RAF He177 TS439 Question

I will have to ask my Farther as he was one of the many who worked on the M3 construction in and around the Farnborough area. We lived in Farnborough at the time and left there in 1984.

Mark

When I worked on “Aviation News” in 1972/73 I recall we carried a small report that an engine and other parts had been discovered during road-building work (possibly for the then-new M3) in the Farnborough area.

Over complication is always a recipe for disaster,and knowing when to stop flogging the dead horse is quite important also 😉

(not really surprisingly) …overheating/unreliability/fires.

Why? The engineering reasons the two types were both unsuccessful were unrelated. Vultures suffered from poor design of the master big-end and a coolant distribution fault, whereas the DB 610 was well known for fires caused by heat build-up between the inboard exhaust manifolds. I don`t know what other problems these two engines suffered from, but I guess maintenance was a headache much like the Sabre.

The Allison V-3420 is configured like the DB 610 but as far as I know it wasn`t intended for any large twins and I don`t think the power units could be run separately?

Pete

Oh no let’s plz not go down that road again, the Coupled Proteus was two engines driving two co-axial mounted propellers, much like D.Mamba etc etc – as distinct from two engines driving one propeller.

Much the same idea was around a few years later with Bristol’s Coupled Proteus. That too was hardly a great success.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1951/1951%20-%200153.html

The Vulture and 610 might seem similar but are very different beasts in principle.
The Vulture started out in concept by using the basics of two V 12 Peregrines meeting at the crankcase, however it is just one 24 cylinder ‘X’ arranged engine using a single crankcase, crankshaft, and prop shaft.
The DB 610 was two side by side inverted V 12 DB 605s retaining their own crankcases, crankshafts and propshafts which were mounted very close to each other at the top of the ‘^’ and feeding into a commmon clutch and gearbox mechanism (this is where some of the problems were), it is still two motors in one powerplant nacelle.

Hi james
Yes I know they were different engine concepts – but very similar in outcome (not really surprisingly) …overheating/unreliability/fires.
The germans hung on to the dive bomber requirement too long and could have gone 4 engined much earlier.
But the a/c did have other fundamental problems inc structural weakness and handling/stability etc

I never got why making two engines drive one propeller (almost reverse of what the allies were trying to do) was a god idea?

Dr Alfred Price – The Aeroplane Sept 2006.

“During 1936 the Luftwaffe issued detail of its requirement for the new ‘Bomber A’. From the start it was a demanding specification, and called for an aircraft with a maximum speed of 335 m.p.h., able to carry 4,000lb of bombs to a target 1,000 miles away or 2,200lb to a target 1,800 miles away. Moreover, it had to be strong enough to make medium angle dive attacks descending at 40-50 degrees.

This formidable specification demanded an aircraft able to outperform, by a considerable margin, any bomber and outrun any fighter then in service. To meet the challenge the Heinkel design team displayed great ingenuity in their P.1041 design study for a well-proportioned aircraft of all-metal construction, with an exceptionally clean airframe. Early on, however, its advanced features presented serious problems.

Power for the new bomber would be from a pair of Daimler Benz DB606 coupled engines. Each DB606 comprised two DB601 liquid-cooled 12-cylinder inverted-vee inline motors, mounted side-by-side and driving a single four-bladed propeller through a connecting gear train.

Each combined engine gave an output of 2,600 h.p. A clutch arrangement allowed either engine in each pair to be shut down in flight, so the aircraft could cruise on two engines to extend its endurance. Installing the engines in two nacelles produced an aerodynamically cleaner arrangement than placing the four engines in individual nacelles. Moreover, concentrating the weight of the propulsion system well inboard gave the bomber increased manoeuvrability for the medium-angle dive-attack role.

In a further move to reduce the drag of the engine installation, the designers sought to dispense with the drag-producing radiators usually employed with liquid-cooled engines. For an attempt on the world air speed record the Heinkel company had pioneered an evaporative cooling system, The water coolant was pressurised, allowing the temperature to rise to 1,100 C (This must be a mistake, 110 C maybe) before steam formed. The coolant was then ducted away and depressurised at which point steam formed. The water was separated off and returned to the engine, while the steam was piped to condensers in the wing leading edges cooled by the airflow. There the steam condensed and the coolant was pumped back into engines.”

The Vulture and 610 might seem similar but are very different beasts in principle.
The Vulture started out in concept by using the basics of two V 12 Peregrines meeting at the crankcase, however it is just one 24 cylinder ‘X’ arranged engine using a single crankcase, crankshaft, and prop shaft.
The DB 610 was two side by side inverted V 12 DB 605s retaining their own crankcases, crankshafts and propshafts which were mounted very close to each other at the top of the ‘^’ and feeding into a commmon clutch and gearbox mechanism (this is where some of the problems were), it is still two motors in one powerplant nacelle.

James…we did try it with the RR Vulture/Manchester saga,but common sense prevailed and chadwick managed to ‘borrow’ 4 merlins for the Lanc project.
ISTR that the common reason given for the 2 prop idea for the 177 was so it could be a ‘Dive Bomber’ :rolleyes:

Hi
In 1998, give or take a year ,there was some HE-177 stuff in a museum near munich,from memory recovered from a training flight crash into a lake.
somewhere…. I have a photo of the bits & info plaque.
maybe someone else knows more.
cheers
JERRY

I never got why making two engines drive one propeller (almost reverse of what the allies were trying to do) was a god idea?
The He 177B/277 with four engines and props in conventional layout looked a far more reliable option.
Agree though that it was an advanced, and for a large bomber, beautiful aircraft.

Cosford DB610

He.177

With each paired engine being a 70-litre monster and a massive propeller to match, can you imagine the sound a pair of them must have made?

The Merlin was a mere baby in comparison.

An oft-overlooked aspect of the era of these machines is how they must have looked and sounded – something which is rarely or accurately portrayed in film footage from those times.

We know how wonderful a Merlin sounds these days but back then, the He.177 and other now-extinct types were huge and very advanced aircraft and it’s easy to denigrate them just because they are old or didn’t do much to win, or attempt to win, wars.

A low, banked pass of an He.177 at a modern airshow would win it a lot of fans these days, I’m sure.

Anon.

Interesting thread, the “Grief” always fascinated me for being Germanys only heavy bomber, almost a very good aeroplane. Very ahead of its time too when you look at the coupled engines concept and electronic turrets.

Whilst it may be a fascinating aircraft I would disagree about it almost being a good aircraft,even if the germans had not wasted years on trying to sort the troublesome engines out and had opted for the much more sensible 4 engine layout …it would never have been a nice aircraft to fly as it also had some fundamental handling/control problems,but the 4 engine version would at least have had a chance of completing a mission without catching fire 😉

Interesting, not as clear-cut as I thought. I had no evidence to suspect they were from that airframe, I just assumed they were. There is at least one DB610 in the USA.
I know an awful lot of German equipment was indeed captured and evaluated at Farnborough and still survives.
There is a new Jumo 211 in its box at Wroughton, I wonder what its history is.

Pete

When I worked on “Aviation News” in 1972/73 I recall we carried a small report that an engine and other parts had been discovered during road-building work (possibly for the then-new M3) in the Farnborough area.

German engines

Well-known aerojumbler stall holder and collector Mick Shaw’s father had the job of scrapping a load of aero engines from Farnborough when Mick was a young man. Mick recognised many of them as being WW2 German powerplants of various types and saw the historical value of them and badgered his father to save some of them, which he did.

I don’t know where these engines ended up but they were preserved. The 610’s extant could be two of these.

Mick is still around and lives near London. He would probably be glad to elaborate on the event, I’m sure.

Anon

Wrecks and Relics the album interestingly has a photo of one of the engines removed with the caption that they where removed possibly before going to America.

Some years ago in the German magazine Jet & Prop there was a sonar picture clearly showing the outline of a He177 Greif. The wreck was located in a German lake near the Swiss border (Lake Constance or the Boden See).
Don’t know if this was a hoax though.

Cees

Also found this interesting paragrath which adds to the imagination regarding what could still be out there!

Possible survivors
During the period of the war when He 177s were based in the occupied Soviet Union, a small number of Griffins were known to have force landed on frozen lakes within that territory, which then could have sunk to those lakes’ bottoms when spring thaws melted the lake ice. As no He 177s were to survive intact well past the end of the war (all known captured He 177 example aircraft, as well as the sole prototype He 274 in France, had been scrapped by the end of the 1950s) those possible sunken Griffins would be the only known surviving examples of the He 177 but none have yet been discovered as of 2007.

Interesting thread, the “Grief” always fascinated me for being Germanys only heavy bomber, almost a very good aeroplane. Very ahead of its time too when you look at the coupled engines concept and electronic turrets.

Would love to know the fate of the captured examples…will it be at Le…(taxi for me!)

Wondy