Mystery Heinkel 2 x HeS 011 aircraft project

[newsdeskdan]

Discovered these two disembodied fragments recently. Someone appears to have taken a pair of scissors to them at some point in the past. They were filed as bits of a Heinkel project drawing (or possibly bits of two different drawings?). But what do they depict? Not a trick question - I genuinely can't work it out. I wondered whether it might be a version of the P 1079 given the wing root engine installation?

 

[Wurger]

Could the first pic be of a single engined fighter? The tail looks like a Messerschmitt P1001 rear section.

 

[newsdeskdan]

Could the first pic be of a single engined fighter? The tail looks like a Messerschmitt P1001 rear section.

I would assume that they both depict the same aircraft. The undercarriage tuck-up position appears to be the same relative to the engine, as does the point where the rear part of the wing meets the section housing the engine. The rearward-firing cannon appears to be just outboard of the engine, with the barrel protruding quite a way from the wing surface. To the left of the cannon, I would guess that the shaded area is a wing tank (usually positioned towards the leading edge).
I've duplicated the image then flipped it upside down and filled in the centre bit where the two wheels would almost meet to show you what I mean (see attached). Kinda seems a bit like the non-flying wing P 1079 but with different details.

 

[hesham]

Not Mystery my dear Dan,

it was Heinkel P.1095,it was a single seat fighter with wing root two jet engines,Heinkel H-S-011,
and V-tail and swept back wing,looks like Super marine Type-508 exactly.

 

[Zizi6785]

I think this is a version of P.1079.

Hesham! Heinkel P.1095? I think there is no Heinkel project with this number!

 

[Zizi6785]

Rearward-firing cannon - very interesting!

 

[Jemiba]

Hesham! Heinkel P.1095? I think there is no Heinkel project with this number!

When googling for the Heinkel P.1095, you'll find a drawing "Heinkel P.1095" ...
with the caption "Heinkel P.1078A" (http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/2358/2/0/1) .
The internet gives us the possibility to make mistakes in seconds, which would have taken
us hours in former times ! ;D

hesham, again, please always mention the sources for such statements !
And in the end, as our site is regularly indexed, maybe we already made the "Heinkel P.1095" real ... :

 

[hesham]

My dear Jemiba,

the Heinkel P.1095 was a real Project,mentioned in a Germany book about Heinkel,but I don't remember
its book title now,and the artist drawing which you found it,was exactly it,and it was not P.1078A,let me a
little time to get the name.

 

[newsdeskdan]

My dear Jemiba,

the Heinkel P.1095 was a real Project,mentioned in a Germany book about Heinkel,but I don't remember
its book title now,and the artist drawing which you found it,was exactly it,and it was not P.1078A,let me a
little time to get the name.

Nah. That's the P 1079.

 

[hesham]

Nah. That's the P 1079.

OK my dear Dan,

your drawing was for P.1079,but there was anther similar Project called P.1095.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Hi

 

[newsdeskdan]

Nah. That's the P 1079.

OK my dear Dan,

your drawing was for P.1079,but there was anther similar Project called P.1095.

But... your drawing also says P 1079 on it...?

Attached is the list of Heinkel projects compiled for the Americans by the Heinkel team in captivity. And the equivalent section of the tailless P 1079.

 

[Hood]

It could well be a P.1079 variant with the rear-firing cannons mounted in the wings instead of the wing-root fillets.

Its a shame the plan has been so thoughtlessly cut up. At first I wondered if it was a fake, but its too much like the P.1079 for it to be an imaginative plant.

 

[hesham]

My dear Dan,

my drawing in reply # 9 was for P.1079 to confirm your statement,but my drawing in reply # 7
was for P.1095,and from the book which I still forget its name.

 

[newsdeskdan]

It could well be a P.1079 variant with the rear-firing cannons mounted in the wings instead of the wing-root fillets.

That's what I thought - a slightly different version of the P 1079. In fact, possibly the only known wartime drawing of the P 1079 (if indeed that's what it is). And I can assure you that it is not a fake; the bits were just tucked away in a large sheaf of assorted He 162 and other period Heinkel documents.

 

[Zizi6785]

I wonder just how many versions planned of the P.1079, and how little I knew ;D

 

[newsdeskdan]

I wonder just how many versions planned of the P.1079, and how little I knew ;D

Heinkel's projects are mysterious generally, or at least, they are to me. There appear to have been loads yet very little seems to be known about most of them. I would love to know what happened to Heinkel's project files at the end of the war because they aren't part of the collections I'm aware of. I am presuming that they were destroyed but who knows? What we do know is that a number of Heinkel engineers and designers, including chief designer Siegfried Günter were tasked with putting together reports on their most recent projects by the Americans immediately after the war ended (because, you would presuppose, the originals were either destroyed or captured by the Soviets). These included the P 1076, P 1078, P 1079 and P 1080 (see attached). I would presume that they also fashioned a P 1077 report but I've not found that.
The P 1079 report shows the V-tail version but right at the back is a 'supplement' written by Günter which shows a tailless version with a central fin. However, British report German Aircraft: New and Projected Types from January 1946 also shows a third version with no vertical fin. That's not in the American report (or at least not in either of the two hard copy versions I've seen).
These new reports all featured drawings with annotations in English and these appear to be reproductions, not of wartime originals, but of versions produced for the Americans on Heinkel drawing paper with German annotations. As a result, in some instances it's not been possible to say for certain that what was produced for the Americans was actually what was produced during wartime.
A case in point is the single-jet P 1078. We know from general reports on the 'emergency fighter competition' or '1-TL-Jager competition' or 'daytime single-jet fighter competition' or whatever you want to call it, that the Heinkel entry, labelled simply 'P 1078' was a tiny tailless gullwing fighter with a full nose intake. Yet the report produced for the Americans shows two different P 1078s - one with a tail and one that's tailless but which has a weird double fuselage protruding from the front, with the engine intake between them. No sign of what we know to have been the wartime P 1078 (usually known as the P 1078 C). The with-tail one is labelled P 1078 A and the two-fuselage tailless one is labelled P 1078 B.
Whether the competition contestant version was actually the P 1078 C or just the original P 1078 without a letter seems uncertain.
It has been suggested that no drawing of the P 1079 was produced during wartime. Or even that the P 1079 did not exist at all during wartime. I have a document captured from Focke-Wulf which appears to show that the P 1079 did, in fact, exist during wartime but it doesn't appear to have been entered for the night and bad weather fighter competition.

 

[Michel Van]

what i notice on the drawing fragments is that there MG in fuselage firing backwards,
also it carry two 500 kg bombs

i wonder if this is a proposal for "1000x1000x1000" project by Herman Göring
a jet bomber that fly 1000 km/h at distance 1000 km and carry 1000 kg bombs.

 

[Justo Miranda]

No, a nightfighter of the "Moskitojäger" class.

 

[Zizi6785]

Dan!
Are you planning another book based on the recent drawings?

 

[newsdeskdan]

Dan!
Are you planning another book based on the recent drawings?

I'm tempted to write something more about this (see attached).

 

[Wurger]

An otherwise unknown Messerschmitt project?

 

[hesham]

An otherwise unknown Messerschmitt project?

Messerschmitt,why ?.

 

[newsdeskdan]

An otherwise unknown Messerschmitt project?

That is the front page of the pre-Feb 27-28 conference report. Some call it the 'emergency fighter competition'. I call it Ein-TL-Jager. Here's the 12th page from the report (attached). The projects considered during the 'final' conference on it were the Messerschmitt P 1101, P 1110 and P 1111, the Focke-Wulf I (nach Baubeschreibung Nr 279), the Focke-Wulf II (nach Kurzbaubeschreibung Nr 30), the Junkers EF 128, the Heinkel P 1078 and the Blohm & Voss P 212.
Messerschmitt really thought that the P 1111 was the sure-fire winner...

 

[Zizi6785]

Great!

Arado didn't applied for the competition?

 

[newsdeskdan]

Great!

Arado didn't applied for the competition?

You would think it would have submitted the E 581 or something similar but there's no evidence of that (that I've yet found). I have the minutes of (but not drawings from) the first 1-TL-Jager comparison conference on September 8-10, when Heinkel, Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf presented designs (Heinkel's appears to have been a swept wing version of the P 1073, Messerschmitt's is described as a modular design which probably looked similar to the 1-TL-Jager design I featured in Luftwaffe: Secret Jets, and Focke-Wulf presented its Nr. 272 aka Projekt VI aka 'Flitzer'). The three designs are described and dimensions for them are given. There are company-calculated performance stats too, but there were real disagreements about exactly how to calculate performance - particularly since FW's design was calculated to be 50-100km/h slower than the others!
I also have details of further meetings in December and January, when the P 1106 and P 1110 were entered by Messerschmitt and B&V and Junkers also came on board. Then I have three different versions of the preamble document to the Feb 27-28 meeting. Two of them largely the same but the third with extensive notes from Messerschmitt on how it expected its three designs to fare against the others.
This briefly discusses the two Fock-Wulf designs, ignores B&V and Heinkel entirely, and seems to regard the EF 128 as the strongest competition. It's evident that by this stage the P 1101 was being offered only on the basis of how fast it could be built. Messerschmitt was pinning its hopes on the P 1111.
Quite why the Arado E 581 or another design from Arado wasn't included I'm unsure. However, Arado (the government's egoless in-house manufacturing and design firm) seems to have been used as a stalking horse in other competitions - notably the Langstreckenbomber competition with the E 555 - so that may have been the case where 1-TL-Jager was concerned.

 

[Zizi6785]

Thanks for the reply. And what about is the Hs P.135?

 

[newsdeskdan]

Thanks for the reply. And what about is the Hs P.135?

I've lately discovered a lot more on the P 135, including what appears to be the only contemporary drawing of it in the well-known 'spine' configuration (in January 1945 it had a bubble canopy - pic in my Luftwaffe: Secret Bombers bookazine). The wingtips in this configuration were actually swept forward slightly. Friedrich Nicolaus makes a big virtue of the fact that the seat is very reclined so that the pilot can withstand higher G during turning combat.
The design was never formally part of the 1-TL-Jager selection process and doesn't crop up in any of the design comparison documents I have. It's been suggested that Henschel was late in submitting it and that's why it wasn't accepted for the competition (Forsyth) but Nicolaus doesn't mention that in his postwar summary. Schick mentions it in his secret projects book and Forsyth has followed suit in his 'emergency' fighters book, which makes me think some mention of it might exist in a Dec 44-Jan 45 period document I haven't seen, but I've not found anything along those lines.
Like the E 581, it's period appropriate but wasn't a contender.

 

[Zizi6785]

How much misleading information lives for many years, and finally it turns out to be fake

Thanks again!

 

[Zizi6785]

By the way, do you have any informations (maybe drawings) Ar E.581.1-3?

Sorry for the many questions! ;D

 

[newsdeskdan]

By the way, do you have any informations (maybe drawings) Ar E.581.1-3?

Sorry for the many questions! ;D

Only scraps, such as graphs with those project numbers written on them, and no drawings of those earlier designs. Even the original drawings I've found of the E 581-4 and E 581-5 appear devoid of explanation. Presumably there's more Arado material on them that I haven't found yet. From the competition side of things, however, they're not mentioned - unlike the Arado Projekt I and II which appear as clear contenders in the night and bad weather 2-TL-Jager competition.

NB: One version of the 1-TL-Jager competition pre-Feb 27-28 conference reports I mentioned is at the National Archives in Kew if anyone fancies having a look at the line-up of competitors for themselves - AIR 40/2005.

 

[richard]

A question , five years ago : http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,16035.msg154131.html#msg154131

Have someone the answer ?

 

[hesham]

the Heinkel P.1095 was a real Project,mentioned in a Germany book about Heinkel,but I don't remember
its book title now,and the artist drawing which you found it,was exactly it,and it was not P.1078A,let me a
little time to get the name.

That's right my dear Richard,

and please tell us the name of German book which Heinkel P.1095 was mentioned ?.

 

[newsdeskdan]

A question , five years ago : http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,16035.msg154131.html#msg154131

Have someone the answer ?

Based on the list I posted in Reply #11, there are only three possibilities for a Heinkel single jet fighter project - P 1069, P 1073 or P 1078. Clearly, within a single designation there could be some fairly substantial variations however. We know that the nose-intake gullwing P 1078 was Heinkel's entry by Feb 27-28 but exactly what the Sept 8-10 entry looked like no one has been able to confirm. The closest I can get is this extract from the report on the Sept 8-10 conference, which gives dimensional details of the early Focke-Wulf, Heinkel (EHAG) and Messerschmitt entries. The Focke-Wulf entry is clearly the Nr. 272 twin-boom design but the others... I'm not so sure. Messerschmitt's is probably a variation on the P 1101 series but Heinkel's could be something like the P 1073 (and the original Heinkel P 1073 Volksjager report mentioned that it was mostly the same as the previous HeS 011-powered P 1073) or something more like the P 1078 A.

NB: Just looking at the dimensions given for the Heinkel single jet projects...
Sept 8-10 design: Wing area = 14sqm, Wingspan = 8m, Length = 9.3m
P 1073 with BMW 003A of Sept 8: Wing area = 11sqm, Wingspan = 7.2m, Length = 8.65m
P 1078 of Feb 27-28: Wing area = 17.8sqm, Wingspan = 9m, Length = 5.13m
P 1078 A (postwar rpt): Wing area = 17sqm, Wingspan = 8.8m, Length = 8.8m
P 1078 B (postwar rpt): Wing area = 20sqm, Wingspan = 9.4m, Length = 5.25m

The Sept 8-10 design appears to fall somewhere between the Volksjager P 1073 (slightly smaller) and the P 1078 A (slightly larger) but is longer than either of them.

 

[newsdeskdan]

By the way, do you have any informations (maybe drawings) Ar E.581.1-3?

Sorry for the many questions! ;D

Only scraps, such as graphs with those project numbers written on them, and no drawings of those earlier designs. Even the original drawings I've found of the E 581-4 and E 581-5 appear devoid of explanation. Presumably there's more Arado material on them that I haven't found yet. From the competition side of things, however, they're not mentioned - unlike the Arado Projekt I and II which appear as clear contenders in the night and bad weather 2-TL-Jager competition.

To elaborate further on what I've got on the earlier E 581 designs; just various scraps like these (attached) which serve to prove very little other than the fact that the E 581-1, -2 and -3 did exist in one form or another.

 

[Zizi6785]

Maybe once the drawings come from somewhere ;D

 

[newsdeskdan]

Maybe once the drawings come from somewhere ;D

If you find them, let me know!

 

[newsdeskdan]

A question , five years ago : http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,16035.msg154131.html#msg154131

Have someone the answer ?

Based on the list I posted in Reply #11, there are only three possibilities for a Heinkel single jet fighter project - P 1069, P 1073 or P 1078. Clearly, within a single designation there could be some fairly substantial variations however. We know that the nose-intake gullwing P 1078 was Heinkel's entry by Feb 27-28 but exactly what the Sept 8-10 entry looked like no one has been able to confirm. The closest I can get is this extract from the report on the Sept 8-10 conference, which gives dimensional details of the early Focke-Wulf, Heinkel (EHAG) and Messerschmitt entries. The Focke-Wulf entry is clearly the Nr. 272 twin-boom design but the others... I'm not so sure. Messerschmitt's is probably a variation on the P 1101 series but Heinkel's could be something like the P 1073 (and the original Heinkel P 1073 Volksjager report mentioned that it was mostly the same as the previous HeS 011-powered P 1073) or something more like the P 1078 A.

NB: Just looking at the dimensions given for the Heinkel single jet projects...
Sept 8-10 design: Wing area = 14sqm, Wingspan = 8m, Length = 9.3m
P 1073 with BMW 003A of Sept 8: Wing area = 11sqm, Wingspan = 7.2m, Length = 8.65m
P 1078 of Feb 27-28: Wing area = 17.8sqm, Wingspan = 9m, Length = 5.13m
P 1078 A (postwar rpt): Wing area = 17sqm, Wingspan = 8.8m, Length = 8.8m
P 1078 B (postwar rpt): Wing area = 20sqm, Wingspan = 9.4m, Length = 5.25m

The Sept 8-10 design appears to fall somewhere between the Volksjager P 1073 (slightly smaller) and the P 1078 A (slightly larger) but is longer than either of them.

Ha - just realised that the Heinkel 1-TL-Jager design of September 8, 1944, was hiding in plain sight the whole time (see attached). I used this drawing on p78 of my Luftwaffe: Secret Jets bookazine in the section on the He 162 and said it appeared to be P 1073.19 of September 26, 1944 (based on a postwar chart produced for the Russians showing the evolution of P 1073).
But looking closely at the dimensions, it matches those of the Sept 8 design almost exactly - it has a wingspan of 8m, wing area of 14sqm, sweepback of 35 degrees, V-tail and a length of 9.25m. So it's just 5cm in length away from fitting exactly. The drawing is from another of those August 1945 reports produced by Heinkel engineers for the Americans (F-TS-672-RE) on the history of the He 162. I hadn't realised its significance for 1-TL-Jager before because I didn't have those Sept 8 dimensions at that time.
The page I featured on p76 of Luftwaffe: Secret Jets (also attached) shows how the Sept 8 1-TL-Jager design was simplified and shrunk to create the design that became the He 162. So this is the older brother of the Volksjager.
I believe all this also answer's Richard's question from five years ago concerning the Heinkel design featured in Messerschmitt Geheimprojekte by Willy Radinger and Walter Schick (Aviatik Verlag).

NB: What F-TS-672-RE has to say about that drawing (which, remember, fits the dimensions of the Heinkel design at the September 8-10 meeting almost exactly) is interesting. The report is by Siegfried Günter and Hohbach and it says: “For the installation of the HeS 11 power plant a new wing and probably V tail, both with sweepback, were contemplated. This type of tail unit reaches higher critical speeds. There would have been sufficient time for wind tunnel tests since aircraft production changes were not anticipated before the beginning of 1946.
“A new model with a 4.8m span and two wing versions was about to be built for testing stalling conditions and to obtain essential data concerning lateral stability by test in the large Braunschweig wind tunnel. One wing was to have a 25ᵒ sweep-forward and the other a 35ᵒ sweep-back. If necessary, a third wing was to be built and the best model subjected to DVL high speed tests.”
In other words, it appears as though Heinkel's plan was to eventually bring the He 162 design back to the condition that the P 1073 was at before it was simplified to become the Volksjager.

 

[hesham]

Nice find my dear Dan.

 

[newsdeskdan]

Hm. Turns out the entrants for 1-TL-Jager (aka the 'emergency' fighter competition) as of December 19-21, 1944, were the Messerschmitt P 1106, Blohm & Voss P 209.02 (forward swept wings), Blohm & Voss P 212.02, Focke-Wulf Nr. 279 design (aka 'Huckebein', aka Ta 183), Junkers EF 128 and... an He 162 development. No Messerschmitt P 1101 now, no Heinkel P 1078 yet (and certainly not three versions) and no Hs P 135.