Heinkel He 219 (U.S.A. 9)

During World War Two, only three nations undertook the development of a dedicated night fighter, built from the ground up for the task rather than being modifications to existing aircraft. The U.S. deployed the Northrop P-61 Black Widow while the Japanese had the Aichi S1A Denko which existed as two, incomplete prototypes by the end of WW2. Germany was the third, deploying a handful of Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito night fighters with Nachtjägdgeschwader 3 (NJG 3) in 1944. There was a second German night fighter that some consider the most potent such aircraft of the war and this was the Heinkel He 219 Uhu (“Night Owl”) which entered service in 1943. The He 219 was the first ever operational combat aircraft to have ejection seats and as a testament of the design’s ability, Major Ernst-Wilhelm Modrow of Nachtjägdgeschwader 1 (NJG 1) claimed 33 of his 34 total kills flying the He 219 against enemy bombers. After the war, the U.S. was keen on getting their hands on a He 219 to evaluate and the one in this photograph represents one of the several He 219 which fell into U.S. hands. There is some confusion as to the identity of this He 219 in terms of model, source depending. Some state it is a He 219A-2, He 219A-5, or a He 219A-7. If one looks closely at the nose, visible is “V11” and this would suggest this was the eleventh prototype. However, after the war, the remains of V11 were found in the Heinkel factory located in Schwechat. Other sources suggest that the V11 was rebuilt as a He 219A-5 model and if this was so, then it is plausible that usable components from the original V11 were used to construct the aircraft to A-5 standards. V11 (werk nummer 190011) was not used in combat and instead was a test aircraft. This might explain the lack of fully fitted radar equipment and that the forward fuselage does not appear to carry any field paint compared to the rest of the aircraft. Looking at the differences in coloration of the tail plane also suggests a usable aircraft constructed from various components from other aircraft. It is noted that the werk nummer of this He 219 was 290060 which would make it an A-2 series aircraft. Originally, it was assigned the code U.S.A. 9 (seen behind the star and bar) after being surrendered at Flieger-Horst Grove in Denmark and carried the German code CS+QG. It was flown to Cherbourg, France by Captain Fred McIntosh, put aboard the HMS Reaper, and shipped to the U.S. with the tail code FE-613. By August 1946, it was scrapped but not before it served as a spares pool for another He 219, FE-614 (werk nummer 290202). The latter aircraft survives today, being on display in semi-restored state, at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. Some sources list this survivor as being FE-613 but this confusion may come from the fact FE-614 utilized parts from FE-613. My own belief is that FE-613 was, indeed, a combination of one or more He 219 aircraft (including parts from the V11 prototype) assembled to be a prototype/test bed for the A-5 model. If the aircraft was, indeed, built from the ground up as a He 219A-5, they would not have re-used V11 which had already been allocated. Rebuilding prototypes into other makes wasn’t uncommon. An example was the He 219 V 16 which was modified into a He 219A-0 model before again being modified into a He 219A-5 model.

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