Berlin - Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin - Heinkel He 162 01
The Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger ("People's Fighter"), the name of the project of the Emergency Fighter Program design competition, was a German single-engine, jet-powered fighter aircraft fielded by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Designed and built quickly, and made primarily of wood as metals were in very short supply and prioritised for other aircraft, the He 162 was nevertheless the fastest of the first generation of Axis and Allied jets. Volksjäger was the Reich Air Ministry's official name for the government design program competition won by the He 162 design. Other names given to the plane include Salamander, which was the codename of its construction program, and Spatz ("Sparrow"), which was the name given to the plane by Heinkel.
The official RLM Volksjäger design competition parameters specified a single-seat fighter, powered by a single BMW 003, a slightly lower-thrust engine not in demand for either the Me 262A nor the Ar 234B front-line aircraft already in service. The main structure of the Volksjäger competing airframe designs would use cheap and unsophisticated parts made of wood and other non-strategic materials and, more importantly, could be assembled by semi- and non-skilled labor, including slave labor. Specifications included a weight of no more than 2,000 kg (4,410 lb), when most fighters of the era were twice that. Maximum speed was specified as 750 km/h at sea level, operational endurance at least a half hour, and the takeoff run no more than 500 m (1,640 ft). Armament was specified as either two 20 mm MG 151/20 cannons with 100 rpg, or two 30 mm (1.18 in) MK 108 cannons with 50 rpg. The Volksjäger needed to be easy to fly. Some suggested that even glider or student pilots should be able to fly the jet effectively in combat, and indeed had the Volksjägerprogramm aircraft design competition and its winning design got into full swing, that is precisely what would have happened. After the war, Ernst Heinkel would say "[The unrealistic notion that this plane [The He 162] should be a 'people's fighter,' in which the Hitler Youth, after a short training regimen with clipped-wing two-seater gliders like the DFS Stummel-Habicht, could fly for the defense of Germany, displayed the unbalanced fanaticism of those days." The clipped-wingspan DFS Habicht models had varying wingspans of both 8-metre and 6-metre, used also to prepare more experienced Luftwaffe pilots for the dangerous Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet rocket fighter — the same sort of training approach would also be used for the Hitler Youth aviators chosen to fly the jet-powered Volksjäger.
The requirement was issued 10 September 1944, with basic designs to be returned within 10 days and to start large-scale production by 1 January 1945. Because the winner of the new lightweight fighter design competition would be building huge numbers of the planes, nearly every German aircraft manufacturer expressed interest in the project, such as Blohm + Voss, and Focke-Wulf, whose Volksflugzeug design contender, likewise meant for BMW 003 turbojet power bore a resemblance to their slightly later Ta 183 jet fighter design. However, Heinkel had already been working on a series of "paper projects" for light single-engine fighters over the last year under the designation P.1073, with most design work being completed by Professor Benz, and had gone so far as to build and test several models and conduct some wind tunnel testing.
Although some of the competing designs were technically superior (in particular Blohm + Voss's P.211 submission), with Heinkel's head start the outcome was largely a foregone conclusion. The results of the competition were announced in October 1944, only three weeks after being announced, and to no one's surprise, the Heinkel entry was selected for production. In order to confuse Allied intelligence, the RLM chose to reuse the 8-162 designation (formerly that of a Messerschmitt fast bomber) rather than the other considered designation He 500.
Berlin - Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin - Heinkel He 162 01
The Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger ("People's Fighter"), the name of the project of the Emergency Fighter Program design competition, was a German single-engine, jet-powered fighter aircraft fielded by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Designed and built quickly, and made primarily of wood as metals were in very short supply and prioritised for other aircraft, the He 162 was nevertheless the fastest of the first generation of Axis and Allied jets. Volksjäger was the Reich Air Ministry's official name for the government design program competition won by the He 162 design. Other names given to the plane include Salamander, which was the codename of its construction program, and Spatz ("Sparrow"), which was the name given to the plane by Heinkel.
The official RLM Volksjäger design competition parameters specified a single-seat fighter, powered by a single BMW 003, a slightly lower-thrust engine not in demand for either the Me 262A nor the Ar 234B front-line aircraft already in service. The main structure of the Volksjäger competing airframe designs would use cheap and unsophisticated parts made of wood and other non-strategic materials and, more importantly, could be assembled by semi- and non-skilled labor, including slave labor. Specifications included a weight of no more than 2,000 kg (4,410 lb), when most fighters of the era were twice that. Maximum speed was specified as 750 km/h at sea level, operational endurance at least a half hour, and the takeoff run no more than 500 m (1,640 ft). Armament was specified as either two 20 mm MG 151/20 cannons with 100 rpg, or two 30 mm (1.18 in) MK 108 cannons with 50 rpg. The Volksjäger needed to be easy to fly. Some suggested that even glider or student pilots should be able to fly the jet effectively in combat, and indeed had the Volksjägerprogramm aircraft design competition and its winning design got into full swing, that is precisely what would have happened. After the war, Ernst Heinkel would say "[The unrealistic notion that this plane [The He 162] should be a 'people's fighter,' in which the Hitler Youth, after a short training regimen with clipped-wing two-seater gliders like the DFS Stummel-Habicht, could fly for the defense of Germany, displayed the unbalanced fanaticism of those days." The clipped-wingspan DFS Habicht models had varying wingspans of both 8-metre and 6-metre, used also to prepare more experienced Luftwaffe pilots for the dangerous Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet rocket fighter — the same sort of training approach would also be used for the Hitler Youth aviators chosen to fly the jet-powered Volksjäger.
The requirement was issued 10 September 1944, with basic designs to be returned within 10 days and to start large-scale production by 1 January 1945. Because the winner of the new lightweight fighter design competition would be building huge numbers of the planes, nearly every German aircraft manufacturer expressed interest in the project, such as Blohm + Voss, and Focke-Wulf, whose Volksflugzeug design contender, likewise meant for BMW 003 turbojet power bore a resemblance to their slightly later Ta 183 jet fighter design. However, Heinkel had already been working on a series of "paper projects" for light single-engine fighters over the last year under the designation P.1073, with most design work being completed by Professor Benz, and had gone so far as to build and test several models and conduct some wind tunnel testing.
Although some of the competing designs were technically superior (in particular Blohm + Voss's P.211 submission), with Heinkel's head start the outcome was largely a foregone conclusion. The results of the competition were announced in October 1944, only three weeks after being announced, and to no one's surprise, the Heinkel entry was selected for production. In order to confuse Allied intelligence, the RLM chose to reuse the 8-162 designation (formerly that of a Messerschmitt fast bomber) rather than the other considered designation He 500.