Heinkel He 176
The Heinkel He 176 was a German experimental rocket-powered aircraft and "Wunderwaffe" created in a collaboration between Ernst Heinkel and Wernher von Braun.
Contents
History
The He 176 was the world's first aircraft to be propelled solely by a liquid-fueled rocket, making its first powered flight on 20 June 1939 with Erich Karl Warsitz (1906–1983) at the controls.
Erich Warsitz
Warsitz was a Flight Captain (Flugkapitän) and a famous test pilot (Erprobungsflieger). He had many firsts, for example at the controls of the He Heinkel 112R (fitted with von Braun's rocket engine[1]) in 1937 and the Heinkel He 178, the first aircraft under turbojet power, during it's first "hop" on 24 August and it's first flight on 27 August 1939. In 1941, he was also as an instructor in Nantes and Eindhoven training the bomber squadrons (Kampfgeschwader) the correct use of the rocket boosters (Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 88). In 1942, during a test flight with a Messerschmitt Bf 109, he had an accident – caused by a faulty fuel lead – which put him out of flying for a year. Thus he took over the management of his father’s precision mechanical firm and also founded the "Warsitz Werke" in Amsterdam making various high-precision materials.
After the end of WWII, Warsitz was living in an apartment in the American sector of Berlin, but at 3 a.m. on the night of 5/6 December 1945, he was abducted by four Soviet NKVD agents. Numerous interrogations followed. He was required to sign a contract which obliged him to co-operate with the Soviets for a period of five years on the development of related technology, but he refused to work for the enemy. As a result, he was condemned to twenty-five years forced labour and transported to a Gulag in Siberia (penal colony 7525/13). After his return to the Vaterland in 1950, he founded his precision mechanical firm “Maschinenfabrik Hilden”, until, in 1965, he retired. He stayed friends with Wernher Freiherr von Braun, they visited each other in the USA and in West Germany.
Specifications (He 176 V1)
General characteristics
- Crew: 1
- Length: 5.21 m (17 ft 1 in)
- Wingspan: 5.00 m (16 ft 5 in)
- Height: 1.435 m (4 ft 8.5 in)
- Wing area: 5.4 m2 (58 sq ft)
- Empty weight: 900 kg (1,985 lb)
- Gross weight: 1,620 kg (3,572 lb)
- Powerplant: 1 × Walter HWK R1-203 liquid-fuelled rocket engine, 5.88 kN (1,323 lbf) thrust, 50 s burn time
Performance
- Maximum speed: 750 km/h (466 mph, 405 kn) estimated
- Cruise speed: 710 km/h (441 mph, 383 kn) estimated
- Range: 109 km (68 mi, 59 nmi)
- Service ceiling: 9,000 m (29,500 ft)
- Rate of climb: 60.6 m/s (11,930 ft/min)
- Time to altitude: 2.5 minutes to 8,000 m (26,250 ft)
Further reading
- Lutz Warsitz: Flugkapitän Erich Warsitz – Der erste Düsenflugzeugpilot der Welt, BoD, Norderstedt 2006
- English version: The First Jet Pilot – The Story of German Test Pilot Erich Warsitz, Pen and Sword Books, England 2008
- The First Jet Pilot, firstjetpilot.com (Archive)
External links
- Heinkel He 176, luftarchiv.de
References
- ↑ The subsequent flights with the He 112 used the Walter-rocket (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hellmuth Walter) instead of von Braun's; it was more reliable, simpler to operate and the dangers to test pilot Erich Warsitz and the machine were less.
