| Heinkel He 177 |
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| german bomber aircraft 1940-1949 | |
| world war ii german heavy bombers | |
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The Heinkel He 177 Greif ( Griffin ) was a 4-engined long-range World War 2 Bomber of the Luftwaffe . The troubled aircraft was the only heavy bomber built in large numbers by Germany during the war. Aircrews nicknamed it the ''Luftwaffenfeuerzeug'' (lighter of the Lutwaffe) due to the engines' tendency to catch fire in early versions. An unusual feature of the airplane was the twin engines in each Nacelle that drove a single Propeller . The twin engine nacelles had first been introduced on the Heinkel He 119 to reduce Drag where they worked trouble-free, but their tight installation in the He 177 led to considerable problems. The insistence of this engine configuration on the part of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (German Air Ministry) stemmed directly from their determination that the aircraft should be capable of Dive-bombing , a manoevre manifestly impossible in craft with four propellers. Starting with He 177A-3, a modified engine nacelle with a new engine (DB610, each containing two DB605 s) was used to attempt to eliminate this incendiary tendency, with only partial success. This insistence on the ability to dive-bomb also led to the need to strengthen the wing structure, leading to an increase in unloaded weight, producing the need to enlarge the undercarriage, in turn increasing further the weight and causing a decrease in speed, range and carrying capacity. The requirement to dive-bomb was never satisfactorily solved, and the He 177 was never able to do this. Beset by many other technical difficulties in development and service, the plane had a troubled life. This was in part due to overly optimistic design requirements of long range, high speed, a large bombload, and even as a Dive Bomber . Though Goering forbade Heinkel to develop a four-engine version, Heinkel did anyway, leading to the development of the Heinkel He 274 and the Heinkel He 277 which had separate engines in the more commonly seen arrangement. The use of the He 177 was ended by the Fighter Emergency Program , which cancelled bomber production and operations and gave priority to defensive fighters in the final stages of the war. The He 277 prototype was completed after the war in France, but no series production took place. The overly ambitious design goals included an unrealistic requirement for a dive bombing capability, similar to the RAF's equally unrealistic requirement for catapult launching for the failed Avro Manchester heavy bomber. The attempt to reduce drag by coupling the engines, while theoretically sound, proved to be difficult in practice, leading to a history of engine failures not unlike that of the failed Manchester or that of the B-29 , which had most of its defensive armament removed in order to lighten the burden on its engines and thus improve reliabilility. VARIANTS
Production Numbers: Over 1000, of which none is known to exist today. |
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