Heinkel He100d

Bob VanderStok's Drawing Board presents:

Heinkel He100d

for Fighter Squadron Screaming Demons over Europe

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Specifications

Engine:       1,175hp Daimler-Benz DB 601M12 inverted V-12
Dimensions   
  Span:       30ft 10 3/4in (9.41m)
  Length:     26ft 10 3/4in (8.195m)
  Height:     11ft 9 3/4in (3.60m)
  Wing Area:  156.08 sq ft (14.60 sq m)
  Weight:     empty 4,563b (2070kg)
              max   5,512lb (2500kg)
Performance (D-1)
  Max speed:  416mph (670km/h)
  Ceiling:    36,090ft (11,000m)
  Range:      625 miles (1005km)

Armament
   one 20mm MG FF in the bow 
   two 7,92mm MG 17 machineguns in the wings

3-side view

History

In 1935, the Heinkel He 112 made it´s first flight. It was a modern fighter with small elliptical wings and a retractable landing gear. But the Messerschmidt Bf 109 was a little bit superior and won the german fighter selection competition of 1936. The main problems of the He 112 were too expensive production and worse handling characteristics.

Propaganda photo showing He100d-1's

But the engineers at Heinkel didn´t give up; in 1937, Siegfried Günther designed a new high-speed fighter with a potential of 700km/h. For easier production, it had less curves, components and component groups than the He 112 (He 100: 969 components, He 112: 2.885 components). The He 100 had two important innovations: It had no normal cooling system with additional drag, but a condensation system which used parts of the wing and fuselage surface to cool down it´s oil and water and it had a full retractable landing gear.

The second prototype (powered by a 1.050PS DB601M engine and piloted by Ernst Udet) achieved a speed record over the 100km distance of 634km/h, a speed the Bf 109 serial planes first reached in 1942 with a much more powerful engine. But this wasn´t enough to convince the RLM (german ministry of aviation), so Heinkel equipped a new prototype with a short-life high power engine (up to 1.800PS). It crashed, so they built the similar eigth prototype with the same engine and it broke the absolute world speed record (708km/h, Italy) with a speed of 746km/h, piloted by Hans Dieterle on march 30th 1939. The guys in the RLM outstripped themselves: instead of recognizing that the He 100 was clearly superior to the Bf109 (later called Me 109), they gave Messerschmidt the instruction to top Heinkels speed record (he did it with a Me 209, which had almost no similarities to the Me109, although it was called Me109R. It flew under better conditions, in which the He100 would have topped this speed with at least 5km/h more.), forbid Heinkel to counter and still reserved the excellent DB 601 series powerplants for the Me 109 and Me110.

He100d in flight

The planned B series was cancelled due to further improvements. The same happened with the heavily armed C serie (2 20mm MG FF, 4 7.92mm MG 17). Heinkel only build three pre-serial He 100D-0 and twelve He 100D-1 (bigger tail unit and cockpit).
Three He 100D-0 were sold to Japan, which planned a licence production, Six prototypes and one He 100D-1 were sold to the USSR, where especially Jakovlev analized it for his later fighters Jak-1 and the excellent Jak-3 (Jakovlev later said that the condensation cooling system was too complex for the rough conditions on russian airfields and didn´t copy it.). The other D-1 were used to defend the Heinkel facilities at Rostock, but never engaged an enemy. Some planes were shown for propaganda purposes as Nightfighter He 113, which was more a mislead for the german people than for the allies. Some british pilots claimed to have encountered He 100's during the Battle of Britain, but they must have been wrong, or weren't they?....... original text by Sven Ortmann

Paint scheme with propaganda squadron symbol

Heinkel He100d

Specifications

History

Screenshots