Hey Did you notice?? I always thought it was a single place machine... But now I see, it was also built in a 4 place side by side configuration http://www.olympicflightmuseum.com/aircraft_gallery/ea1e.htm
I was told that they squeezed more than 4 into those things when things got hot. I saw a French version that had a radar operators position back in the fuselage, aft of the regular canopy area. Had a little oval door with porthole right about where the star is on the blue example previous.. Claustrophobic looking. It is a really BIG A/P to say the least!
Did you know that the Bear and the B-29 were blood relatives? The Soviets copied the B-29s that landed there during WW II and came up with the Tu-4 Bull. Needing a larger and longer-ranged bomber, they developed the aircraft into the Tu-80 and Tu-85 prototypes, still straight-winged aircraft powered by 4 piston engines. When the powerful Kuznetsov turboprop engine came along, they mated the Tu-85 fuselage to new swept wings and tail, and the result was the Tu-95. The fuselage of the Bear is actually a stretched B-29 fuselage, with the same cross-section. And on the early versions, the disposition of the defensive armament (and its fire-control system) was the same as on the B-29.
I was aware that the Soviets reverse engineered the B-29 but it never occured to me that the Tu-95 was an evolution of the Tu-4. ........................learn something new everyday!
I had to throw this in again. A rare picture of good quality. What a nasty looking machine. Dornier 335A-1 Image Unavailable, Please Login
The rear engine alone. Boy to see one of those (and hear) make a full speed pass on the deck would be hair raising. I wonder if it turned very well.
Spasso, in the early stages of the 707 I worked with a man by the name of Henry Quenzler in preliminary design. Of course, from his name , one realized that he was a German engineer. We became close friends and I learned much from him and the most interesting was the stories that he told me about his being the CHIEF ENGINEER on the Dornier airplanes before and during the war including your favorite. He was also the chief test pilot on the Dornier 318 "Pfiel". It was a very fast airplane and had superior high altitude performance but it was not the most maneuverable due to its size BUT it would have been a terrible bomber killer and hit and run fighter. He loved the airplane and said that he could never finish a test flight because he was jumped time and again by American fighters and always came back with holes in his airplane. He didn't hate the Americans, he said, he just got damn mad because he couldn't finish his flight tests and they kept. " Hurting his airplane." He always got back. Does that say something for the airplane? He said that it was an honest 450 MPH airplane and would have been a great weapon. He was probably correct but at that point in the war they didn't have the fuel to operate a big hot twin engine machine like that. Henry died last year and left me with a lot of good memories from our chats over the years.
Excuse my mental lapse and a typo regarding the Dornier type to which I refered as the Do 318. I was thinking Do 335 that had a top speed of 480MPH. Yeah, wouldn't that be someting to hear !
Switchesoff, Henry Quenzler was one of the KG200 pilots who from May to August 1944 flew one of three civilianised Junkers Ju-290 A9 aircraft from Odessa and Bulgaria to Ningxia in Japanese held Manchuria. They were flown in Deutsch Luft Hansa markings. The unit was known as Kommando Nebel Did Henry ever mention these flights to you ? It could be of huge historical significance in an ongoing debate about these flights if he did mention them.
Italian Series 5 fighter MC205 Veltro or the rarer Fiat G55 version Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
He never mentioned anything about Kommando Nebel. He only spoke about working on the Dornier flying boats and test flying them before and during the war. He told of trying to find a reported weak spot in the Dornier Whal and landed one 90 degrees to the wake of the liner Bremen and split the bottom of the hull open thus finding the weak spot. He said that he thought that his " Bung" was up to his back teeth from the impact. He loved the DO 335 since he was a key designer AND test pilot. The performance figures of this airplane are astounding and if they had had the fuel and a bit of space from marauding P-51's and P-47's the airplane would have been deadly to the bomber formations AND fighters. It was fast as hell on two engines and fast on one engine. Not enough fuel and too many American fighters to complete a test flight and this is what drove Henry nuts. He couldn't complete a test flight to get his numbers. He seemed to have no attachment to the Nazis and was simply an engineer who was totally involved in his work. He predicted problems with the 707 design that did come to pass, the 7 degrees dihedral coupled with the 35 deg. swept wing caused over stabilization that caused dutch roll that necessitated a healthy yaw damper. He criticized many other things that came to be. Quite a guy but in all our association he never mentione d the Kommando Nebel. I would like to know more about this facet of Henry. SWITCHES
Thought you might like this quick snap from a recent Smithsonian trip Image Unavailable, Please Login
Amazing plane that flying pencil. Yup quite correct that Henry did a lot of work on Dornier flying boats. He was also quite involved with the Do-17 and Do-217 light bombers and incidentally probably tested them as dive bombers too. Up to 1944 there was a regular exchange of surface blockade runners between Japan and Germany, but in early 1944 the last three to sail from Japan were hunted down off Brazil and sunk. U-boats kept up contact between the two Axis powers, but with a horrific loss rate and with less cargo capacity than surface ships. Special high value cargoes needed an urgent courier service by 1944. Prior to Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of Russia, a giant Blohm und Voss Bv222 Wiking flying boat had flown to Japanese held Sakhalin. After Barbaraossa however the Japanese were wary of triggering a war with the soviets so objected to overflights of the Soviet Union by aircraft in military markings. In February 1944 three Ju-290 aircraft were withdrawn from military service with Feraufklarungsgruppe Nr.5 and civilianised. Each of these three aircraft received enlarged fuel tanks. they were assigned Deutsch Luft Hansa (DLH) markings, but in reality were operated by KG200. Flugkapitan Rudolf Mayer made the first test flight to Ningxia, 300nm west of Beijing from Odessa in February 1944. Oberluetnant Wolfgang Nebel from a special long range reconnaissance unit had been tasked to explore using another ultra long range aircraft, the Me-264 from Northern Finland, but it had an impractically long take off run. The Junkers Ju-290 was the obvious alternative. Nebel selected a number of civil test pilots to operate these missions with civilianised Ju-290 aircraft. they included Flugkapitans Karl Patin, Henry ("Ivan") Quenzler, Erich Warzich, and Matthias. Odessa fell to the Soviets mid April and until August 1944 flights were still operated from Bulgaria which was nominally neutral. The most significant source for this story was the interrogation of a Luftwaffe photographer attached to the long range reconnaissance unit ***r.5 at Mont de Marsan. Unteroffizer Wolf Baumgart, as a prisoner of war, was interrogated in August 1944 by the US Ninth Air Force, cited in A.P.W.I.U. Report 44/1945. Baumgart's accounts were apparently corroborated by a more senior Luftwaffe officer whom I have yet to identify.
Thanks so much for all this info about Kommando Nebel and Henry Quenzler. He talked mostly about his hatred of the Nazi's and his flight test work at Dornier. Very little about his life other than as a test pilot and engineer.....passionate about both. He had such frustration for not being able to translate his creations into hardware that he developed an ulcer. he amazed me with his mentality, he could come within two percent of the empty weight of a large airplane by mentally calculating the square feet of the airframe and figuring the weight of it. he wanted to build a small flying boat powered by two alcohol fueled Wankle rotary's that could fly the Atlantic. He knew how long the takeoff run with a full load would be on Lake Washington, " It would miss the bridge." Thanks again for your information on my old friend. Switches
You mean the early prototype where they put a piston engine in the nose because the jet engines were not ready? I heard it was "chust a leetle" underpowered - If we are talking German pistons here, I would suggest the Focke-Wulf 190 D9.
I'm fascinated by your material and uncovering Quenzler's name in the KG200 roster. Please, where can I access this information. Thanks for your posting this as I have fond memories of Quenzler. Switches
There's no roster of KG200 pilots as such. Indeed all the Luftwaffe personnel files had been stored in a coal mine close to a town now called Walbrzych (then known as Wenceslas) upper Silesia. These and other documents were shifted by the trainloads via Prague to Linz in March 1945. The official version is that they were burned in an orgy of destruction on bonfires at Linz during April 1945 and no longer exist. The truth more likely however is that the documents were seized by American forces and shipped under Operation LUSTY (acronym for LUftwaffe Secret TechnologY) to Le Havre where 200 tons of Nazi material were shipped to New Orleans. Author Robert Forsyth has unearthed some of the story about civillian test pilots employed by Sonderkommando Nebel for his book Amerika Bomber Me-264. He has consulted wartime POW interrogations to unearth fragmentary knowledge of these flights to "Manchuria." In reality it should be called Inner Mongolia, but the phrase Manchuria, or Manchurian flights has stuck. In February 1944 when KG200 took over all long range special missions, Hitler tasked the head of his own VIP flight Hauptman Braun to form a Japan Kommando flying an air bridge to Japan. This unit was also known as 14/TGS.4 (or 14 Transportgeschwader 4). A Ju-290 A-5 aircraft was requisitioned and modified at the DLH maintenance facility on Rusnye aerodrome at Prague. Not at the nearby Junkers factory in Prague. Deutsche Luft Hansa pilot Flugkapitan Rudolf Mayr was placed in charge of the Manchurian flight operation. Aircraft were stripped of armaments, military markings and were given civil DLH markings. A War Ministry report (AIR 40/203) detailed in mid October 1944, a POW gave information under interrogation that since the beginning of 1944, there had been "regular air travel between Germany and Japan established for the transport of high officials flown by old "experienced Hansa pilots." Pilots thought to have flown these missions to Ningxia included Flugkapitan Nebel, Flugkapitan Mattias (died April 1946 in Soviet captivity), Flugkapitan Erich Warsitz (died of stroke at the age of 76 years 12 July 1983 at Barbengo Switzerland), Flugkapitan Hermann (Henry) Quenzler (Dornier Test Pilot), and test pilot Karl Patin (possibly Engineering Dr Albert Karl Patin brought to USA in 1945). Trial flights began with Ju-290A-5 werke # J900170 Luftwaffe code KR+LA. This aircraft also had KG200 codes 9V+DH. It was destroyed by air raids at Reichlin in 1945. Its fuel capacity was increased and for long range operations, MTOW was increased from the Ju-290s standard 41.3 tons to 45 tons. In March 1944 three other Ju290 aircraft were transferred to Versuchsverband OKL carrying Luftwaffe codes T9+, thence they were stripped of all weaponry and civilianised for Deutsch Luft Hansa (DLH) service on flights to China. Modification included fitting fuel tanks for 23,800 litres. Each of the aircraft also then received civil registrations. These three aircraft were Ju-290A-9 werke # J900183, former Luftwaffe code KR+LN. From February 1944 this aircraft became T9+VK. It was attacked on the ground at Finsterwalde in April 1944 and scrapped at Travenmunde in September 1944. Also Ju-290A-9 werke # J900182, former Luftwaffe code KR+LM. From February 1944 this aircraft became T9+UK. This aircraft was lost whilst on the ground to strafing fire by four Soviet flown Hurricanes near the village of Utta, near Astrakhan in July 1944. This was thought to have been an ambushed rendesvous arranged by the NKVD. Ju-290 A7 werke # J900185, former Luftwaffe code KR+LP was the third conversion to become T9+WK. Later in it's career it was attacked over the southern eastern front in May 1944 and returned from the mission beyond all hope of repair. On 2 September 1944 Ju-290A-3 werke # J900163 Luftwaffe code PI+PQ was ordered to be converted for a mission to China to carry VIP Ulrich Kessler, but work on the aircraft was interrupted by general anti Nazi uprisings in Bulgaria where the aircraft was to fly from. The aircraft was eventually blown up in May 1945 to prevent it's capture. Henry sounds like he was an amazing man and it is a pity more of his life story has not been told. Unfortunately many of the former Nazi scientists and engineers were brought to USA in secrecy and were compelled by various factors, not least being Cold War tensions to keep quiet and suppress knowledge of their wartime careers. As these veterans have departed to meet their makers their contributions to history have been lost and their amazing deeds have become denegrated as pure myth. Glad if I could help fill in some blanks - Simon
Simon, I cannot tell you how this exchange of information has awakened me. It takes me back to a unique time that will never return. In the 50's and 60's when I was working on the KC-135 and 707 I met and worked with those who at one time during the war were allies from England and at the same time were enemies from Germany. Then later on there were the Poles who hated both the Germans and the Russians at the same time. I trained these people who were coming in from Europe to work as engineers at Boeing and I saw a cross section of all sides. The stories that were related to me were hair-curling and amazing and there were times that some of my Polish immigrant/ students were in tears from anger at how the Russians treated them. I was quickly educated in what really happened during and after WW2 over there. Then there was Henry Quenzler with whom I worked as a cohort on the 707 and who talked only about his flying and engineering while at Dornier. And now you have illuminated another facet about his history that I never knew. He was unique in that he wasn't involved politically. He only said that he hated Hitler and the Nazis and wanted nothing to do with them. How he survived is told in his obituary that he did what he could only do to stay alive and that was to work with aircraft. Now to learn more about him after he is gone is sad in a way because I'm certain that had I known about his being in KG200 and had asked that he probably would have told me. We had lunch together many times but he always talked about aeronautical engineering flying boats, and the "Great stupidity" that the 707 was. Also, of course, his favorite airplane, the DO-335. I am impressed and amazed at the vast amount of information about KG200 that you have garnered. It is invaluable. I'm sure that some of the myth went with Henry Quenzler when he died. Thanks. Bob
Bob that is perhaps the magic of aviation that aviation people around the world have a common love of flying that breaks down national barriers. The Nazis were elected by only 30% of the population before Hitler declared marshall law (after Reichstag fire). I had a Hungarian friend who fought for the SS on the Eastern front. I remember once naively trying to ask him to explain to me why Nazi ideology appealed and whether there was some way I could appreciate it from a rational perspective like fear of the Bolsheviks etc. My friend growled at me that nobody has the right to ever tell another person how to live. I guess that says it all whatever ideology it is... Right wing or left wing. He has two daughters still living in USA. I am curious if he ever told them. I've read that Henry lost his son and his wife. Cheers my friend
True, Simon. My son and I hosted a bunch of Russian pilots and thier translators in 1990 when Russia was sliding down then and they sent the air show people over in that six engined transport. They are wonderful people and we had a blast with them but I would hate to have a conflict with them. Henry's wife died in 1980 and his only son, Fritz, was lost at sea. Sad. Henry died at age 93. That Hitler could have driven the entire German nation to do his evil bidding will forever puzzle me...except that his timing was right and the Germans were waiting for a type of Messiah. Take care and thanks again, Bob
Maybe a different viewpoint and back to the original question. My father flew nearly all the fighters from WW-II, and went into combat in the P-47D with the 86 FBG. He flew the P-36, P-38, P-39, P-40, P-43, P-47, Spitfire, P-51 and P-80 post-war, and his last operational aircraft was the F-84 straight wing. When asked what his favorite aircraft from the WW-II era was, he said the P-38. The combination of counter-rotating props, tricycle landing gear and the smooth, turbo-charged V12 engines won him over, even if it did have a yoke instead of a stick. Plus it was one of the prettiest aircraft that ever flew. Taz Terry Phillips
