He-100 vs Bf-109

[Footslogger]

It appears that the He-100 had a range of 1,000 km, while the Bf-109 had a range of 850 km. Since both were built about the same time, why did the Germans choose Messerschmitt over Heinkel?

It also appears that Japan was interested in the He-100. If Japan had chosen the He-100, I wonder what effect it would of had during the war?

[geofflambert]

I can't speak to the He-100, but if you discount range the Bf-109 was the best fighter of the war (IMO) and that's saying alot.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

I can't speak to the He-100, but if you discount range the Bf-109 was the best fighter of the war (IMO) and that's saying alot.

But you can't discount the range. You can't win a war without projecting air power deep into enemy territory. Certainly one of my favorite aircraft (so beautiful) but not near the best fighter. Not close to a war winner.

AS for the HE 100, nobody really knows for sure why it was not put into production There are many theories. A good design and a fast plane but who knows...

[btbw]

He.100 never was compared with Bf.109 (it He.112 was). Developing of He.100 had alot tweaks (mostly for reach best speed atm). His constructuion found too weak for real use (cooling system can be broke by single bullet).
Fokke-Wulf was desired as future replacement fighter after Bf.109 (also Bf.209 as speed record plane had a chance to developing Bf series).
When Mustangs coming into high alts then He.100 was outdated and abandoned construction.

[margeorg]

Hello my dear Gorn!


The He 100 was a develeopment for just one purpose: To get the speed record for land-based aircraft back to Heinkel, and to demonstrate Heinkel´s ability to produce modern fighter aircraft comparable to the Me 109. It wasn´t a competition for the Me 109 as the standard fighter for the Luftwaffe. This can be easily proven by the fact that the development order for the Me 109 was given in February 1934 (at this time it was still called Bf 109 - Bf = Bayrische Flugzeugwerke), while the He 100 was developed 1937/1938. Ironically it only held the speed record for a short time after it was achieved at March 9th, 1939 with 746km/h. Messeschmitts own record-chasing fighter, the Me 209R took the record back on April 26th, 1939 with a maximum speed of 755km/h.

The real competitor to the Me 109 was the Heinkel 112. The Fighter competition for 1934 called for a new standard fighter aircraft for the Luftwaffe. Competing aircraft were developed by Arado (Ar 80), Heinkel (He 112), Focke Wulf (Fw 159) and Messerschmitt (Bf 109). The officials expected the Heinkel to be the winner, as Heinkel had supplied almost all fighter for the new Luftwaffe so far. While Arado and Focke Wulf did withdraw early because their planes proved not to be competitive, the Bf 109 turned out to be a radical new design. The Heinkel was a well-designed, sturdy and reliable aircraft, but the Bf 109 did climb faster, it was faster, and it had better turn rates. However, Messerschmitts design philosophy to develop very lightweight aircraft also introduced some principal problems which did plague the whole Model for its entire lifespan. Most noticable was the fragile landing gear construction, which lead to many gear collapses, and made the plane difficult to land for inexperienced pilots. However, during first demonstration flights, the Bf 109 showed it´s excellent flying performance, while the He 112 unfortunately crashed after the engine had stalled. So the Bf 109 was choosen to be the winner even before all flying tests by the "Erprobungsstelle Rechlin" (Flying test department at Rechlin) had been completed.

Heinkel tried to turn the tide with a new version of the He 112 almost one year later (He 112B), but at this time the now-called Me 109 already went into mass production, and the He 112B was therefore rejected and allowed to be sold to other countries (with very limited success). A small number of He 112B was later used in some lone squads (about 80 planes in total) while an even smaller number was exported to Hungary, Japan and Spain.

BTW, what really originated the development of the Fw 190 is not 100% clear: Ernst Udet himself, as being responsible for the aicraft production, moved away from his principle of the "Einheitsjäger" (one fighter standard) by giving a development order for an air-cooled radial engine (BMW 801) fighter to Focke Wulf in summer 1938. Is it speculated that he was influenced by the success of the Polikarpov I-16 during the spanish civil war. The I-16 design was then "translated into german", i.e. an aicraft was developed with german standards of technology and engineering. This later lead into the Fw 190.


Edit: Forgot to cite the source of information. Almost all info comes from "Die Entwicklung der deutschen Jagflugzeuge, Rüdiger Kosin, Bernard & Graefe Verlag". Ruediger Kosing was a leading aicraft designer before and during WW II, first for Focke Wulf, later for Arado. He was heavily involved in the design of the Ar 440.

[coreyjones]

Heinkel used the HE-100 primarily as factory defense fighters. They used them alot for propaganda and film purposes.

[coreyjones]

And as to why it wasn't chosen as a front line fighter was because Messerschmitt was considered the main company for fighter production, heinkel was told to make bombers. Messerschmitt always got what they wanted like the spoiled baby. Focke-wulf actually got lucky the 109 made it to the front because Georing did not want it at all. Get a book called warplanes of the third reich. Hard to find but has detailed info and story's on every aircraft produced by the third reich

[Dili]

109 difficult upgradeability due to its nimble size, that even made them consider the Fiat G.55 who had size to get the DB603 engine in begin of 1943 sealed the defeat of Luftwaffe.
Fw 190 was always limited in high altitude until the D version so from 1942 until the arrival of D and Ta 152, Luftwaffe had never a comparable fighter to the allies.

[Footslogger]

So if you were the Germans, which fighter would you have gone with in 1938?

I also spoke about the Japanese interest in the He-100 also.

[Terminus]

The 109. The Luftwaffe had no reason to believe, given the data at hand, that this was not the best choice.

[panzer cat]

The aviation museum in Va Beach has an I-16, she is a beautiful plane.

[tigercub]

The Messerschmitt 109 was the right choice (shot down more planes than any plane in history)realy both should have been pursued there was always a need for better fighters and development was behind were it should have been by 1943.. hence the mess the Luftwaffe found itself in.
He 100 and the 109E were both sent to japan and had a some impact on Japanese thinking KI61...

[veji1]

This type of debate is endless. The Bf.109 was a fantastic plane which managed to be somewhat efficient well past its theoretical use by date. When you compare that to the performance of the Zero line... Was it the best plane ? Who cares and you can't answer such a question regarding a conflict that saw such an evolution in plane designs. But it is one of the 2 or 3 plane designs that got thourhg the whole war playing a role till the end.

Personally if I had to name the best planes of the War I would name 3 in no particular order and knowing that there is no way of evaluating such a thing : the Bf.109, the Spitfire and the B17. These 3 planes to me are symbolic, having been there more or less from beginning to end, always playing a part.

[Commander Stormwolf]

very simlple. and here is the entire truth on the subject.

Lwaffe was concerned with avoiding a quantitative disadvantage as germany had in WW1.
The BF-109E was selected since it could be assembled in about 5,000 man hours.

Germany had a large amount of duralumin available so production time was the main concern, rather than materials (german fighters were not made out of wood like soviet or some british types)

The RAF had both the Hurricane and Spitfire running in parallel.
The Hurricane was a vastly inferior design from a performance standpoint, but
a Hurricane could be assembled in 10,000 man hours while a Spitfire took 15,000

more importantly, the Hurricane was built of wood and steel tubing, with far less
duralumin than the spitfire.so literally, you could built 3 Hurricanes for the price of 2 Spitfires
both in terms of time and materials.

The Spitfire was bar none the best airframe design available in Europe per-war, emphasizing tactical performance(the combination of high speed and low wing loading made other nations scratch their heads) that was achieved by sacrificing range (spitfire mk.I only carried about 300L of fuel).
Also the aerodynamics of the Spitfire were excellent, with clean lines, and without glaring aerodynamic
flaws like the Bf-109E's tail struts.

The HE-100 would have been a contender against the spitfire, offering superior speed of about 400 mph to the Spitfire's 360mph, but with a far higher wing loading of about 170kg/m2 versus 120kg/m2.

Against superior performance, one has fewer numbers built.

Interestingly, despite the Bf-109E being so easy to build, the Luftwaffe's fighter production was still lower than the RAF during the Battle of Britain, since the RAF had no quarrel with putting 20 hour novices into Hurricanes and sending them into battle (giving the illusion that the RAF fighters were at times inferior in performance) while the Luftwaffe was convinced that novice pilots would be useless therefore greatly increasing fighter production would be superfluous (that was to change later in the war).

The Luftwaffe's main blunder was making the BF-110, twice as expensive as a single seat fighter
and half as good.

Probably making He-100s instead of Bf-110s would have been the correct strategy, having a small number
of high performance He-100s with a large number of fast-to-build Bf-109Es

[Terminus]

You actually had the balls to write "here's the entire truth"? *slow, sarcastic clap*

[LoBaron]

Thanks for the summary margeorg! Interesting read.

@TermInus: you expected different from our duralumin addicted friend?

[Terminus]

I'd forgotten what he was like... Sadly, now I remember.

[geofflambert]

Commander Stormwulf left out some of that "entire truth". Goering's girlfriend at the time, "Heidi", preferred the 109. [;)]

[Footslogger]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


very simlple. and here is the entire truth on the subject.

Lwaffe was concerned with avoiding a quantitative disadvantage as germany had in WW1.
The BF-109E was selected since it could be assembled in about 5,000 man hours.

Germany had a large amount of duralumin available so production time was the main concern, rather than materials (german fighters were not made out of wood like soviet or some british types)

The RAF had both the Hurricane and Spitfire running in parallel.
The Hurricane was a vastly inferior design from a performance standpoint, but
a Hurricane could be assembled in 10,000 man hours while a Spitfire took 15,000

more importantly, the Hurricane was built of wood and steel tubing, with far less
duralumin than the spitfire.so literally, you could built 3 Hurricanes for the price of 2 Spitfires
both in terms of time and materials.

The Spitfire was bar none the best airframe design available in Europe per-war, emphasizing tactical performance(the combination of high speed and low wing loading made other nations scratch their heads) that was achieved by sacrificing range (spitfire mk.I only carried about 300L of fuel).
Also the aerodynamics of the Spitfire were excellent, with clean lines, and without glaring aerodynamic
flaws like the Bf-109E's tail struts.

The HE-100 would have been a contender against the spitfire, offering superior speed of about 400 mph to the Spitfire's 360mph, but with a far higher wing loading of about 170kg/m2 versus 120kg/m2.

Against superior performance, one has fewer numbers built.

Interestingly, despite the Bf-109E being so easy to build, the Luftwaffe's fighter production was still lower than the RAF during the Battle of Britain, since the RAF had no quarrel with putting 20 hour novices into Hurricanes and sending them into battle (giving the illusion that the RAF fighters were at times inferior in performance) while the Luftwaffe was convinced that novice pilots would be useless therefore greatly increasing fighter production would be superfluous (that was to change later in the war).

The Luftwaffe's main blunder was making the BF-110, twice as expensive as a single seat fighter
and half as good.

Probably making He-100s instead of Bf-110s would have been the correct strategy, having a small number
of high performance He-100s with a large number of fast-to-build Bf-109Es

So as the war progressed, did the Germans transfer fighter and bomber squadrons, from the OB West, to the Eastern Front?

Another question is, when did the Germans start designing drop tanks for thier fighters and when did they get them?

[Commander Stormwolf]

typically the best and most modern designs were kept for the western front

The FW-190 was quickly pressed into service against the RAF in 1941 (with some success)
since the soviet air force typically was qualitatively not on par with western front adversaries

the need for drop tanks had already been foreseen, and drop tanks were placed on the Bf-109E-7, but too late for the battle of britain.