Improvements resulted in the Hs 129 A-1 series, armed with two 20 mm MG 151/20 cannons and two 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine guns, along with the ability to carry four 50 kg (110 lb) bombs along the fuselage centreline.Įven before the A-1s were delivered, the plane was redesigned with Gnome-Rhône 14M radial engines, which were captured in some number when France fell and continued to be produced under German occupation. The Focke-Wulf was put on low priority as a backup and testing continued with the Hs 129 A-0. The only real deciding factor between the two designs was that the Henschel was smaller and cheaper. The RLM nevertheless felt they should continue with the concept.
Both planes were underpowered with their air-cooled, inverted-V12 Argus As 410 engines and very difficult to fly. The Focke-Wulf design proved to be no better. The controls proved to be almost inoperable as speed increased and in testing, the V2 prototype flew into the ground from a short dive on 5 January 1940 because the stick forces were too high for the pilot to pull out. Henschel's plane came in 12 percent overweight with the engines 8 percent underpowered understandably, it flew poorly. There was so little room in the cockpit that the instrument panel ended up under the nose below the windscreen where it was almost invisible some of the engine instruments were moved outside onto the engine nacelles' inboard-facing surfaces and the gunsight was mounted outside on the nose.
To improve the armor's ability to deflect bullets, the fuselage sides were angled in, forming a triangular shape, resulting in almost no room to move at shoulder level.
#Tank buster plane windows
Even the canopy was steel, with only tiny windows on the side to see out of and two angled blocks of glass for the windscreen. The Hs 129 was designed around a single large "bathtub" of steel sheeting that made up the entire nose area of the plane, completely enclosing the pilot up to head level. Only four companies were asked to submit tenders three submissions followed and only two of these were considered worthy of consideration: one derived from an existing Focke-Wulf reconnaissance type, the Fw 189, the other was Henschel's all-new Hs 129. Another, non-operational, requirement severely hampered the designs: the RLM insisted that the new design be powered by engines that were not being used in existing aircraft, so that the type would not interfere with the production of established types deemed essential to the war effort. The aircraft was expected to be attacking in low-level, head-on strafing runs, so the cockpit had to be located as close as possible to the nose, in order to maximize the visibility of its targets. Similar protection was also needed in the canopy, in the form of 75 mm (2.95 in) thick armored glass. It was anticipated that the main source of damage to such an aircraft would be small arms fire from the ground, meaning that the plane had to be well- armored around its cockpit and engines. This led to support within the Luftwaffe for the creation of an aircraft dedicated to this role, and the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM " Reich Air Ministry") requested tenders for a specialized ground attack aircraft. Even though it was equipped with types unsuited to the role, such as the Henschel Hs 123 and cannon-armed versions of the Heinkel He 112, the Kondor Legion proved that ground-attack aircraft were a very effective weapon. The experience of the German Kondor Legion during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) refuted this idea. For high-value, well-protected tactical targets, the dive bomber was becoming the conventional solution. Only a small number of these B-3 models were produced, late in the war.īy the mid-1930s, the German military, as well as its counterparts in other countries, had come to see the main role of ground-attack aircraft as the interdiction of logistics and materiel, a task in which targets were often poorly protected and less likely to have strong, well-coordinated defences. As the war continued and anti-tank support became the main goal, the aircraft was continually up-gunned, eventually mounting a 75 mm anti-tank gun. The design was relatively effective when it was first introduced, and saw service on the Eastern Front in a variety of front-line roles.
Prototypes with low-power German Argus As 410 engines of 465 PS (459 hp 342 kW) failed acceptance test, a more powerful replacement was found with the French Gnome-Rhône 14M engine of 700 PS (690 hp 515 kW). The aircraft saw combat in Tunisia and on the Eastern Front.Ī key requirement of the original specification was that the aircraft be powered by engines that were not in demand for other designs. The Henschel Hs 129 was a World War II ground-attack aircraft fielded by the German Luftwaffe.
0 kommentar(er)
