Designed as an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft, the Heinkel He 119 never went into production, precisely because of the lack of weapons. The following link provides a complete report with information and photos of this fabulous airplane. I hope you enjoy the article and count on your visit.
http://aviacaoemfloripa.blogspot.com.br/2011/03/heinkel-he-119.html
Interesting, as usual. An elegant Heinkel design, with very good observation capacity. However, it would have been quite a big target - unlike smaller spotter aircraft - and the lack of armament would not have helped. Clearly, fighter escort would not have been practical in the type of mission contemplated for this aircraft. Thanks for posting, JR.
I’m not sure the crew cabine so near to the propellers transmission can guarantee reliability in a war operative aircraft…
Not entirely sure what you mean there, can you elaborate please ?
I meant: in this aircraft the cabine and the propeller are almost the same thing, I don’t think it’s a good solution of reliability especially for an operational aircraft (which this one never has become).
I’m afraid I still don’t quite grasp your point, the reliability of which part of the flying machine do you mean ?
While the motor is placed internally at the CofG I have seen no documentation reference overheating even though airframes 02 to 08 had a semi-retractable rad installed to increase cooling during t/o & gaining alt.
Nor have I seen anything to suggest that the extended propshaft induced severe vibration which can affect handling and airframe life.
So without meaning to appear obtuse I still fail to understand how the positioning of the prop/engine should affect the reliability.
Not being an aeronautical engineer, I give it a shot:
Vibrations!
I suppose the propeller axis in the glass/cockpit compartment is not fully supported as a closed engine compartment would be…i.e. you can always put a larger coaxial supporttubing around it, but you are not free to have it supported anywhere you want, because interference with pilot seats or instruments…whatever…
Probably also not a big problem during regular flight, but once the shit hits the fan (something breaks down, a bullet/particle hits the prop axis) and the axis start vibrating (even only a little bit…) and all stress design calculations are void.
The obvious clue that there IS something wrong with it, is that you never see it implemented again…
and what about the horrendous noise ?..:shock: