The Dornier Do 217 was a bomber used by Germany during World War II. It was designed from scratch as a replacement for the earlier Dornier Do 17.

At the beginning of 1938, Dornier issued manufacturing specification No. 1323, recognising the need for a twin engined bomber or long range reconnaissance aircraft powered by Daimler-Benz DB 601B engines. Dornier recognized shortcomings of its fast Dornier Do 17 well before the war. With Junkers' new prototype, the Junkers Ju 88 being superior to the Do 17 in every way, Dornier designed a new bomber to meet a requirement from the RLM for a larger and more versatile bomber than the Do 17, capable of both level and dive bombing. One of the most versatile and useful bomber designs the Germans put into production after the war started, the Dornier Do 217 remedied the shortcomings of the Do 17 while greatly advancing the design in all areas.

Superficially a scaled up Dornier Do 215, and initially powered by the same engines, the Do 217 was actually considerably larger and totally different in detailed design. The first prototype (the Do 217 V1) flew on 4 October 1938, but crashed seven days later during a single engine flying test.^[1] It was found to be underpowered and was unmanoeuvrable when compared with contemporary bombers. Instability was a problem at first, but modifications such as fixed slats along the leading edges of the vertical fins helped to improve flight stability.

Much of Dornier's efforts in 1938 to 1940 were devoted to finding more powerful engines and improving the flying qualities. When the BMW 801 radial engine became available, it solved the problems of the aircraft being underpowered and allowed the fuselage to be deepened, thus accommodating larger and heavier bomb loads. This enabled the Do 217 to fulfil its potential and carry a heavier bomb load than any other Luftwaffe bomber of the time.

There was a desire for the Do 217 to be capable of performing dive bomber duty, so it was therefore fitted with a tail mounted air brake. This could not be made to function adequately in the early models however, and was omitted until the Do 217E-2 entered service. When this mark reached service, use of the dive brake was found to sometimes overstrain the rear fuselage, so the dive brakes were often removed.

In almost every way, the Do 217 was a success. It could carry a much heavier bombload than either the Heinkel He 111 or the Junkers Ju 88. It was also very fast, surpassing both aircraft in maximum speed. It was Germany's largest bomber for nearly two years until the Heinkel He 177 was finally safe enough to use. Do 217s sank the Italian battleship Roma with Fritz X missiles as she steamed to the Allies after Italy's capitulation. Do 217s were phased out of combat use in mid 1944.

Like the Do 17 and the Ju 88, the aircraft was used in a variety of roles, including that of the night-fighter - a sign that Germany desperately needed fighters far more than it needed bombers. Production was stopped in April 1944 in favor of single-engined fighters. Operational use of the Do 217 as a night-fighter was restricted in 1943 to NJG 4. The only capability in which the Do 217 was used up to the end of the war was as a night reconnaissance plane. Like the Do 17, this important type of service in the Luftwaffe is frequently overlooked.

The Do 217 was built in series from November 1940 to May 1944. In 1943, 395 aircraft could not be delivered to the Luftwaffe due to shortages of the DB 603 engines used in the M-1 and N-1 versions. These aircraft were stored, and while some were refitted in 1944 when the engines became available, the remainder (around 125) were scrapped. The Do 217 was only built by the three Dornier companies: Dornier Friedrichshafen (DWF): 316 aircraft, Dornier München (DWM): 985 aircraft and Norddeutsche Dornier-Werke (NDW): 602 aircraft. Production stopped in Friedrichshafen in December 1942, and in Wismar (NDW) in October 1943.

General characteristics

• Crew: 3
• Length: 18.20 m (59 ft 8½ in)
• Wingspan: 19.00 m (62 ft 4 in)
• Height: 5.00 m (16 ft 5 in)
• Wing area: 57.00 m² (613.54 ft²)
• Empty weight: 9,350 kg (20,615 lb)
• Max takeoff weight: 13,180 kg (29,059 lb)
• Powerplant: 2× BMW 801A 14-cylinder radial engine, 1,560 PS (1,539 hp, 1,147 kW) each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 487 km/h at 5,500 m (303 mph at 18,045 ft)
• Range: 2,050 km (1,274 miles)
• Service ceiling 8,400 m (27,560 ft)

Armament

• 4 x 7.92 mm MG 17 machine guns in nose with 1,000 rpg
• 4 x 20 mm MG FF cannons in nose with 250 rpg
• 2 x 13 mm MG 131 machine guns in dorsal and ventral positions with about 500 rpg apiece

The Heinkel He 111 was a German medium bomber designed by Siegfried and Walter Günter in the early 1930s in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The Heinkel became the most numerous and primary Luftwaffe bomber during the early stages of World War II. It is perhaps the most famous symbol of the German bomber force (Kampfwaffe) due its distinctive "Greenhouse" nose.

The He 111 took on the mantle of "workhorse", and was used in a variety of roles on every front in the European Theatre throughout the war. It was used as a strategic bomber during the Battle of Britain, a torpedo bomber during the Battle of the Atlantic, a medium bomber and a transport aircraft on the Western Front, Eastern Front and Mediterranean and North African Fronts. It became obsolete, but the failure to design and produce a successor meant the He 111 continued to be produced until 1944, when piston-engined bomber production was largely halted, in favour of fighter aircraft.

The design of the Heinkel endured after the war in the CASA 2.111. Its airframe was produced in Spain under license by Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA. The design differed significantly in powerplant only. The Heinkel's descendant continued in service until 1973, when it was retired.

In the early 1930s, Ernst Heinkel decided to build the world's fastest passenger plane, a lofty goal met by more than a little skepticism by the German aircraft industry and its newly evolving political leadership. Heinkel entrusted the development to Siegfried and Walter Günter, fairly new to the company and untested.

The aircraft was superior to the already fast Lockheed 9 Orion that their design was competing against. The first example of their soon-to-be-famous Heinkel He 70 Blitz (“Lightning”) rolled off the line in 1932 and immediately started breaking records. In its normal four-passenger version, its speed almost reach 200 mph (320 km/h), even though it was powered by only a single 600 hp (447 kW) BMW V1 engine. The elliptical wing, which the Günther brothers had already used in the Bäumer Sausewind sports plane before they joined Heinkel, became a feature in many subsequent designs the brothers developed. The design immediately garnered the interest of the Luftwaffe, which was looking for medium bombers for military service.

The future Heinkel He 111 was a more powerful twin-engine version of the Blitz, producing an aircraft that had many of the Blitz's features, including its elliptical inverted gull wing, small rounded control surfaces, and BMW engines. With location of the engines the only notable change in appearance, the new He 111 design was often called the Doppel-Blitz (“Double Lightning”).

At 14,000 kg take-off weight (carrying 2,000 kg of bombs internally), the He 111H achieved a top speed of 405 km/h at 6 km, improving to 435 km/h without the bomb load and at 50% fuel load. Still, this was considerably slower than the newer Junkers Ju 88 which entered service in 1940, so the He 111 was gradually withdrawn from the bomber role. The He 111 became a jack-of-all-trades as the war progressed, carrying out missions not even imagined when the war started.

Nevertheless, the He 111 had to be kept in production until 1944 because the RLM failed to provide a successor: the He 177 Greif heavy bomber was plagued by engine problems, and the Bomber B program was eventually abandoned. The vast majority of the 7,300 He 111s produced would be the H models, largely identical to the first H introduced in 1939.

General characteristics

• Crew: 5 (pilot, navigator/bombardier, nose gunner, ventral gunner, dorsal gunner)
• Length: 16.4 m (54 ft 6 in)
• Wingspan: 22.5 m (74 ft 3 in)
• Height: 3.9 m (13 ft 9 in)
• Wing area: 86.5 m² (942 ft²)
• Empty weight: 7,720 kg (17,000 lb)
• Loaded weight: 12,030 kg (26,500 lb)
• Max takeoff weight: 14,075 kg (31,000 lb)
• Powerplant: 2× Jumo 211F-1 liquid-cooled inverted V-12, 986 kW (1,300 hp) each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 400 km/h (250 mph)
• Range: 2,800 km with max fuel (1,750 mi)
• Service ceiling 8,390 m (27,500 ft)
• Rate of climb: 20 minutes to 5,185 m (17,000 ft)
• Wing loading: 137 kg/m² (28.1 lb/ft²)
• Power/mass: .082 kW/kg (.049 hp/lb)

Armament

• Guns:
  • up to seven 7.92 mm MG 15 or MG 81 machine guns, some of them replaced or augmented by
    • 1× 20 mm MG FF cannon (central nose mount or forward ventral position)
    • 1× 13 mm MG 131 machine gun (mounted dorsal and/or ventral rear positions)

• Bombs:
  • up to 2,000 kg (4,409 lb) carried internally (eight 250 kg max), or:
  • up to 2,500 kg (5,512 lb) on two external racks

The Heinkel He 177 Greif (Griffin) was a long-range bomber of the Luftwaffe. The troubled aircraft was the only heavy bomber built in large numbers by Germany during World War II. Aircrews nicknamed it the Luftwaffenfeuerzeug (Luftwaffe's lighter) or the 'Flaming Coffin' due to the engines' tendency to catch fire on the early versions of the aircraft.

Earlier versions had many problems; when the problems were solved the type was successful, but could not be deployed in quantity due to Germany's deteriorating situation in the war.

The He 177 was conceived as a result of an Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) requirement called the Bomber A specification which called for a bomber aircraft more advanced than the Dornier Do 19 or Junkers Ju 89 Ural-Bomber prototypes, capable of carrying a bombload of at least 1,000 kg (2,204 lb) over a range of 6,695 km (4,160 miles). The aircraft had to possess a maximum speed of about 540 km/h (335 mph) at altitude and it had to embody sufficient structural strength to enable it to undertake medium degree (later changed to 60 degree) diving attacks. In order to meet these specifications the He 177 embodied many advanced features including coupled engines with surface evaporation cooling and small remotely controlled defensive gun turrets.

An unusual feature of the aircraft was the use of twin engines in each nacelle driving a single propeller, as the components of a "power system". Siegfried Günther, chief designer of Heinkel, chose to use the Daimler-Benz DB 606, which consisted of two Daimler-Benz DB 601 engines coupled together to use a common propeller, in order to minimise drag. The two engines were coupled side by side in each nacelle and inclined inwards at the crankcases' upper surfaces, so that the inner cylinder banks were disposed almost vertically, a single gear casing connecting the two crankcases, and the two crankshaft pinions driving a single airscrew shaft gear. The insistence of this engine configuration stemmed directly from the RLM's determination that the He 177 should be capable of dive bombing. The use of only two propellers on a heavy bomber also offered a substantial reduction in drag and a marked improvement in maneuverability. Indeed, the initial prototypes and pre-production models of the bomber had an airspeed and maneuverability comparable to many heavy fighters of the time.

Both the DB 606 and 610 coupled "power systems" had A and B versions, signifying opposing rotation directions when in operation-the He 177 V1 through V3 prototypes all had the A-1 version, that rotated counterclockwise when seen from the front, used on both sides, while all later 177s, from the V4 prototype onwards through the entire production run, used one A- and one B-version of the engines, using one of the clockwise-rotation B-versions on the port-side wing.

Beset by many other technical difficulties in development and service, the plane had a troubled life. This was in part due to overly optimistic design requirements of long range, high speed, heavy bomb load, and dive bombing. Though Goering forbade Heinkel to develop a version with four separate nacelles, Heinkel nevertheless produced prototypes of the Heinkel He 177B (later renamed Heinkel He 277) which was produced in limited numbers.

Although the He 177 entered service in 1942 it was still far from operational. As an emergency measure it was used to supply the encircled 6th Armee at Stalingrad where it was determined that it could only carry about the same cargo payload as the appreciably smaller Heinkel He 111, and was useless for the evacuation of wounded troops. As a result the He 177s reverted to bombing and flak-suppression missions in support of the Wehrmacht in the vicinity of Stalingrad. Only thirteen missions were flown and seven of the He 177's crashed in flames without any action attributable to the enemy.

General characteristics

• Crew: 5
• Length: 22 m (72 ft 2 in)
• Wingspan: 31.44 m (103 ft 1 in)
• Height: 6.7 m (21 ft)
• Wing area: 101.5 m² (1,092 ft²)
• Empty weight: 16,800 kg (37,000 lb)
• Loaded weight: 31,000 kg (68,340 lb)
• Powerplant: 2× Daimler-Benz DB 610 (twin DB 605) 24-cylinder liquid-cooled inline engines, 2,950 hp (2,170 kW) each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 565 km/h (350 mph) at 6,100 m (21,000 ft)
• Combat radius: 1.540 km (960 mi)
• Ferry range: 5,600 km (3,200 mi)
• Service ceiling 9,400 m (30,800 ft)
• Wing loading: 319.9 kg/m² (65.6 lb/ft²)
• Power/mass: 110 W/kg (0.067 hp/lb)

Armament

• Guns:
   
  • 2 x 20 mm MG 151 cannon
  • 3 x MG 131 machine gun
  • 3 x MG 81 7.92mm machine gun
• Bombs: up to 7,200 kg (15,873 lb) of bombs or 3 guided missiles (Henschel Hs 293 or Fritz X)

Usual configuration:

• 48 x 70 kg bombs (3,360 kg/7,405 lb total)
• 10 x 500 kg bombs (5,000 kg/11,020 lb total)
• 6 x 1000 kg bombs (6,000 kg/11,224 lb total)
• 2 x 2500 kg bombs (5,000 kg/ 11,020 lb total)

or

• 2 Hs 293 + 1 Hs293 remotely controlled missiles under the fuselage
• 2 Hs 294 + 1 Hs 294 remotely controlled glide bombs under the fuselage
• 2 PC 1400 + 1 PC 1400 gliding bomb under the fuselage
• 2 torpedoes + 2 torpedoes under the fuselage