During World War II, Germany had only one long-range bomber, which was serially built. It was the Heinkel He 177, and its maiden flight took place in November 1939. It was the brainchild of Heinkel engineers that became the only long-range heavy bomber that came to the disposal of the Luftwaffe and was comparable in its capabilities (carrying capacity and flight range) with similar four-engine bombers available to the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force. Fortunately for the Allies, from 1942 to the end of 1944, about 1,100 He 177 bombers were produced, and the machine itself was not very reliable and received the sarcastic nickname "Luftwaffe lighter".
On the way to the long-range bomber
Despite the fact that Germany began World War II without long-range and heavy bomber aircraft, and all of its air forces were created for the implementation of the blitzkrieg concept, work on the creation of long-range bombers that could easily reach objects in Great Britain and on the territory of the USSR began still long before the war, in 1934. It was then that the first task was formed not to build a heavy long-range bomber. Subsequently, a specification for the creation of a heavy four-engined bomber appeared, which became known under the unofficial name "uralbomber".
Initially, Dornier and Junkers were involved in the program, whose engineers developed the four-engine Do-19 and Ju-89 bombers. At the same time, the flight range of the Do-19 bomber was supposed to be 2000 km, which did not fit into the Ural-bomber concept. This definition was assigned to the program for the creation of German heavy long-range bombers much later, perhaps even after the end of World War II. Either way, both projects by Dornier and Junkers have shown unsatisfactory results. A big problem was the lack of powerful engines, which made it impossible to achieve an acceptable flight speed. So, Do-19 with four Bramo 322H-2 engines with a capacity of 715 hp. each accelerated to only 250 km / h, which was even lower than the speed of the Soviet four-engine TB-3 bomber, which received new engines by 1936, which made it possible to accelerate the aircraft to a speed of 300 km / h.
After the death in a plane crash of the ideological mastermind of the long-range bombers program, General Walter Wefer, in June 1936, the program was curtailed. His successor, Lieutenant General Albert Kesserling, revised the entire concept, suggesting that the Luftwaffe focus on creating a more promising heavy bomber - the Bomber A program. Work on the new program in June 1937 was entrusted to the Heinkel company, whose specialists began to develop their own version of the long-range bomber, known as the Project 1041, which later became the He 177 bomber. According to the updated program, the long-range bomber was supposed to reach speeds of up to 550 km / h, provide a flight range of about 5000 kilometers with a combat load of up to a ton of bombs.
At the same time, the development of the new aircraft was carried out without super-efforts, by that time the German military had decided on the concept of a future war. So, Kesserling rightly believed that twin-engine vehicles, small in size and flight range, would be quite enough for military operations in Western Europe. The main goals that the Luftwaffe had to solve lay in the tactical and operational plane, and not at the strategic level. Taking into account the limited capabilities of the German aviation industry, it was possible to speed up the work and the serial production of long-range bombers itself only at the expense of the production of fighter aircraft and tactical bombers. At certain points, the strategic bomber project was held up only due to the fact that the fleet needed a long-range naval reconnaissance aircraft that could interact with submarines. The Germans realized their mistakes after the war took on a protracted nature, and the concept of the blitzkrieg finally collapsed in the snow-covered fields near Moscow. Then the Hitlerite generals were faced with the fact that they did not have bomber aircraft that could be used to strike at military factories beyond the Urals, even despite the vast occupied territories located in the European part of the Soviet Union.
The first flight of the He 177 long-range bomber took place on November 19, 1939, after the outbreak of World War II. Earlier, the plane had already received the official name Greif (neck or griffin). The name was chosen with reference to the coat of arms of the city of Rostock, which featured a griffin. It was in this German city that the headquarters of the Heinkel aircraft company was located at that time. In the future, the aircraft was continuously refined, turning out to be quite difficult to master and problematic, primarily because of its original power plant. Serial production was only possible in 1942, but even after the launch of the series, the aircraft was constantly improved, and the designers worked to correct the identified defects, having achieved a significant reduction in accidents and malfunctions on board only in 1944.
Technical features of the bomber Heinkel He 177 Greif
Since the terms of reference for the new aircraft did not regulate the number of engines in any way, the designers settled on a scheme with two motors, although, in fact, it was about two twin engines located in one engine nacelle. The bomber hull was all-metal, duralumin sheets were used as plating. The aircraft was a cantilever midwing with a square fuselage, but with seriously rounded corners. The aircraft's crew consisted of six people.
The length of the aircraft was 22 meters, the wingspan was 31.44 meters, and the wing area was 100 square meters. In terms of its dimensions, the German long-range bomber was quite comparable to the famous American "Flying Fortress" B-17. At the same time, the "Griffin" surpassed the American bomber in maximum flight speed, and its maximum take-off weight was almost one and a half tons more - 31,000 kg.
A distinctive feature of the only long-range bomber, which was at the disposal of the Luftwaffe, was its unusual power plant. The twin power plant was a fairly complex Daimler-Benz DB 606 engine, which, in turn, was a pair of two liquid-cooled in-line 12-cylinder DB 601 engines installed side by side in one engine nacelle and working on one common shaft rotating a four-blade propeller … The total power of these twin engines was between 2700 and 2950 hp. An aircraft engine that alone would develop such power, in Germany then simply did not exist.
The Heinkel designers had the opportunity to use four smaller engines, but they settled on this design for a number of reasons. The use of two engine nacelles on such a large aircraft was preferable from the point of view of aerodynamics, such a move by the designers contributed to a decrease in air resistance, and also increased the maneuverability of a long-range bomber. In the future, the Germans hoped to create a new powerful engine of similar power, simplifying the transition of the aircraft to a new power plant of the same power as the twin, without major design changes. In addition, the designers settled on twin engines and for the reason that at the time of the start of design, the Ministry of Aviation put forward a schizophrenic requirement for a 30-ton long-range bomber about the possibility of dive bombing. The designers simply could not provide such an opportunity for a four-engine aircraft.
At the same time, the twin engines became an inexhaustible source of problems for the new bomber, which was nicknamed the "Lighter" for a reason. In pursuit of improved aerodynamics, the designers assembled the engine compartment with the highest possible density. As a result, there was no room in it even for fire bulkheads, and oil lines and oil tanks were located near the engine exhaust pipes. In flight, these pipes were often red-hot. All electrical wiring was also very tightly placed. As a result, in flight, with any depressurization of the fuel system or oil pipelines, a fire became inevitable. In addition to this, the problem was that at high altitudes the oil sometimes boiled, which led to the malfunction of the engines, at best the motors simply overheated and stalled, at worst a fire started on board. German designers managed to achieve relative stability in engine operation only by 1944. Despite the fact that the aircraft were put into service in 1942, their combat value was very conditional. Despite its very good flight characteristics, the aircraft was notable for unacceptable problems with the power plant and airframe strength.
In addition to the engines, one of the aircraft's features was the landing gear, which, although it was three-post, had its own differences. In order not to increase the size of the engine nacelles, the Heinkel designers made the main landing gear doubles. Each of these rather massive half-stands had its own wheel and cleaning mechanism. The half-racks were retracted into the wing of the He 177 long-range bomber in different directions. The design made it possible to fit a fairly massive landing gear into the relatively thin wing of the aircraft.
Another feature and innovation of the Germans was to be the location of the defensive weapons of the bomber in three remote-controlled towers (for the first time on German aircraft), but the designers failed to cope with this task. In reality, only the upper defensive turret was remotely controlled, which housed a 2x13 mm MG-131 machine gun. At the same time, the composition of the defensive armament of the bomber was quite impressive: 1 or 2 7, 92-mm MG-81G machine guns, up to 4 13-mm MG-131 machine guns and two 20-mm MG-151 automatic cannons. The maximum bomb load of a bomber could reach 7000 kg, but in reality it rarely exceeded 2500 kg. The aircraft could use the German Henschel Hs 293 and Fritz-X guided bombs, which proved to be quite effective weapons against naval targets, especially Allied transport ships.
Combat use of long-range bombers Heinkel He 177
In total, by the end of 1944, about 1190 Heinkel He bombers of 177 various modifications were assembled in Germany. Despite a fairly large series, they could not have a noticeable impact on the course of World War II. The debut of the new long-range bomber was the help of Paulus's army surrounded at Stalingrad. The Germans were forced to attract all available means to build the "air bridge", including the latest long-range bombers, which they began to use as transport vehicles, transferring them to the airfield in Zaporozhye. However, this use of aircraft was unjustified, since the machines were not converted for the carriage of goods. Therefore, the "Griffins" could take on board no more cargo than the much lighter and more reliable He 111 bombers. Moreover, they could not take the wounded out of the cauldron, so they returned empty, another problem was the landing of heavy vehicles on field airfields. Very quickly, the aircraft were reoriented to bombardment of Soviet troops and the positions of anti-aircraft batteries. In total, at Stalingrad, the Germans lost 7 He 177 aircraft, all as a result of engine or chassis accidents.
Another area of application of the new long-range bombers was the fight against Allied convoys. The most notable achievement was the sinking by a He 177 bomber with a Henschel Hs 293 guided bomb on November 26, 1943, of a British transport "Rohna" with a displacement of more than 8,500 tons. The disaster took place off the coast of Algeria. Along with the transport, 1149 people died, including 1015 US military, which became the second most fatal naval disaster in the history of the US Navy, which was surpassed only by the death of the battleship "Arizona" in Pearl Harbor, when 1177 died as a result of the explosion and sinking of the ship. American sailors.
In 1944, bombers were actively used on the Eastern Front to strike targets in the depths of the defense. The most large-scale raid was the strike on the railway junction in Velikiye Luki on June 16, 1944, when 87 He 177 bombers were simultaneously used. The planes were also involved in the raids on Smolensk, Pskov and Nevel. Earlier in February 1944, long-range bombers took part in Germany's latest attempt to conduct massive air raids on London as part of Operation Steinbock (Mountain Goat). The losses of He 177 bombers were relatively low, in three months of the raids the Germans lost a little more than ten aircraft, but the effect of the raids was small, and the total losses of the Luftwaffe amounted to 329 bombers, which could be useful to the Germans in the summer of 1944 on the Eastern Front or after the Allied landings in Normandy.
By the end of 1944, most of the Heinkel He 177 Greif long-range bombers remaining in service had ceased their combat activities, standing firmly at their home airfields. The main reason was the acute shortage of aviation fuel and lubricants. By the fall of 1944, Soviet troops had withdrawn Romania from the war, depriving Germany of Romanian oil, and Allied aircraft inflicted serious damage on German synthetic fuel plants. Under these conditions, the Reich did not have enough fuel even for fighter aircraft, so it was inexpedient to spend it on bulky, gluttonous aircraft. And even earlier, Hitler's generals curtailed the serial production of their only long-range bomber, focusing on the production of fighter aircraft, including the latest jet aircraft.
