Heinkel He 162 Salamander

This was another of Hitler's pipe-dreams. The He 162 was originally to be built with the intention of being flown by the Hitler Youth! Poor kids with little or no flight skills. That only goes to show you what JERKS the members of the Nazi hierarchy were.

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Firstly Ron, seek as I may I can not find any reference to a Tempest being shot down by an He162. The plane really was a last gasp attempt at finding something to fight the allies back with. Not only was it made of non-strategic materials, it was made by unskilled labour with the resulting product assurance problems. Coupled to this was that the pilots were to be members of the Hitler youth and the chances are that whatever happened they were going to be on a hiding to nothing. After training had begun at Parchim in February 1945, it was moved to Ludwiglust on 8th April and onward to Leck in Schleswig Holstein on 14th April. The unit was joined on 3rd May by II /JG.1 which was fleeing from Warnemunde after the Russian advance. On the 4th May the personnel and some 50 aircraft were formed into one Gruppe of 3 Staffeln only to have the British occupy the airfield on the 8th May. In all 116 He162's were built with a further 800 in various stages of production in underground factories. This was some way off the intended production of 4,000 units a month. Was it any good? Ingenious, but lets face it with limited endurance and only 2 x 20mm cannon flown by inexperienced pilots (that's if they could train them in good order)this surely would have been cannon fodder for the allies!

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The design was right on edge of greatness, just a little tweaking here and there

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Air age store a part of model airplane news caries a plan for the Heinkel HE-162

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Dennis,
I read that the last WW 2 Allied loss in Europe was a Tempest shot down by an He 162!

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How many if any allied aircraft did the HE-162 shoot down during it's operational lifetime? And on this note, how many HE-162,s were shot down before the end of the war? Thank you, Dennis Garrett

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You know from the American point of view, US pilots of the era were really lucky the Germans didn't realize the need for this aircraft or something conceptually like it, in 1941.
There would have been more than ample time to clear up the relatively small technical issues, possibly a better engine might have been availble, if this plane had been seriously mass produced and with the right armament, it could have cleared the skies over occupied france and germany of most allied bombers and many of the fighters.
The design was right on edge of greatness, just a little tweaking here and there.
A ground attack version would have undoubtedly followed oriented for anti ship and anti tank and infantry fire support applications . the He-162 was very close to greatness.

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Strange that a technical problem with this aircraft, was the inability of the glue to bond /dissipate so badly!

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If you can visit www.rafmuseum.org.uk /london /collections /aircraft /heinkel-he-162a-2.cfm they have one on display.

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Sorry, no video. The Mossie wasn't stealthy. Balsa isn't RAM. And props reflect large.

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May be this airplane was stealthy but proberly by accident like a mosquito where is balsa wood absorbed radar energy.

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Art Deco, as far as I know, no one knew about inertia coupling at that time, so it would have made sense for the German engineers to respond aerodynamically. They didn't really understand what was happening. It wasn't clear even at the time of the Bell X-2, which crashed for the same reason.

Anyways, would you happen to know where I could get a copy of that video?

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The He-162 suffered from a tendency to dutch roll, which is aerodynamic. Inertial coupling is a physics problem, more related to mass. The fact that the Heinkel engineers responded aerodynamically would seem to confirm that it was dutch roll divergence. Also, the Germans hadn't a glue.

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I need a special video of the crash of a Heinkel World War II plane, which illustrated a then unknown phenomenon.

A Heinkel He 162 prototype aircraft mysteriously crashed during a test flight at the end of 1944. The crash was captured on video. The cause was the phenomenon now known as inertia coupling. As a student of Aeronautics, I have been doing some research on this topic. Do you know where I could get a copy of the video of this incident?

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Dusty,
Definitely no intent to get stealth properties.
He 162 was designed as short distance fighter (max. flight duration 45 min)in order to attack day bombers over own territory. Heinkel had enough problems with stability (probably same story as Ta 154) of wooden wings. He was proud to deliver the plane in less than 200 day from order to flying prototype - the engine position (as an example) was only choosen to avoid extensive testing. No time for any sophisticated planning.(E Heinkel, Stürmisches Leben)

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dont know stealth capable but germans had lack of proper materials like aluminiun an other metal so they had to use what ewer they got.

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Tim,

Actually, Northrup did not rip off anything. Northrup was working on the B-35 /B-49 design, in the United States, at the same time that the Horton brothers were designing the GO-229 in Germany.

The original reason that the GO-229 was constructed of composite materials was that the Germans did not have sufficient stocks of aluminum at that time in the war. Both the German engineers and the Northrup people discovered the stealth feature of the flying wing design by accident, at approximately the same time, by noting that the test aircraft were extremely difficult to track on radar. The Germans realized the importance of this discovery and tried to improve this feature of the design. The US Army Air Force, with the end of the war in sight and almost total air superiority over Germany established, just made note of the discovery.

When the B-2 was proposed, the engineers dragged out and reviewed the data on both of these aircraft. You might be interested to note that the overall dimensions of the B-2 are exactly the same as the B-35 /B-49.

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Dusty-- the aircraft technical data you speak of went into Gotha
GO-229, the forerunner of today's B-2. A 229 still sits in a hangar at
Ft.Meade, MD. It is a flying-wing design, which flew in two incarnations--- one powered by 4 Daimler pusher engines, then
4 Jumo jets. It never saw action. It was not "coated", but actually constructed of the composite materials you speak of, with carbon fibers for airframe strengthening. I have personally seen this aircraft while I was in the Army-- Northrup in essence ripped-off a
50-year-old design in building the B-2. Hope this info was of some help.

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I'm trying to make a small scale RC version of the Salamander. If you know where I can get some blueprints it would be great to know where they are, thanks!

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WAS THE HE-162, BY DESIGN, STEALTH CAPABLE, WITH LITTLE OR NO RADAR
SIGNATURE?? DID THE GERMANS COAT THE HE-162 WITH A COMPOND OF SAWDUST
AND CARBON TO MAKE IT MORE STEALTH WORTHY???
THIS IS WHAT I HEARD, BUT CAN NOT CONFIRM.
PLEASE HELP ME ON THIS.

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