Warthunder Period Planes VI. exotic jets part 2 German designs

Lucinator · August 2, 2016

This next part of my series on Pulse, Ram, and Thermo Jets will cover purpose built designs, i.e. those built from the beginning to be powered by these engine types. This article will cover Axis designs.

As the war ground on and it became ever more clear that it wasn't going in their favor the Nazi's began to grow more desperate and a ever more high Hitler ordered more and more Wunderwaffe (german for wonder weapon). In the aircraft department many of these designs tried to alleviate the problems of supplies that Germany now faced, such as:Lack of petroleum for fuel, lack of skilled labor and the infrastructure to manufacture complex machinery like turbo-jet engines. Because of their simple design Ram jets, and Pulse jets offered a solution to the problem of manufacturing, also many designs for ram or pulse jets did not require exotic fuels and could be run on more simple fuels that were more available to Germany. While most of the designs that follow never made it to flight, many of them would inspire further designs after the war in the Allied nations.

The Italians during the war were mostly sidelined from major jet technology due to a early allied invasion and German interference, however before WWII Secondo Campini began work on using a piston engine to drive a air compressor into which more fuel was burned. This type of engine was known by several names Though Motor-Jet, and Thermo-Jet are the most common. In 1934 Secondo Campini teamed up with famous aircraft designer Caproni to design a plane that used this engine. The N.1 was the result. Though not a fighter it proved that the technology could allow a aircraft to obtain great speeds (the N.1 broke 250mph at half throttle). The N.1 first flew in 1940. In 1943 Caproni submitted a proposal for a fighter known as the Ca.183 This aircraft would have two piston engines with one of them driving the air compressor for the Thermo jet. Top speed was expected at 460 mph with a range of 1200 miles. Its armament was a staggering 4 20mm cannons in the wings and either a 30mm or 20mm cannon in the nose. Progress continued until the Italian surrender to the allies, by which time a prototype was under construction.

Germany is widely credited with being the first nation to use cruise missiles in war, the Fi-103 better known as the V1 used a pulse jet to reach targets like England. To help the struggling He-162 it was thought to take out the complicated jet engine and replace it with two pulse jets. The He-162B based aircraft though did not have enough thrust and was abandoned by the Germans, though the Japanese did develop a design based on the german work known as the Ki-162, which would have supplemented the pulse jets with a ram jet. The most advanced in terms of completion of the German pulse jet projects was the Junkers EF-126. Powered by a single Argus 109-044 pulse jet the put out 1190 Lbs of thrust and armed with two 20mm cannons and 800lbs of ordinance. It had a top speed of only 485mph and a range of only 70 miles (25 mins of flight time) at full power. A unpowered prototype was completed in Germany before the end of the war. Along with the first plane (v1) there was a second glider (v2) along with two powered prototypes (v3, v5) which were mostly complete when the soviets took possession of them at the end of the war. A final prototype (v4) was in early stages of construction and when brought to the Soviet Union was improved by captured Junkers engineers. It flew for the first time in 1947. Shortly thereafter the soviets abandoned all work on the project to focus on the more promising turbo-jet technology.

The Germans also experimented with ram jets during the war, often coupled with rockets to get the plane up to the speed needed for the ram jet to start. Of the numerous designs four stand out for their advanced stage of design and advanced aerodynamics. The Focke-Wulf Super Lorin was a company design that would have substituted the Ta-183 Huckebein's jet engine with two ram jets with a rocket booster getting the aircraft up to speed. The aircraft though was only ever a concept design though the base aircraft the Ta-183 would later be built in Argentina after the war. More advanced still was the the Focke-Wulf Ta-283, which was a design for a twin ramjet powered fighter and possibly bomber. The Ta-283 was notable for having a long slender body and sharply swept (45⁰) wings. Top speed was expected to be high subsonic with supersonic dive capabilities. To get up to speed the plane also had a Walter HWK liquid fueled rocket (same one as in Me-163) that wood boost the plane up to speed and altitude. This made the aircraft role wise, a improved version of the Me-163, with the ramjets providing a longer duration of flight, which was a major weakness of the Komet. As far as is known the project never progressed passed wind tunnel testing though that is further than many of its peers ever got. One of the most technologically advanced designs can also be considered the first attempt at a jet powered VTOL aircraft, I'm not going to go into this plane in too much detail since there is already extensive literature on this aircraft. The Triebfluegel literally Thrust Wing Fighter and was a desperate attempt to regain the skies over Germany. This aircraft was a tail sitting Vertical Takeoff and Landing(VTOL) ram jet fighter. It had a small rocket shaped body, at the mid point of the body there were three wing/rotors attached to a free rotating section. At the tip of each wing was a ram jet mounted at a slight angle. Max thrust from each of the ramjets would be 1800lbs of thrust each. As the jets ran their thrust caused the rotor wings to rapidly spin around the fuselage creating additional thrust. The aircraft would have been 30ft long with a wingspan of 38ft. To help with takeoff the plane also had 3 liquid fueled rockets to start the pulse jets along with 2 RATO boosters. Once airborne the wings would change pitch slightly and the aircraft would transition to horizontal flight. It's armament was to be two 30mm cannons and two 20mm cannons. It's top projected speed would have been 621 mph. The reason for creating this aircraft was to shoot down bombers as they approached high value targets. Because Germany's airfields were under constant attack and often damaged a fighter with no need of a runway was designated as a important project. The Triebflügel underwent significant wind tunnel testing before the war ended and a ground rig for testing the rotor system and ram jet was completed and used to gather data. The war ended before any prototypes could have been built but the data was taken back to the US where it was further verified through unrelated uses like the Hiller Hornet that proved the concept at least was scientifically sound.. Had the aircraft been built however it is doubtful that it would have made a difference or even been feasible to use (not that that fact ever stopped the Germans in the past... Me-163...cough...). The most advanced design was the Lippisch P13. which would have used a revolutionary coal burning ram jet. A working engine of which was built in Vienna before the war ended. A pure delta wing fighter the P.13a has been wind tunnel tested and shown to be capable of being extremely stable up speeds of Mach 2.6 (2.6 times the speed of sound). Range has been calculated to be over 600miles. The P-13a would need two JATO rockets to accelerate the plane past 198 mph needed for the ram jet to start. After which the plane would be able to accelerate up to 1,080 mph(based on the thrust of the prototype engine the US government after the war was able to extrapolate how the aircraft would have preformed) making this the worlds first super sonic aircraft had it been built. Because of its small size only one 30mm cannon, or two heavy machine guns would have been carried. A more advanced design the P13b would have use two improved ramjets with ceramic linings to contain the heat, as well a paraffin based powered coal fuel, to achieve speeds well over 1200mph. To test the delta wing design the Germans built a flight testing glider known as DM-1. After the war the DM-1 was sent to the United States where it was tested by the NACA(predecessor of NASA), and eventually wound its way to the Smithsonian where it still is today. Data from the DM-1 was directly used in the creation of the XF-92 fighter, and the wing design lead to several delta wing fighters, such as the XFY pogo, F2Y sea dart, F-102 and F-106 Delta Dagger family of aircraft. Of all of the fighters in this article this is the only one that really could have been feasibly built, and would have been able to be used effectively even with petroleum fuel cutoff.

Of the aircraft shown all the german aircraft would be rank 5 and are unlikely to be included in the German tech tree unless Gajin decides to compress the Me-262 variants into one slot, though the P13a and P13b could be used to replace the saber and mig15 respectively. I do however believe the the Italian Thermo jet Ca183 would be a good rank IV addition (right after the Me-410).

Fri will be the last part of this series: the USSR ram,pulse, and thermo jets.

Lucinator is a Historian and Docent at the Seattle Museum of Flight who enjoys studying experimental and concept airplanes.

Ca.N.1 Ca.132bis

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