Focke-Wulf won the tender for the production of a light reconnaissance aircraft. The Fw 189, a two-beam aircraft, proved to be more reliable, more comfortable and easier to manufacture than the original asymmetric design of Richard Vogt. The Fw 189 entered service in 1940 and was nicknamed "frame" in the USSR. “The frame has arrived - wait for the bombing,” the soldiers joked
Have you ever seen an asymmetrical car? Of course! For example, a mining truck with an offset cab. What about an irregular ship? Naturally, think of any aircraft carrier. But asymmetrical aircraft in history have been very few. Let's even be more precise: only two. The first of them was created in 1937 by the gloomy Teutonic genius, aircraft designer Richard Vogt.
In the 1930s, the air force of the young Reich grew by leaps and bounds. The Reich Aviation Ministry regularly held tenders for the development of new aircraft models between leading enterprises in Germany. In an effort to outmaneuver the competition, the designers offered completely insane-looking designs - and sometimes they were implemented. However, this applied not only to aviation: this is how the project of a gigantic railway with a gauge of 4000 mm, the titanic "Mouse" tank, miraculously preserved to this day in Kubinka, and many other outlandish projects were born.
In 1937, the need arose for a light reconnaissance aircraft. The ubiquitous Heinkel He 46, put into service back in 1931, was a rather unfortunate model due to poor visibility. And in general, its design is outdated both technically and morally. The main requirement for the new car was good visibility from the cockpit. Aircraft of the 1930s were seriously affected by the small glazing area of the pilot's seat and the presence of a significant number of "blind spots" (in particular, under the aircraft). In principle, "full-size" cockpit glazing was already in use at that time, but only on heavy aircraft, where propeller engines could be placed on the wings. The nose of a small and light single-engine aircraft could not be made of glass. The way out of the situation could be a plane with a pusher propeller, but the designer Richard Vogt suggested going the other way.
Blohm & Voss BV 141
The most surprising thing was not even that serious funds were allocated for Vogt's project, but the fact that they were used "on business." BV 141 was built and flew successfully
Friends-rivals
Initially, work on the project was entrusted to the company Arado Flugzeugwerke, which once developed the first combat biplanes of the Luftwaffe. The most famous Arado aircraft was the Ar 196 flying boat, which since 1938 has become the standard seaplane of the deck aviation of the Imperial naval forces. But the German Air Ministry never hesitated to order more than needed, so requests were sent to other leading design bureaus - Focke-Wulf, Blohm & Voss and Henschel. In fact, the order was all-German - all aircraft factories, without exception, undertook the design of a light reconnaissance aircraft. But only the four mentioned models were approved by the top management at the stage of the drawing and "admitted" to the production of working prototypes.
The first to respond to the party's call were the designers of Henschel, who presented the Hs 126 at the beginning of 1937. It had only one drawback: the design was monstrously outdated even at the development stage. Henschel jumped at speed by getting a finished plane when competitors didn't even have finished calculations. In fact, it turned out to be an ordinary monoplane. But the party had no way out - and Hs 126 went into series. However, the tender was not withdrawn because the visibility problem was not resolved.
The Arado designers also failed. They proposed the Ar 198, a traditional monoplane with two cockpits. At the top were the pilot with the gunner, and at the bottom - the observer. Due to the specific glass "belly" the plane received the nickname "Flying Aquarium". In fact, the plane was unsuccessful. It was too expensive and difficult to manufacture and - what is especially unpleasant - unstable when flying at low speeds. This was unforgivable for a scout. No upgrades helped: The Arado was not approved for mass production.
The proposals from Focke-Wulf and Blohm & Voss turned out to be much more elaborate and competent. Focke-Wulf proposed a compact twin-engine Fw 189. The small aircraft's light wings could not serve as a supporting structure for the engines, and designer Kurt Tank got out of the situation by making a twin tail section; the tail booms became a continuation of the engine nacelles of the power units. This significantly increased the rigidity of the structure and made it possible to place a teardrop-shaped, fully glazed cockpit with 360-degree visibility between the fuselages.
Vogt's curve
But the designer of the Blohm & Voss firm, Richard Vogt, approached the solution of the visibility problem radically. He basically did not want to use a twin-engine scheme - and managed to find a way to install a drop-shaped glazed cockpit on a single-engine aircraft. The solution was as obvious and simple as it was ridiculous. On the basis of one of his patents in 1935, Vogt proposed an asymmetrical aircraft. The fuselage with the engine and bomb hatches was to be located on the left, and on the right, at the same distance from the plane's axis of symmetry, the cockpit.
The aircraft was built in 1937 and was named BV 141. A 1000-horsepower Bramo 323 Fafnir radial engine was installed on the aircraft. By the way, this was one of the few mistakes Vogt made - the engine turned out to be weak and unreliable. Bramo was a large aircraft manufacturer in the 1910s (under the name Siemens-Schuckert), then moved on to making engines, but by the 1930s its shares had fallen seriously, and in 1939 it was bought out by BMW. At the same time, competitors from Focke-Wulf ordered a new 12-cylinder Argus 410 engine for their development - simple, lightweight and reliable.
Balancing an asymmetrical aircraft became a serious issue. In the first prototypes, the tail unit was ordinary, but rather quickly Vogt came to the conclusion that it was necessary to develop an asymmetric tail. It appeared on the first working copy of the aircraft, which took off on February 25, 1938, four months earlier than the Focke-Wulf. Surprisingly, the asymmetry did not lead to any problems in flight. Dr. Vogt calculated everything quite right. The change in the weight of the fuselage (for example, when dropping bombs) was immediately compensated by the torque of the weighted propeller. None of the test pilots complained, the BV 141 proved to be a maneuverable and effective reconnaissance aircraft. The task was completed - and earlier than the competitors.
But here, as already mentioned in passing, there was a problem with the engine. Bramo just didn't pull the car and it lacked speed. The third prototype was equipped with a different engine - this time a BMW 132 N. It was equal in power to the Bramo, but it cost an order of magnitude cheaper and was produced in much larger industrial batches. Nevertheless, the aircraft required a more powerful power unit. German industry did nothing suitable.
It was not until January 1939 that an engine appeared suitable for Vogt's revolutionary aircraft - the mighty BMW 801 with 1,539 hp. By this time, two BV 141 A aircraft with a Bramo engine had been manufactured and six more with a BMW 132 N. The new version was named BV 141 B and proved to be excellent in tests. 10 more asymmetric aircraft were built.
The very first copy of the BV 141 aroused the crazy interest of both the bosses and the rank-and-file officers of the backlash. People who had nothing to do with Blohm & Voss were eager to get to the factory in order to get a better look at the amazing car.
Untimely genius
But time flew by rapidly. Focke-Wulf Fw 189 was already in series production, and the need for a reconnaissance aircraft with the largest possible glazing area practically disappeared.
Nevertheless, tests and modifications of the BV 141 B continued actively until 1941. The engine power was now enough with a margin (especially since the forced version was delivered to the last experimental batch of eight aircraft), but some other shortcomings were revealed. Test pilots, including the famous Erich Klöckner, praised the flight characteristics of Blohm & Voss, but everyone scolded the landing of the aircraft with one voice. Hydraulic failures in the chassis system have plagued the design from the very first prototype, and the increased weight due to the heavy engine only exacerbated this problem. One of the prototypes was even forced to make an emergency landing - on the belly. The pilot was not injured.
Armament tests were also not carried out with a bang. It turned out that the cockpit was completely unsuitable for the installation of machine guns (although initially such a task, of course, was). Powder gases, due to an unsuccessful layout, penetrated into the cockpit and seriously interfered with the pilots. True, the plane dropped bombs perfectly - without a hitch.
But, as already mentioned, it was 1941. The Focke-Wulf Fw 189 already existed in several hundred copies, and the BV 141 was still in the prototype stage. In addition, the war was in full swing and it became increasingly difficult to find money for new projects. And the BMW 801 engines were originally developed not at all for a reconnaissance aircraft, but for the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Wurger fighter and were always in short supply. The odious project Blohm & Voss was neatly shut down.
None of the 26 manufactured BV 141s have survived to this day (some sources indicate the number 28, but it is reliably known about 26 numbered copies of the aircraft). In 1945, the Allies got three asymmetrical creations of Vogt - the rest were probably sent to be melted down for the needs of the army. One of them was taken to England for research - there his traces are lost.
During the war, Vogt tried to promote several more projects of asymmetrical aircraft, but was unsuccessful. However, many of Vogt's original projects were not implemented primarily because of their extravagance. For example, the Blohm & Voss BV 40, a non-powered glider-fighter of 1943, was worth it.
Like many other German designers and scientists, after the war, Richard Vogt emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a senior engineer for the Curtiss-Wright and Boeing corporations. But in history he remained primarily as the creator of insane designs that could seriously change the face of modern aviation. For better or for worse, that's a completely different question.
