Uralbomber. The first four-engine "strategist" of the Third Reich

2024 Author: Matthew Elmers | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:49

This Teutonic "monster" with an angular and rough appearance is found in Russian archival documents only once, but, really, its uniqueness is worth telling about it. The four-engine Dornier Do-19 heavy bomber was built in a single copy, made its first flight in 1936, and was not serially built. In 1939, the only flight prototype of the Do 19V1 was converted into a transport prototype and was even used for a short time in this capacity during the Polish campaign. On the Eastern Front he was not, and could not be. And nevertheless, on August 24, 1941, a pair of I-153s from the 192 IAP of the Leningrad air defense system was “shot down” in the Ryabovo area, namely “Do-19”. But let's not rush things and start from the very beginning.

The possibility of reconstructing strategic aviation began to be discussed in Germany in 1934. Even then, the problem of choosing between tactical and strategic aviation appeared, which did not lose its sharpness until 1944. A heavy bomber is an expensive toy, the equivalent of several front-line bomber, and the resources of a belligerent country are always limited. The most active lobbyist of the "strategists" was the first chief of the general staff of the Luftwaffe, Walter Wefer, who believed that the Reich in any case needed an aircraft capable of reaching the industrial centers of the enemy. I must say that Walter Wefer was an interesting enough figure in Nazi Germany to talk about him in more detail. Walter Wefer began military service in the Kaiser's army in 1905. In 1914 he fought on the Western Front as a platoon commander. In 1915, Wefer was awarded the rank of captain, and he was sent to the General Staff, where, despite his low rank, he proved himself to be a capable tactician and organizer. In 1917, Wefer became an adjutant to General Erich Ludendorff and later gained a reputation as one of Ludendorff's best students. After the end of World War I, Wefer continued to serve in the Reichswehr personnel administration, where he earned great respect from the commander of the armed forces of the Weimar Republic, Colonel General Hans von Seeckt. In 1926 Vefer was promoted to the rank of major, and in 1930 - to the rank of colonel. In 1933 he became head of the administration of military educational institutions. The Minister of War of the Third Reich, General Werner von Blomberg, realizing the need for competent leaders of the newly created Luftwaffe, transferred his best staff officers to this department, among whom was Wefer. In his address, Blomberg noted that the army was losing the future chief of the General Staff. Wefer (by this time already a lieutenant general) in an incredibly short time delved into all the problems of the Luftwaffe and determined the priority directions of their development. Unlike other staff officers, he realized that Hitler did not seek to take revenge from France and Great Britain for the defeat in the "great war." The Fuhrer believed that Russia would become the main strategic enemy of the Third Reich in the struggle to conquer the "living space" (Lebensraum). Guided by these considerations, Wefer organized the Luftwaffe counting on a strategic air war with the Soviet Union, considering it much more important (based on the need to save human and material resources of the Reich) the destruction of enemy weapons at factories that produce them than on the battlefields. He was confident in the need for Germany to have a heavy bomber with sufficient flight range to destroy targets in Soviet industrial areas and, moreover, be able to reach the Ural Mountains, located 1,500 miles from the German airfield closest to the borders of the USSR. He eventually managed to convince both Goering and Milch of the need to create long-range heavy bombers capable of achieving these goals. As a result, in 1934, the German Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) formulated requirements for a new four-engine bomber that was supposed to surpass the best heavy bomber of the time, the Soviet TB-3. According to the assignment, the aircraft was supposed to be a cantilever monoplane with retractable landing gear, which should be able to deliver 2.5 tons of bombs to targets in the Urals or Scotland. The project received the resounding name "Uralbomber".

Here is what A. Speer (Reichsminister of Armaments of Germany) wrote in his memoirs about potential targets for Uralbomber: “We remembered about the vulnerabilities in the energy economy of Russia. According to our information, there was no well-established air defense system … In the Soviet Union, electricity production was concentrated in several points, located, as a rule, on a vast territory of industrial zones. So, for example, Moscow was supplied with electricity from the power plant in the upper Volga. But according to the information received, 60% of all devices necessary for the optical and electrical industry were produced in Moscow … It was enough to bring down a hail of bombs at the power plant, and steel plants in the Soviet Union would stand up and the production of tanks and ammunition would be completely stopped. Since many Soviet power plants and factories were built with the help of German firms, we had all the technical documentation at our disposal. An interesting fact … Moscow aircraft factories were built by specialists from the Junkers and Dornier firms, and it was to these firms that in the summer of 1935, Walter Wefer transferred specifications for a new aircraft intended for bombing Soviet factories. By the way, these companies have already conducted preliminary studies of the project, on the basis of which the technical department prepared the specifications. At the beginning of autumn, three experimental aircraft were ordered from each of the companies, which received the designation Do-19 and Ju-89.

The creation of the Do-19 was considered by the Dornier firm as a priority task, the work on this aircraft was carried out so intensively that a little more than a year after the receipt of the technical assignment, the assembly of the first prototype of the Do-19 V1 was completed. The plane made its first flight on October 28, 1936. Naturally, the Soviet TB-3 (created in 1930) had a huge influence on the German designers. By analogy with it, the Do-19 was also designed as a cantilever mid-wing monoplane. The all-metal fuselage, as on the TB-3, had a rectangular cross-section and consisted of three parts: nose, middle (to the front wing spar) and rear (from the second wing spar). The middle and rear parts of the fuselage were bolted to the center section. The wing, like the TB-3 wing, was of great thickness with a wide chord; it had a two-spar structure with a smooth working skin. The nacelles of four Bramo 109 322 J2 air-cooled engines were attached to the power elements of the wing, the power of which was 715 hp. each. The propellers were three-bladed metal VDM with variable pitch in flight. The nacelles of the internal engines were equipped with compartments in which the main landing gear was retracted in flight (the tail wheel was retracted into the fuselage). The bomber could reach a speed of 315 km / h. It should be said that the Do-19 VI had the Ascania-Sperry autopilot - for the first time among bombers. At that time, not a single aircraft of either Germany or other countries of the world had such a device. The aircraft's crew consisted of nine people (commander, co-pilot-navigator, bombing operator, radio operator and five gunners), in the Do-19 V2 modification, the number of the crew is sometimes reported as 10 people.

To accommodate the bomb load, the fuselage had a compartment equipped with cluster bomb racks. The total weight of the bombs was 1600 kg (16 bombs of 100 kg or 32 bombs weighing 50 kg each).

If the first prototype Do-19 V1 flew without defensive armament, then on the second and third prototypes and on production aircraft it was supposed to have a very powerful defensive armament at that time, consisting of four rifle installations:

• one installation with a 7.92-mm MG 15 machine gun in the bombardier's bow turret, • two turret mounts with 20 mm MG151 / 20 cannons above and below the fuselage, • one installation with a 7.92-mm machine gun in the aft fuselage.

The tower installations were very original - two-seater, in design they resembled ship artillery towers: one gunner controlled the tower - horizontally, the other cannons - vertically. However, this tower, designed in parallel with the aircraft, turned out to be heavier and cumbersome than could be assumed. Static tests have shown that the installation of the turrets will require significant structural reinforcement of the central fuselage section. In addition, the towers created high aerodynamic drag, and their weight significantly increased the aircraft's already overstated take-off weight. The weight problem especially affected the aircraft's flight speed: with Bramo 322Н-2 engines and turrets, it was 250 km / h I and an altitude of 2000 m, which in no way suited the Luftwaffe command (TB-3 model 1936 flew at a speed of 300 km / h at an altitude of 3000 m). Therefore, the armament on the V1 was not mounted. The V2 was planned for a VMW-132F with a capacity of 810hp at takeoff and 650hp at par. Armament was planned to be installed only on VЗ.

But since there was no other turret for installation, and the flight characteristics had to be acceptable, Dornier proposed a more powerful production model Do-19a with four Bramo 323A-1 “Fafnir” engines with a capacity of 900 hp at takeoff and 1000 hp. … at an altitude of 3100 m. Naturally, in the future, it was planned to install lighter towers. Takeoff weight of Do-19a was estimated at 19 tons, speed up to 370 km / h and range up to 2000 km; an altitude of 3000 m was gained in 10 minutes, and a ceiling of 8000 m.

However, these plans were not realized: the fate of the aircraft was directly related to its ideological father, General Walter Wefer, and after his death in a plane crash on June 3, 1936, the program for the creation of the "Ural" bomber was gradually phased out.

Wefer's receiver, Lieutenant General Albert Kesselring, decided to revise the Uralbomber program. Luftwaffe headquarters have already developed the basic parameters of a much more promising heavy bomber. The requirements for such "Bomber A" were passed on to Heinkel, who began work on Project 1041, which was embodied in the He-177. Kesselring concluded that a smaller twin-engine bomber was sufficient for a war in Western Europe. The main goal of the Luftwaffe was determined at a tactical rather than a strategic level. Given the limited capabilities of the German aircraft industry, a heavy bomber could only be produced to the detriment of fighters and tactical bombers. Thus, despite the protests of the Technical Department, on April 29, 1937, all work on the Uralbomber was officially terminated.

However, despite the official order to terminate work on the Do-19 due to the absence of a decision to launch it into serial production, the tests of the aircraft continued. 83 test flights were carried out, but in the end it was decided to scrapped all built (under construction) Do-19 aircraft and delete all design work on the creation of long-range bombers from the plans. Many experts believe that when the Luftwaffe was created, the exclusion of four-engine heavy bombers from the aviation development program was one of the most fatal mistakes.

On November 1, 1942, Admiral Laas (President of the German Aircraft Industry Association) wrote to Field Marshal Milch, "Both of them [Do-19 and Ju-89], subject to continuous improvement, would have surpassed American and British long-range bombers in flight data." However, such a development is unlikely. Most likely, Germany in the mid-thirties could have received, like the USSR with its TB-3, an armada of rapidly aging "strategists" who would be problematic to use against strategic objects on the territory of the Soviet Union, which had a very good system of object air defense. If, nevertheless, to compare with British bombers, then the maximum that could be obtained from the Do-19, subject to constant improvement, is the same flying misunderstanding as Short Stirling, with which the German "strategist" was even outwardly similar.

As a result, the nearly finished Do-19V2 and the half-assembled V3 were scrapped. The Do-19V1 survived, in 1939 it was converted into a transport aircraft and accepted into the Luftwaffe. It was used in the Polish campaign, then its traces are lost. There is no confirmation that this plane got to the Eastern Front, no documents proving the opposite. Still, the fact that the Do-19V1 was shot down in the sky of Leningrad raises doubts. It should be remembered that in the first period of the war, the pilots had serious problems with the identification of enemy aircraft. In particular, the shot down He-100 and He-112 appeared in many reports, which, in principle, could not be. Therefore, “Stalin's falcons” could “identify” the Do-19 in any other unusually large aircraft.