I believe there were 10 Mg-151 20mm and 4 MG-131 13 mm
Armored ventral emplecement MG-13
Side ( amidship) emplacements with MG-151/20 Mauser.
That’s really cool…was there a tug too?
The Heinkel 111Z, the supposed inspiration of the “twin mustang”.
Several twin A/C design come out in WW2 and not all are necessary related each other.
With so many pictures of the Me321/323 I suspect you might also have some of the Ju 322!? I´ve only seen one, grainy picture.
Junkers was instructed to built the 322 of wood and came up with a visually interesting design, but the wooden construction came with severe penalties. I don´t know if Luftwaffe found out if the 322 had awful flight characteristics or needed a more powerful tug than the Ju 90 (more pwrful was not to be had in Germany for some time to come…), but I guess they didn´t need to as it more or less flunked on payload (after structural strengthening) and the Me 321 kinda worked. The sole complete 322 became firewood. I would have liked to see one with engines, probably a difficult proposition…
Anybody ever heard of Allied plans for giants gliders (larger than the Hamilcar)?
I have some illustrations of the ju-322 but first those need to hit the scanner. :rolleyes:
The Ju-322:
Source:
The Ju-322, Part II.
heavy camouflage netting in this one.
In flight towed by the suffered Ju-90.
Sources: www.luftarchiv.de
www.lautecmedien.dewow! It flew at all?
Thanks a lot! Great!
And the source is a book with the XF5U on the cover, that showes some style 
(Pzknacker, I have a (kinda stupid) question for you on the Ju 290 conspiracy-thread)
wow! It flew at all?
Just once…then became firewood.
Thanks a lot! Great!
And the source is a book with the XF5U on the cover, that showes some style
(Pzknacker, I have a (kinda stupid) question for you on the Ju 290 conspiracy-thread)
Anytime. I am a man with stile, I didnt see your question but I going to have a look right now.
I wonder, did the hortens designs and stuff like the mammut influence the northrop desiners in building stuff like the XB-35?
Northrop developed their wings from 1929 (if memory serves), and flew two different scale models/proof of concept demonstrators (in all likelyhood before anybody in the USA had heard about the Horten brothers). The XB-35 was complete in design before information from the Horten designs was available. Northrop also built a rocket powered wing and glide bomb-wings before the end of the war.
I think there was no influence from Horten in the XB-35/YB-49 wings. The B-35 was not suitable for precision bombing with free fall bombs and apart from the B-2 and a few odd gliders (some of direct Horten descendance) there´s been scant interest in wings ever since. So the Horten wings (said to be more advanced than Northrops) left remarkably little influence on aircraft design. (Which is a pity, if for no other reason than that I like flying wings, The Ho 229 V1 (unpowered) is the most beautiful aircraft ever, in my opinion).
Back to the gliders:
I think I know only one post war assault glider. A Swedish design, that did glide very well, but the Swedes lost interest (as did soon everybody else). Helicopters took their job, but (again) it´s hard to find info on glider designs. One would think that the allies did contempate big gliders for the planned invasion of Europe, but I haven´t found any.
Here is a video with a lot of photage of Me-323:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avytZ8LTyoA&feature=related
My grand dad saw how such a moster crushed during take off into Ju-88. It was near Odessa in 1942.
OMG the thing is huge! was your father of the Great Patriotic War?
I mixed up the things a bit.
That is what my granddad wrote:
[i]Working on the farm, which was located next to the Odessa airfield I was witness to numerous aircrushes of the German, Romanian and even Italian military airplanes.
Once I was a witness to a rare incident: midair of two airplanes on the opposing course. The German bomber Heinkel-111 was taking off while Ju-52 was about to land. A huge fireball apeared in the sky in front of my eyes…
I also saw how the newest German air giant Me-323 could excellently burn. That was a 6 propeller engine super airplane that could lift up to 200 troops. When it took off it looked like it was hoovering above the ground and the engine thunder shaked everything around. It appered in the begining of 1944 and it was an eye catcher. And such a “handsome” once crushed at take off burying under it’s own wreckage more than 200 Romanian troops, that were to be relocated to Crimea for resistance to the advance of Soviet Army.[/i]
I lol at that thinking the same thing when I saw the floor plan for the men seated in the first section of each wing, even manning machinegun points on the top of each wing.
Anyway an interesting subject. I see their creative thought in modern machines right here today that are practically copies of their ideas. Impractical? Absolutely. But ahead of it’s time.
btw I personally thought the way the front splits to load was ingenious.
A weird experiment, a Me-321 packed with several rockets and towed by a single Me-110. In the end the Me-110 cannot cope with the weight and the Me-321 made a forced landing.
Hmmm… maybe they should have put more rockets and use it as an interceptor…
Talking about flying wings and heavy transports, look at this interesting projekt by Messerschmitt.
Messerschmitt Me P.08
In early 1939, Dr. Alexander Lippisch moved to the Messerschmitt Aircraft Company in Augsburg with most of his closest coworkers. Dr. Wurster designed the P.08.01 in September 1941, which was basically a flying wing design. The wing featured two different sweepback angles, and contained the armored fuel tanks. The fuel could also be jettisoned if need be. Four Daimler Benz DB 615 engines (or DB 613 if teh DB 615 engines were not ready in time), mounted on the wing trailing edge, provided the power. The engine radiators were located in the wing’s leading edge and a huge bomb bay/cargo area was to be found in the central fuselage area. A tricycle landing gear arrangement was chosen, with the main gear having double wheels. The cockpit was pressurized and a provision was made for remote controlled defensive armament in the nose and tail. Underwing weapons or loads could also be carried.
The diagram to the right shows a tank being loaded into the cargo bay of the Messerschmitt Me P.08.01
One thing has always puzzled me about the Me 321:confused:
Didn’t anyone realise while they were designing it, that they didn’t have a plane powerful enough to safely tow it :rolleyes: