Heinkel

Heinkel Flugzeugwerke (German pronunciation: [ˈhaɪŋkəl ˈfluːktsɔʏkˌvɛʁkə]) was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight, with the pioneering examples of a successful liquid-fueled rocket and a turbojet-powered aircraft in aviation history, with both Heinkel designs' first flights occurring shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

History

Following the successful career of Ernst Heinkel as the chief designer for the Hansa-Brandenburg aviation firm in World War I, Herr Heinkel's own firm was established at Warnemünde in 1922, after the restrictions on German aviation imposed by the Treaty of Versailles were relaxed. The company's first great success was the design of the Heinkel He 70 Blitz high-speed mail plane and airliner for Deutsche Luft Hansa in 1932, which broke a number of air speed records for its class. It was followed by the two-engine Heinkel He 111 Doppel-Blitz, which became a mainstay of the Luftwaffe during World War II as a bomber. Heinkel's most important designers at this point were the twin Günter brothers, Siegfried and Walter, and Heinrich Hertel. The firm's headquarters was in Rostock later known as Heinkel-Nord (Heinkel-North), possessing a factory airfield in the northwestern, coastal Schmarl neighborhood of the city (then known as "Marienehe") with an additional Heinkel-Süd facility in Schwechat, Austria, after the Anschluss in 1938.

Heinkel He 162

The Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger (German, "People's Fighter"), the name of a project of the Emergency Fighter Program design competition, was a German single-engine, jet-powered fighter aircraft fielded by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Designed and built quickly, and made primarily of wood as metals were in very short supply and prioritised for other aircraft, the He 162 was nevertheless the fastest of the first generation of Axis and Allied jets. Volksjäger was the Reich Air Ministry's official name for the government design program competition won by the He 162 design. Other names given to the plane include Salamander, which was the codename of its construction program, and Spatz ("Sparrow"), which was the name given to the plane by Heinkel.

Development

Origins

Heinkel HeS 011

The Heinkel HeS 011 or Heinkel-Hirth 109-011 (HeS - Heinkel Strahltriebwerke) was an advanced World War II jet engine built by Heinkel-Hirth. It featured a unique compressor arrangement, starting with a low-compression impeller in the intake, followed by a "diagonal" stage similar to a centrifugal compressor, and then a three-stage axial compressor. Many of the German jet-powered aircraft designs at the end of the war were designed to use the HeS 011, but the HeS 011 engine was not ready for production before the war ended in Europe and only small numbers of prototypes were produced.

Design and development

Starting in 1936, Junkers started a jet engine development project under the direction of Wagner and Müller, who worked on axial compressor designs. By 1940 they had progressed to the point of having a semi-working prototype, which could not run under its own power and required an external supply of compressed air.

Meanwhile, Hans Mauch, in charge of engine development at the RLM, decided that all engine development should take place at existing engine companies. In keeping with this new policy, he forced Junkers to divest itself of their internal engine teams. Müller and half of the existing Junkers team decamped and were happily accepted by Ernst Heinkel, who had started German jet development when he set up a lab for Hans von Ohain in 1937. The two teams worked on their designs in parallel for some time, von Ohain's as the HeS 8 (or 109-001), and the Junkers team as the HeS 30 (109-006). Heinkel's efforts were later re-organized at Hirth Motoren.