James - Hitlers Forgotten Secret Weapon

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ISBN 978-1-907791-16-1

Historianstend to look back on the past with the benefit of hindsight. Thingshave a habit of seeming inevitable just because that is how thingshappened. Knowledge we have now can seem to be commonplace andobvious: RAF FighterCommand won the Battle of Britain; the Spitfire was a superlativefighter aircraft; the Germans did not invade Britain.

But for the peoplewho lived through the past, things were very different. They didnot know what the future held and they did not know what we knownow. The people of Britain in the summer of 1940 did not know thatthey were going to defeat Germany. Every other country that haddared to stand up to German dictator Adolf Hitler had been crushedin a matter of weeks. The Aryan Master Race was starting to looklike a reality. Hitlers boastful gloating over his secretweapons that had seemed bombastic in 1938 now seemed to be fullyjustified as new models of panzers swept across France, new typesof mines sank merchant shipping by the dozen and new types ofbomber pounded cities to destruction.

It was into thismaelstrom of carnage, destruction, secrecy and terror that theHeinkel He113 Super Verfolgungsjaegar (Super Air Pursuit Fighter)flew in the spring of 1940. Faster than the Spitfire, more agilethan the Hurricane and more heavily armed than the MesserschmittBf109, the He113 was a Super Fighter indeed. It had the abilityto dominate the skies. Hermann Goering, chief of the Luftwaffe, wasquoted as saying that The Spitfire is now just a pile of scrapmetal.

And yet todayalmost nobody has heard of this wonder. The Heinkel He113 SuperFighter has become Hitlers forgotten secret weapon.

Rumours of a SuperFighter

At 9am on 14July 1936 a black car pulled up at the gates to Bentley Priory, aGeorgian mansion built in the Italianate style that had been agirls boarding school until bought by the RAF. In the car was AirMarshal Sir Hugh Dowding. He had just been put in charge of thenewly formed RAF FighterCommand and given Bentley Priory as his headquarters. Dowding wasshown around the rambling house and chose his office. None of hisstaff had yet arrived, but the paperwork had.

Dowdings primetask as head of Fighter Command was to defend the air space overBritain in the event of war with a foreign power. By 1936 it wasbecoming clear that if war came, then Germany was going to be theenemy. If Dowding was to turn Fighter Command into a war-winningorganisation then he needed to know everything that he possiblycould about the prospective enemy. Unfortunately, as Dowding tookhis seat in Bentley Priory, that wasnt very much.

The Treaty ofVersailles that ended the First World War had forbidden Germany tohave an air force at all. Intelligence had reported that sincecoming to power in 1933 the Nazis had begun secretly forming an airforce, the Luftwaffe. The key figure in the formation of theLuftwaffe was Herman Goering. Goering had served with distinctionin the German air force during the First World War and then becomea leading member of the Nazi Party. His prestige was instrumentalin persuading Adolf Hitler to divert resources from his belovedarmy to the newly constituted Luftwaffe. Goering generallypreferred to leave the hard work to others, but he had a realtalent for spotting the right men for jobs and had a sound grasp ofair power that enabled him to set the overall direction and patternfor the Luftwaffe.

The formation ofthe Luftwaffe was, of course, carried out in absolute secrecy. Itwas a flagrant breach of the Treaty of Versailles and Hitlerworried about how other countries would react but the Luftwaffe,could not be kept secret for ever. In 1935, the new propagandaminister, Josef Goebbels, came up with a plan. The Luftwaffe wouldbe announced to the world, but in the guise of a purely defensiveforce. It would be portrayed as a force dedicated to the defence ofGerman air space against invaders. To this end, the announcement inthe summer of 1935 that the Luftwaffe existed did not mentionbombers, but concentrated on the new fighter the Heinkel He51.

Thus when Dowdingsat at his desk in Bentley Priory, one of the first documents heread was the assessment from British intelligence of the He51. Itdid not worry him unduly.

The HeinkelHe51 was a conventional biplane fighter of a type to be found inall air forces around the world. The frame was constructed of metalwhile the skin was of stretched fabric. The wings had two aluminiumspars, while the fuselage was built around four steel tubes shapedinto a rounded form by aluminium and wood spacers. The enginecowling was made of aluminium sheeting and could be easily removedto allow for engine maintenance. The best feature of the aircraftwas the BMW VI engine, aV12 liquid-cooled powerplant that remained the main German airengine until 1938.

The performance ofthe He51 was average for the early 1930s. Nor was the weaponryoutstanding, being composed of twin 7.92mm machine guns firingthrough the nose, and later models were adapted to be able to carrysix 22lb bombs in racks below the wings.

Dowding knewthat his RAF FighterCommand aircraft easily had the measure of the He51. The HawkerFury biplane, which the RAF had in large numbers when the He51 was announced, had a topspeed of 223mph, a ceiling of 29,000 feet and a range of 270 miles.Just entering service was the Gloster Gauntlet with a top speed of230mph, a ceiling of 33,500 feet and a range of 460 miles. Itsarmament, however, was almost identical to that of the He51 beingtwo 0.303in machine guns mounted in the nose. Another Glosterbiplane, the Gladiator, was due to enter service in large numbersin 1937 and was even faster.

Moreover, Dowdingknew that the RAF had on order three aircraft from a new generationof monoplane fighters that were expected to be the most advanced inthe world. The first of these was the Boulton Paul Defiant. Theperformance of the Defiant was not massively better than that ofthe biplanes it replaced, but it packed a punch in the form of agun turret mounted behind the pilot. The gunner could turn histurret to face any direction and pour a devastating fire from four0.303in machine guns into enemy bombers. The Defiant was due toenter service in late 1939.

More impressivewas the Hawker Hurricane equipped with no less than eight 0.303inmachine guns that were mounted in the wings to fire forward. Theaircraft was surprisingly nimble given its high speed and yetproved to be a stable platform when the eight machine guns werefired.

The Hurricane wasdue to start arriving with the RAF in December 1937, and the firstorder was for 600 aircraft, soon to be massively increased as theprospect of war approached. The swift delivery and large numberswere made possible by the fact that although the Hurricane was ofrevolutionary design, its construction was traditional. Much of thefuselage was covered in stretched fabric and the internalengineering was straightforward.

Rather differentwas the Supermarine Spitfire. Like the Hurricane, the Spitfire hadeight machine guns mounted in the wings and was a low-wingmonoplane but there the similarities ended. The Spitfire was ahighly sophisticated aircraft with an all metal cantilevered frameand pre-stressed metal skin. The internal mechanics were likewiseof latest design to enable them to be squeezed into the highlyaerodynamic shape and thin, elliptical wings that were to make thissuch a distinctive aircraft.