German designers had never solved the issues of the Heinkel He 177 design difficulties.

By the summer of 1939, the Luftwaffe had nine Jagdgeschwader ( fighter wings ) mostly equipped with Messerschmitt Bf 109, four ' Zerstörergeschwader ( destroyer wings ) equipped with the Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter, 11 Kampfgeschwader ( bomber wings ) equipped with mainly the Heinkel He 111 and the Dornier Do 17Z, and four Sturzkampfgeschwader ( dive bomber wings ).

The largest failure for the Kampfgeschwader, however, was saddling them with an aircraft meant to be as big and as apparently capable as any Allied four-engined " heavy bomber " – the perpetually-troubled Heinkel He 177 – which had been condemned to being designed to carry out moderate angle dive bombing missions from the day that the RLM accepted it for production in November 1937, making it overweight from the start, and mandating design features that led its " welded-together engines ", a pair of cumbersome Daimler-Benz DB 606 " power systems ", to perpetually catching fire in flight during operational missons over both the Eastern Front and the United Kingdom.

Many of the technical advances in the Spitfire had been made by others: the thin elliptical wings were designed by the Canadian aerodynamicist, Beverley Shenstone, and shared some similarities with the Heinkel He 70 Blitz ; the under-wing radiators had been designed by the RAE, while monocoque construction had been first developed in the United States.

The United Kingdom had licence-built right-hand drive versions of the Heinkel Kabine and the Isetta.

It was intended to install the engine on the Heinkel He 280 fighter, but the airframe development progressed much more smoothly than the engine, and had to be used in gliding tests while work on the engine continued.

Heinkel was so impressed by the concept that he had brought on Adolph Müller from Junkers, who was developing an axial compressor-powered design, renamed as the Heinkel HeS 30.

Fritz-X had been initially tested with a Heinkel He 111 bomber, although it was never taken into combat by this aircraft.

Nazi Germany had put only one large, long-range strategic bomber ( the Heinkel He 177 Greif, with many delays and problems ) into production, while the America Bomber concept resulted only in prototypes.

As the German Luftwaffe was primarily tasked with supporting the ground forces of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe never had a chance to develop a heavy bomber before the start of the war-its prime proponent of strategic bombing, General Walther Wever had lost his life in a 1936 takeoff accident, with only the troubled Heinkel He 177 design existing as a frontline heavy bomber during the war years, which was used for only minor actions against both the Soviet Union and England.

Heinkel was less successful in selling fighter designs — before the war, the Heinkel He 112 had been rejected in favour of the Messerschmitt Bf 109, and Heinkel's attempt to top Messerschmitt's design with the Heinkel He 100 failed due to political interference within the Reichsluftfahrtministerium ( RLM — Reich Aviation Ministry ).

Very late in the war, a Heinkel jet fighter finally took to the air as the Heinkel He 162, but it had barely entered service at the time of Germany's surrender.

Late in 1936 Erich Warsitz was seconded by the RLM to Wernher von Braun and Ernst Heinkel, because he had been recognized as one of the most experienced test-pilots of the time, and because he also had an extraordinary fund of technical knowledge.

During the development programme at Neuhardenberg the term " interceptor " had been coined, and the Heinkel He 176 was seen as the research machine for the project.

The He 176 rocket aircraft had been developed in close collaboration with the RLM, but in spite of its success, Heinkel did not receive the support he had hoped for.

Early Republican numerical air superiority had been challenged almost immediately by the technical superiority of Italian Fiat CR. 32 fighters and Savoia-Marchetti SM. 81, and German Junkers Ju 52 bomber-transports ; Soviet Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters had given the Republicans air superiority in the winter of 1936-1937, but the Nationalists had achieved lasting air superiority after German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and Heinkel He 111 bombers and Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM. 79 bombers had arrived in 1937.

By 06: 00, the small Danish Air Force had been taken out and 28 German Heinkel He 111 bombers were threatening to drop their bombs over Copenhagen.

Late in 1936 Erich Warsitz was seconded by the RLM to Wernher von Braun and Ernst Heinkel, because he had been recognized as one of the most experienced test-pilots of the time, and because he also had an extraordinary fund of technical knowledge.

In the early morning of 7 July 1943, Dr Ernst Steinhoff flew von Braun and Major-General Dornberger in his Heinkel He-111 to Hitler's Führerhauptquartier " Wolfsschanze " headquarters and the next day Hitler viewed the film of the successful V-2 test launch ( narrated by von Braun ) and the scale models of the Watten bunker and launching-troop vehicles:

At the end of the war Heinkel was arrested by the Allies but evidence of anti-Hitler activities and his treatment by the regime led to his acquittal.

Udet merely conveyed the OKL's own dive-bombing capability request to Ernst Heinkel concerning the He 177, who vehemently opposed such an idea, which ruined its development as a heavy bomber.

However Wever's vision of a " Ural " bomber was never realised, and his emphasis on strategic aerial operations was lost, with the only design submittal for Wever's ' Bomber A ' that would reach production being Heinkel's Projekt 1041, which became officially known on November 5, 1937 as the Heinkel He 177.

The Luftwaffe also quickly realized the days of the biplane fighter were finished, the Heinkel He 51 being switched to service as a trainer.

A Heinkel He 111H bomber, which was abandoned by the Luftwaffe during the retreat after the Battle of El Alamein, on a landing ground in Libya after being " commandeered " by No. 260 Squadron RAF, who painted it with RAF roundels and the unit code letters " HS -?

Due to the restrictions placed on German aircraft manufacturing by the Treaty of Versailles, Heinkel looked overseas for contracts, with some seaplane designs being licence-built in Sweden and working on catapult-launched seaplanes for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

By contrast, the only heavy bomber to enter service with the Luftwaffe during the war years-the Heinkel He 177-turned out to be one of the most troublesome German wartime aircraft designs, plagued with numerous engine fires from its general airframe design being mis-tasked to be built to be able to perform moderate-angle dive bombing attacks from the moment of its approval by the RLM in early November of 1937.

Heinkel thus succeeded in continuing its design on the aircraft ordered by Aichi Aircraft without being spotted.

Meanwhile Hans von Ohain's first engines were being run at Heinkel, although there was little official interest.

These used a ( long range ) Messerschmitt Bf-108, two Heinkel He-111s, and a captured B-17-given the fictional designation " Dornier Do 288 "-which despite being badly damaged during a raid on Al Mukaram by a Sudan Defence Force detachment managed to return to Athens for repair.

He paddled around in the water for three hours before being rescued by a Heinkel He 59 float plane based at Schellingwoude.

The Fernbedienbare Drehlafette FDL 131Z remotely-controlled gun turret system, used as a forward-mount dorsal turret on the He 177A, used two MG 131s for dorsal defense, with the experimental Hecklafette HL 131V manned aircraft tail turret design, meant to be standardized on the never-built A-6 version of the He 177A, was also meant for standardization on many late-war prototype developments of German heavy bomber airframes such as the separately developed four engined He 177B and the 1943-44 Amerika Bomber design contender from Heinkel, the Heinkel He 277, both airframes being intended to use the HL 131V tail turret unit mounting four MG 131s, two on either side of the seated gunner.

After being grilled by Heinkel engineers for hours, they conclude his idea is genuine.

The bulk of the aircraft crashed in the grounds of Aldro School in Darley Road-the wreckage was incorrectly identified in the local press as being that of a Heinkel He 111.

( See: Heinkel He 111 torpedo bomber operations ) Without specialised naval aircraft, the Luftwaffe was forced to improvise.

As a result, the Luftwaffe was forced to attack London in 1940 with heavily overloaded Heinkel and Dornier medium bombers, and even with the unsuitable Junkers Ju 87.

In early September 1944, he was sent to Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen, where he was forced to work for the Heinkel aircraft factory.

* the aircraft designers Willy Messerschmitt and Ernst Heinkel ( shared award ).

Lusser's first jobs were with the Klemm and Heinkel companies, before joining the newly-relaunched Bayerische Flugzeugwerke ( Bavarian Aircraft Works, later Messerschmitt ) in 1933.

This latter aircraft never reached production however, since the RLM wanted Heinkel to concentrate on bomber production and instead promoted the development of the rival Messerschmitt Me 262.

Seventeen years ago today, German scientist Willy Fiedler climbed into a makeshift cockpit installed in a V-1 rocket-bomb that was attached to the underbelly of a Heinkel bomber.

The nearby airbase was the home station for the Stab & I / KG53 ( Staff & 1st Group of Kampfgeschwader 53 ) operating 38 Heinkel He 111 bombers.

Wever's participation in the construction of the Luftwaffe came to an abrupt end on 3 June 1936 when he was killed along with his engineer in a Heinkel He 70 Blitz.

This led to a rush on the part of the RLM to produce the Junkers Ju 86, Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 before a proper evalutation was made.

The greatest failure for any German aircraft design in WW II was the always-troubled Heinkel He 177, one shown here captured by the Free French near the war's end.

The first jet aircraft was the German Heinkel He 178, which was tested in 1939.

A veteran aviator of the First World War, Klink happily lives out the end of his military career in the relative comfort and safety of a prison camp commandant's billet-although in one episode he wished he was piloting a Heinkel bomber again, and also wants his old bomb group back.

The first turbojet aircraft to fly was the Heinkel He 178 prototype of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, on August 27, 1939 in Rostock ( Germany ).

During World War II, its airfield was the base of one of the most famous Luftwaffe Night Fighter squadron, NJG1, with units II / NJG1 and IV / NJG1 operating Junkers Ju88 and Heinkel He219 aircraft from here in 1944.

The first functional jetplane was the Heinkel He 178 ( Germany ), flown by Erich Warsitz in 1939, followed by the world's first operational jet aircraft, the Me 262, in July 1942 and world's first jet-powered bomber, the Arado Ar 234, in June 1943.

Likewise, the Heinkel He 177 is often mentioned as having its development upset by the demand for it to dive bomb, although this too was an example of glide bombing.

The mystery was eventually revealed after an X-Gerät-equipped Heinkel He 111 crashed on 6 November 1940 on the English coast at Chesil Beach.

Another installation was a radar equipped Wellington used to direct Bristol Beaufighters onto Heinkel He 111s, which were air-launching V-1 flying bombs.

The Junkers company survived the Second World War and was reconstituted as Junkers GmbH and eventually merged into the MBB consortium ( via joint venture Flugzeug-Union-Sued between Heinkel and Messerschmitt in 1958 ).

The finest was, perhaps, a Heinkel bomber which, unfortunately, was sold in order to purchase a replacement which then crashed soon afterwards.

His first design ran in March 1937, and it was one of his engines that powered the first all-jet aircraft, the prototype of the Heinkel He 178 in late August 1939.

Heinkel arranged a meeting between his engineers and von Ohain during which he argued that the current " garage engine " would never work but that the concept upon which it was based was sound.