority. For example, at MIT, the Rad Lab (doing radar, electronics, and computer research) had numerous people inducted into the service that way. It wasn't uncommon to see say, a technician wearing a First Sargant's uniform with no ribbons, medals, time in service stripes, that would normally be the case.
The US railway engineer battalions were done that way too. They were made up of men that worked for a particular railway corporation and most of the battalion would be given instant rank equivalent to their civilian positions. Shop foremen became senior NCO's. Shop supervisors, warrant officers. The managers would be officers of various ranks with the commanding officer being a major or Lt. colonel.

This had to be done to protect these valuable people from ending up being drafted and then misused in the military compared to their value as civilians.

 

[hesham]

In Wikipedia,they talked about Me.462 as a Me P.1107 ?!.

List of RLM aircraft designations - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[iverson]

In Wikipedia,they talked about Me.462 as a Me P.1107 ?!.

List of RLM aircraft designations - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The cited source in the Wikipedia articles is just another website that does not itself cite a specific source--it just lists some general references, most of which are familiar titles and one of which refers back to Wikipdeia itself. So I wouldn't rely on the the information alone

If interested, you could take the Wikipedia information as a starting point (which is the purpose of encyclopedias). You might try to follow up by checking the one primary source supplied: USAAF Air Materiel Command: "List of German Air Ministry Aircraft Numbers" (Foreign Equipment Descriptive Brief 46-6B,21 August 1946). That might give you a lead to finding further information.

 

[Apophenia]

In Wikipedia,they talked about Me.462 as a Me P.1107 ?!.

They did ... but it is worth mentioning that Wikipedia's source was our own Andreas Parsch and his Designation Systems website: https://www.designation-systems.net/non-us/germany.html

Wikipedia, without qualification, states "Me 462 | Proposed RLM designation for the P.1107." But Wikipedia fails to mention that Andreas listed 'Me 462' in light brown type.

On the same page, Andreas makes clear "There are also a few numbers which do not appear in the RLM-GL/C lists (and which may or may not have been allocated by the RLM), but which are found in one or more other sources. These are presented in light brown." In other words, this 8-462 number is to found in secondary sources but not in the lists which were actually created by the Generalluftzeugmeister Entwicklungsabteilung C.

Wikipedia also ignored Andreas' footnote ...

Me 462 (note 34) | Messerschmitt | Four-engine jet bomber (1945); project only ...

34. The number 8-462 was proposed by Messerschmitt for their P-1107 project, but the RLM did most probably never officially allocate the number.

So, as statements, "Proposed RLM designation ..." and "... RLM did most probably never officially allocate the number" pretty much contradict each other.

 

[hesham]

In Wikipedia,they talked about Me.462 as a Me P.1107 ?!.

List of RLM aircraft designations - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

From this book.