He-100

[Smokey]

Nice pages on the He 100

http://www.geocities.com/lastdingo/aviation/he100.htm

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/he100.html



He 100 three-side drawing of V2 and D-0


He 100D`s on the ground


He 100D`s on the ground (as He113 for propaganda bluff)


He 100D on the ground (as He113 for propaganda bluff)

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 UDSSR, 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 during the Battle of Britain, but they were wrong.

My comment:
The He 100 had some problems with its condensation cooling system, but these were solved with
an additional retractable normal cooler under the fuselage and the original condensation cooling
system proved that it was able to take as much battle damage as well as normal cooling systems.
The C serie proved that this fighter can carry a armament superior to all enemies of its time.
The expectable dogfight tactics would have been similar to the F4U Corsair and Fw190A (hit and run).
Why didn´t this plane succeed? Even with a standard cooling system (and no condensation cooling),
it would have been still fast enough to be state-of-the-art until at least 1942!
The only weakness I found was the small wing area of 14,50m2. It later would have limited the
amount of additional armour, horsepower, armament and fuel and resulted in a high landing speed.
In fact, the allies wouldn´t have had any chance in the Battle of Britain against
800 Heinkel 100D instead of 800 Me 109E!

Ideally the wing area should have been larger, for example by scaling up the wing, which would reduce wing loading which would in theory reduce its trurning circle. The extra weight and drag would have reduced its speed and acceleration, but probably not by much.

Even without these changes it seems an amazing fighter plane, and in 1940 may have been to Spitfires and Hurricanes what the BF109 was to the I 16.


He 100D left side


He 100D-1 inflight photo

It looks damn nice, almost as if its melting on the ground due to friction of the speed

Imagine a DB605 fiited to the Heinkel He 100, this would have been in 1942. With the speed of the DB601 and DB605 variants, the RAF may have needed a much faster fighter, sending out urgent requests for a fighter with laminar flow wings. In 1942, the P-51B Mustang could have become the standard RAF fighter, or a Spitfire with laminar flow wings may have been rushed into production as early as 1940/1941

[CharlesBronson]

Imagine a DB605 fiited to the Heinkel He 100, this would have been in 1942. With the speed of the DB601 and DB605 variants, the RAF may have needed a much faster fighter, sending out urgent requests for a fighter with laminar flow wings. In 1942, the P-51B Mustang could have become the standard RAF fighter, or a Spitfire with laminar flow wings may have been rushed into production as early as 1940/1941

A more usable engine would be the 1350 hp DB-601E, with this a suposed "He-100E" shall surpased the 690 km/h.
In this "future" version also is likely that the wingroots Mg, were the MG-131 instead the MG-17 and the central cannon probably the Mauser MG-151.

And the wingspan wasnt so bad, for example the Lagg-3 had 9,42m (the same as He-100) and the Yak-3 had 9,2 m, and they both had good handling qualities even at low altitude only, the He-100 probably was surpased in this item by the 109 in the high altitude arena.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

The first prototype of the He-100 passed the 690km/h mark anyhow going over 700 and breaking the world speed record. It did not need the DB-601E

[CharlesBronson]

Nop......the only He-100 that surpassed that speed was the record aircraft He-100V8.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

And what engine did it use? I dont think it was a DB-601E. I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

[CharlesBronson]

It used the special DB-601R (Rekord) that achieved 1770 hp by short periods.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Okay well I stand corrected.

[CharlesBronson]

In here you have the DB-601 versions:

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Cool thanks.

[kiwimac]

He-100, one of my favourites!

Kiwimac

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I agree with you, and I think it was missed oportunity and a grave mistake not to pursue it by the Luftwaffe.

[schwarzpanzer]

Not really.

The HE112 was more manouverable than the 109, but had a much lower top speed.

The HE100 was faster but very expensive.

These may just have been excuses by the RLM though?

I know the 109 was ordered whilst the trials were going on though.

I also know Ernst Heinkel was in Luftwaffes good and bad books due to things he'd done right/wrong.

Also he gave a few pointers to Reginald Mitchells assistant or whoever, I thought this was because he admired him.

But could he have had alterior motives? i.e. to spite Willy Me/RLM and see his ideas enter mass production?

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Yeah it was not made by Messerschmitt. The He-100 was easier to work on, easier to build, faster, and more manueverable. So polotics can be the only reason.

[CharlesBronson]

The HE100 was faster but very expensive.

After the defeat of the He-112 desing in 1936, the Gunthers brothers take seriously the effort on simplified the production.

To ease production the new design had considerably fewer parts than the 112, and those that remained contained considerably few compound curves. In part count the 100 was made of 969 unique parts and was held together with 11543 rivets, in comparison the 112 had 2885 parts and 26864 rivets. The new straight-edged wing was a source of much of the savings, after building the first wings Otto Butter reported that the reduction in complexity and rivet count (along with the Butter brothers's own explosive rivet system) saved an astonishing 1150 man hours per wing.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Hey CharlesBronson if you are going to copy texts please source them so that this site does not get hit with copyright problems. I have used that website before so I remember that paragraph there.