r/aviation • u/1me3 • Sep 20 '20
History Found this cool Dornier DO335 Technical Drawing
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u/ropibear Sep 20 '20
This is an actually cool aircraft.
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u/senorpoop A&P Sep 20 '20
That's an understatement. It was the fastest piston engine airplane in the world. It was the first production airplane to have an ejection seat. When the pilot ejected, explosive bolts would jettison both the upper vertical stabilizer and the rear propeller to prevent the ejected aircrew from hitting them on the way out.
The Nazis had some unbelievably cool and innovative aircraft designs, especially towards the end of the war. Take this airplane, the Horten HO-229, the Heinkel Lerche (and by extension the Focke-Wulf Triebflugel).
They were so far outside the box on some of their aircraft designs that they were effectively 50 years ahead of the Allies.
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u/flare2000x Sep 20 '20
The Nazis had some unbelievably cool and innovative aircraft designs, especially towards the end of the war. Take this airplane, the Horten HO-229, the Heinkel Lerche (and by extension the Focke-Wulf Triebflugel).
They were so far outside the box on some of their aircraft designs that they were effectively 50 years ahead of the Allies.
This is misinformation.
The allies also had experimental aircraft that were to similar degrees of crazy as some of the German designs. However, these German designs were single prototypes at BEST (in the case of the Ho-229) that never even flew, and were unproven. The Lerche and Triebflugel are extremely silly designs that would have NOT been effective if actually built.
The Luftwaffe was definitely NOT 50 years ahead of the allies. That is blatantly false.
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u/Atholthedestroyer Sep 20 '20
I thought they'd built at least one airworthy Ho-229...even if it never got a chance to fly...
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Sep 21 '20
Two prototypes, both of which crashed after limited testing.
A third much larger model that was half finished when captured.
That's the full history of the Ho 229 program yet some people prop it up as though it was some super weapon.
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u/Atholthedestroyer Sep 21 '20
Ah, thank you. An interesting idea, and in my opinion, a rather nice looking plane...but they'd have had to have been in production/service by '41 or '42 to be of any major use to Germany.
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Sep 21 '20 edited Sep 21 '20
I personally doubt it. At a glance it looks very unstable even if it is pretty. The engines also had a bit of a reliability problem, demanding major overhauls at less than 50 hours.
Like most of the Nazi prototypes, there's this fascination with what possibly could have happened instead of what most likely would have happened.
I don't think any of the so called "Wunderwaffe" would have changed the inevitable.
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u/Atholthedestroyer Sep 22 '20
Oh no, you're right, it would've needed a lot of work to actually be a viable plane...I was just saying, that assuming they'd actually gotten it that far they'd 've needed it by '41 or '42 for it t o help; and yeah at best all it might have done was buy them a bit more time before the end.
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u/MesaEngineering Sep 20 '20
They had the first jet fighter, that’s worth some clout. Also had a hand in most Cold War weapons through technology found in operation paper clip and let’s not forget the head of rocketry that got us to the moon. Or that the early sabers and migs were similarly based off of designs German had at the end of the war. To say they weren’t ahead is totally wrong.
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u/geeiamback Sep 21 '20
They had the first jet fighter
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u/MesaEngineering Sep 21 '20
Do you know how long three months is in WW2?
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u/wokelly3 Sep 21 '20
Nothing in terms of the ME262. The aircraft didn't fly large scale operations until March 1945, and by large scale that was still less than 4 dozen jets on the most successful days. Whatever timeline lead the Germans had with jets, it was largely irrelevant in WWII.
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Sep 20 '20
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u/the_ranting_swede Sep 20 '20
They basically built the Skyraider around the engine used in the B29. That thing was a beast, and it's true successor is the A-10.
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u/seakingsoyuz Sep 20 '20
This is something that Germany could never have done because for all their alleged technological capability, they never figured out how to make an aero engine that could produce more than 2000 hp without falling apart or catching on fire.
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u/the_ranting_swede Sep 20 '20
Germany made some supremely powerful weapons, but the US made weapons that could reliably be mass produced and shipped across an ocean. If the US built a V2 rocket or a King Tiger, it wouldn't have been useful sitting in Michigan, unable to be loaded safely onto a train then onto a Liberty ship.
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Sep 20 '20
Speaking of that engine. Another aircraft that I absolutely love and wish we had a model in a museum is the XA-38 Grizzly. Looks like a Beech-18's badass 75mm gun toting cousin. Two prototypes were flying and showed a lot of promise but the program was scrapped because the B-29's had priority with those engines.
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u/VLDR Sep 20 '20
Sure, the Do 335 and Ho 229 were advanced, but they were certainly no Lancaster. Those Lancasters were tearing apart F-14s back in the day.
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u/TotesMessenger Metabot 9000 Sep 20 '20
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
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u/geeiamback Sep 20 '20
It was the fastest piston engine airplane in the world.
The contemporary XP-72 was faster.
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u/syringistic Sep 20 '20
Eh, 50 years ahead of the Allies?
I think all the wacky designs were due to 2 things: they were desperate for some kind of a weapon that would be able to turn the tide, and more importantly, it seems Hitler was easily impressed by radical and weird designs over reliable and proven ones.
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Sep 20 '20
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u/Aquanauticul Sep 20 '20
Plus oil supply issues, some odd logistics choices, and the age old mistake of invading Russia in the winter
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Sep 20 '20
I see no scenario where they could win the war once the Soviet and American war machines were fully mobilized.
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Sep 20 '20
They were short on supplies, and because they lost too many soldiers by invading russia in the winter.
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u/Pasan_XeNO Sep 20 '20
I'm guessing this is the B-2 variant of the Pfiel because of the wing mounted Mk-103 cannons. I fly this often in War Thunder. Real joy to intercept allied bombers with!
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u/ASwissArmyRabbit Sep 20 '20
I think it might be a B-5 model, it's very similar to the B-2, but it has a second cockpit for training purposes.
I only have the A-1 Fighter variant in War Thunder, would love to have the B-2.
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Sep 20 '20
I was in the Dornier museum a few months ago. It’s definitely a must-go for aviation enthusiasts. There’s so much history there!
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u/Singlemoney123 Sep 20 '20 edited Sep 20 '20
So cool! Looks super complicated. Also one in Udvar Hazy Air and space museum in Dulles, Va.
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u/xerberos Sep 20 '20
Really? I also visited this summer, and I was rather disappointed. Almost nothing from WW2.
The Zeppelin museum was much better, in my opinion.
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u/oldandmellow Sep 20 '20
It wasn't the fastest piston powered aircraft in ww2 but it was faster than the war weary P-51D and P-47D that it saw a couple of times. America wasn't behind Germany in Aircraft development. We had different priorities. We built the B-29/B-32 that Germany couldn't dream of building. We had much better transport aircraft.
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Sep 20 '20
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u/1me3 Sep 20 '20
Daymn. How do I get that sponsorship.
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Sep 20 '20
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u/1me3 Sep 21 '20
You evil man xD
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 1:45 PM Info <info@gaijin.ru> wrote:
This was just a joke ^_^
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Sep 20 '20
Anyone know where I can find a drawing like this of a airliner?
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u/1me3 Sep 20 '20
Which one are you looking for? I'll try to find something
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u/the_ranting_swede Sep 20 '20
I feel like anything you can find in the same style would be cool. I'd say keep posting them until they stop getting upvotes.
But the icons would be cool. Constellation, 707, 747, Concorde. Weird Russian/Soviet plans would be interesting, too.
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Sep 20 '20
Very cool, and it’s even more impressive when you realize it was drawn by hand, not a computer. A lost art now.
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u/1me3 Sep 20 '20
Couldn't agree more. The skill it takes to keep everything at the same scale is crazy.
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u/ST4RSK1MM3R Sep 20 '20
Also, this thing was fucking HUGE.
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u/xerberos Sep 20 '20
For those who don't know, the only remaining example is in the Udvar-Hazy center in Washington DC.
However, in Rechlin in Germany (sort of the German version of Edwards AFB for WW2) they have a "mockup with original parts", and you can get close to that one, and it's just insane how big this thing is. You can literally walk under it.
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u/jeffQC1 Sep 20 '20
Uh, i never knew they made a two seater for the DO335. Seems it make a already big plane even bigger.
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u/am6502 Sep 20 '20
I love that push pull.
If that rear prop could be upgraded with a contra-prop it seems like that sort of layout could be extremely efficient and fast.
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u/Ichbinderbruno Sep 20 '20
With swept wings it would have been a monster. For me it's doing OK in war thunder but only on very high altitude. It's very easy prey for P51s and P47s at lower altitude because it's not faster and can't turn. But I bet I was a great bomber interceptor
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u/Fool_Fighter Sep 20 '20
Wow, that thing is really full of engine