A strange aircraft

[Mariano]

I found a picture of this strange aircraft. It´s seems to be a german plane.

[Cyrano]

Dornier Do-31E3


Dornier Do 31 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reminds me of Bell Airacuda

[SoD Stitch]

Yes, it's a Dornier, I believe. It was a contemporary of the experimental Bell VTOL aircraft, which itself was a progenitor of the V-22 Osprey. I believe the wingtip pods contained the vertical-lift jets, and the pods in the middle of the wing had the forward-propulsion engines.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Yeap and it can be seen at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. I have a pic somewhere of me standing next to it.

[Cyrano]

Hi Adler, did you remove my pic or was hotlinking prevented on that site? I just want to know if you guys don't approve linking to certain sites...

[Mariano]

That´s fine DerAdlerIstGelandet.

[Graeme]

Originally Posted by Mariano

I found a picture of this strange aircraft. It´s seems to be a german plane.

From the experience gained with the Dornier Do 31E, the Dornier Do 231 was proposed in response to a German Federal government requirement for a civil and military V/STOL transport. The winning design from five others, it was expected to be flying by the late 1970s. Not to be.

[timshatz]

The 231 is a good looking design. Looks like it would be a jack of all trades with the capacity of something like a 121.

[MP-Willow]

Some nice pics. I would be worried about the wing stress on liftoff with the engins outboard of the forward flight ones. But that is just my impression without any test numbers.