The Heinkel He 162A VH513 taxiing at Farnborough.

The collection of ex-Luftwaffe aircraft for evaluation had been initiated by the British Air Ministry's Branch Al 2 (g), the group which had been the intelligence gatherer and collator of Luftwaffe aircraft information since before the start of the Second World War. It was this group which, with assistance from the British wartime Ministry of Aircraft Production, had drawn up a 'Requirements List' of items needed for evaluation in the UK after the war.

 

The list had been initiated during 1944 and was in the hands of Air Technical Intelligence teams in Europe prior to the German collapse in May 1945. The list was amended as new requirements were identified; these amendments included previously unknown aircraft or items of equipment found on the ground by the intelligence teams. With the end of hostilities the Air Technical Intelligence teams were reinforced by ...

read more

This example was the only Me 163B to be flown in Britain. VF241 arrived at Farnborough during April 1945 and by July, when this photograph is believed to have been taken, was partly repainted in RAF camouflage, with roundels, fin flash, serial number and yellow 'P' prototype marking.

 

This phase involved engineering assessments, followed by limited flight tests. Such work was concentrated mostly on jet types.

 

Typical of the work was that carried out on the Messerschmitt Me 262A WNr112372 (Air Min 51). This aircraft was flown from Lubeck to Copenhagen/Kastrup, and then on to Farnborough, on 23rd June 1945. It was taken over by the RAE Structures and Mechanical Engineering Flight, which carried out a detailed engineering assessment of the aircraft, which was later resulted in the publication of Report No. EA 235/3 describing the Me 262's electrical system. It was then turned over to the ...

read more

'The RAE's Fi 156C Storch VP546 photographed at Wolverhampton at an air race meeting in 1950 or '51.

After the accident to the Dornier Do 335, a reassessment of the use of the ex-Axis aircraft was made. For some time, only the Fieseler Fi 156 and one of the Junkers Ju 352A transports were flown. Then, in March 1946, flight trials of the Messerschmitt Me 163B VF241 recommenced. These trials were made mostly at the nearby airfield of Wisley, to avoid the busy circuit traffic at Farnborough, since the Me 163B was towed off as a glider by a Spitfire and released at altitude to make its own way back to earth. These trials were primarily to explore the handling characteristics of the Me 163B's tailless configuration, to provide information for other tailless designs on the drawing boards of British manufacturers in the post-war period. The 'tailless' design ...

read more

Helmut Gröttrup

It has been widely reported that the Germans unanimously decided to surrender to the Western Allies. This is not the case. Some of the scientists were more impressed by the Soviet system than they were by American capitalism, and Helmut Gröttrup was the most conspicuous of these. Gröttrup was an electronics engineer who no longer wished to 'understudy' Von Braun as he had done in the development of the V-2 rocket. Gröttrup decided to approach the Soviets and was offered a senior position in Russian rocket development. Between 9 September 1945 and 22 October 1946 Gröttrup with his loyal team of researchers worked for the USSR in the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany (later to become the German Democratic Republic). His director of research was Sergei Korolev, Russia's leading rocket scientist. In the autumn of 1946, the entire team was moved to Russia. Gröttrup had cooperated with ...

read more

The Soviet Union's first swept-wing fighter, and the Sabre's main rival in Korea, was the MiG-15, also created with German research, and British jet engines.

USAF's first swept-wing fighter, the F-86 Sabre, inspired by German wartime research, was the mount for most Korean War "aces."

Models by Anis Elbied [Sabre] and Michel Guillion [MiG], photographed by Dominique Breffort.

 

In the time since man first battled with his fellow man, aerial warfare takes up a milli-second. Heavier-than-air flight is less than a century old and it was not until 1910 that a military firearm was fired or a dummy bomb dropped from an aeroplane in flight. In the following decade, World War I accelerated aviation technology out of all recognition and airplanes had become an important weapon.

 

In five short years, they had photographed the front line from the air, sunk submarines, bombed capital cities, and pursued and ...

read more

First German passenger Jet "152"

The first official history of OKB-1 to be published (in Kryl'ya Rodiny for December 1987, written by I Sultanov) stated that it was led by Alekseyev, whose own OKB had been closed, and that this aircraft was 'designed in close collaboration with CAHI (TsAGI), the leading experts on aerodynamics and structures being V N Belyayev, AI Makarevskii, G P Svishchev and S A Khristianovich'. At the end it briefly noted that 'a group from Germany, led by B Baade, participated...' It would have been more accurate to explain that OKB-1 was specifically formed on 22nd October 1946 in order to put to use several hundred German design engineers, led by Prof Brunolf Baade and Hans Wocke, who had been forcibly taken with their families to a location 120km east of Moscow where they were put to work in a single large office block. For ...

read more

The EF 140 was begun as a private venture by Baade's team, who had faith in their forward-swept designs. The weak feature was obviously the need to use six primitive engines, and work went ahead rapidly to replace these by one of the newer engines which by 1947 were available. These were not only much more powerful, so that the aircraft could become twin-engined, but also had better fuel economy and much longer and more reliable life. The greater power available meant that previous compromises were no longer necessary, and the German team really felt they had a good jet bomber at last. Construction was speeded by using major parts of the second EF 131, so that the first of two EF 140 prototypes began its flight-test programme at Tyopliy Stan on 20th September 1948. The flight report described all aspects of the flight as 'normal'. Previously, in May ...

read more

From late 1944 the Red Army overran many sites where German aircraft engineers had been working on jet aircraft and engines. The largest group had been in the employ of the vast Junkers Flugzeug und Motorenwerke in the Dessau area and at Brandis near Leipzig. At Brandis the principal project had been the Ju 287 jet bomber. Having flown the Ju 287 VI (a primitive proof-of-concept vehicle incorporating parts of other aircraft) on 16th August 1944, work had gone ahead rapidly on the definitive Ju 287 V2, to be powered by two triple engine pods, but the Soviet forces overran Brandis airfield before this could fly. This work was clearly of intense interest, and with the aid of a large team of ex-Junkers engineers, who were prisoners, the programme was continued with all possible speed. The Ju 287 V2 stage was skipped, and parts of this aircraft were used to ...

read more

MiG-15bis, c/n 2015337, ex red 2057, was purposefully flown to Kimpo air base on September 21, 1953 by defecting North Korean pilot Ro Kim Suk. It is shown here at Kadena airbase on Okinawa being piloted by USAF Capt. Thomas Collins.

The 6th prototype of the I.Ae-33, Pulqui II, currently on exhibit in Buenos Aires at the Museo Nacional de Aeronautica. Both of these jet fighters are direct descendants of designs created by the wartime German aircraft manufacturer, Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH.

 

Who were the immediate beneficiaries of German wartime aviation technology? In addition to the United States one does not have to look any further than the Soviet Union and Argentina. When the Soviets seized Berlin, among the items they acquired was a duplicate set of blueprints for Kurt Tank's Ta 183. The Russians were so impressed by the design's potential and, spurred by Stalin's ...

read more

Soviet RPG-43 antitank grenade

Shortly after the German invasion of Russia in 1941, the Germans introduced the Panzerwurfmine(L), an extremely lethal close-quarter HEAT anti-tank grenade that could destroy the heaviest armored tanks of the war. The grenade was tossed overhand to land atop the tank. After release by the thrower, three spring-out canvas fins stabilized it during its short flight. The Panzerwurfmine(L) was lethal, and inexpensive to manufacture, but required considerable skill to throw accurately and was issued only to specially trained infantry tank-killer teams.[4]

 

It did not take long after the Russians captured the German Panzerwurfmine(L) to come out with their own hand-thrown anti-tank grenade with a HEAT warhead. In 1940, they developed a crude antitank grenade that used the simple blast effect of a large high explosive charge, designated RPG-40, which was stabilized in flight by a ribbon released after it was thrown. The ...

read more