Opinions of the He 219

I was looking for more information on the 219 and came across this art site that is pretty good. Seems like when you go looking for one item on the internet you come across 100 distractions to lead you astray !
I like the picture, "Morning Chorus". It is 100 degrees here and it makes me feel cold.
http://www.assonetart.com/index.htm

 

Found anouther site that has a nice color picture of the 219 and also some pictures of the Ta-154. I was wondering why they bothered making the 154 a tricycle gear aircraft as it sits so far back in the tail. Good color photo of it too.
http://www.luftwaffepics.com/lhe2191.htm

 

Those are interesting links, Ta - thanks !

I have totally forbidden myself to buy any more signed prints !

 

The Germans had so many advanced weapons and ideas that is seems strange that a low tech item like glue would ground the TA-154. I guess if De Hallivand did not know it's glue the Mossie would be a foot note in WWII like the TA-154. I wonder what the full story about this is ? The Germans had a few WWI fighters made of wood seems like the knowledge base would be there. Oh well, I should return the thread to the He-219. I get on the internet and get pulled in so many directions by all the good stuff that is coming out.

 

The Mosquito used casein glue which is milk-based ( so you can say that British cows did their bit for the war affort ! ). People laugh at this, but it sets very hard ( lab tests show it to be 71% stronger than commercial PolyVinylAcetate glues ). Certainly when we try to dismantle 60-year old Mosquito plywood parts, the glue is like iron.

The many thousands of small brass screws helped as well......

 

First, the glue issue: Essentially, the glue used for aircraft assembly is some variation of phenyl, acetate or, amide plastic along the lines of the current commercial product Gorilla Glue. In the 1940's this was still a nacient technology and generally patiented.
In Germany, most companies were loath to share such patiented technologies except at very favorable terms (to the patient holder). Tungsten Carbide is a good example that is widely known. The same occured with the glue Focke Wulf was using on the Ta 154. The company that made the glue got bombed out of existance and no other firm could duplicate the product due to patient laws.

On the He 219: It was a decent aircraft performance-wise. As a nightfighter it had several outstanding features for the time. The best was probably the cockpit layout. It would have been hard to improve on the Henkel design.
On the other hand, most 219's were underpowered and sluggish as performers (yes, they were fast in level flight but, put them into a maneuver and they bleed speed like a bull in the last stages of a bullfight.). They do have a tremendous amount of firepower for the era though but, are handicapped by the pathetic quality of German electronics. Those 'antlers' added an unnecessary drag not to mention the radar in general just being poor in performance.
On the whole, I think the He 219 has a reputation not wholly deserved.

 

I knew there was a good reason the TA-154 did not get glued together good. On the other hand I thought in a dictatorship little items like patient laws meant nothing. But maybe the FW people did not have the right connections.
Have any idea why it sat so tail heavy for a tricycle geared aircraft ? Seems to defeat the purpose of good visiablity on take off and taxi that a tricycle gear has to offer.
Thanks for the glue information.

 

The He 219 did indeed feature tremendous armament which in practice may have been a little too good.

According to many reports, the 3-cm MK108 produced a very high level of muzzle flash at night which made it unpopular with Nachtjagd pilots ; it could give away their presence and destroy the night vision of the crew.

For the Luftwaffe's type of night operation, the 2-cm MK151 was generally considered to be effective enough.

 

Martin some of the Bf 110G-4's in NJG 5 had the upper nosed 3cm replaced by long rod 2cm's. this was not the norm though and pilots still dealt with the problem as best they could, even the Me 262 pilots of Kommando Welter. so powerful were they in the 262 that some pilots had a special attached firing button on the control stick to operate two 3cm's only.

For the He 219 the 3cm's were kept sometimes and then again may be replaced by 2cm's but the undertray was reduced from 4 cannon to two to lessen the weight and four cannon were enough to bring down any RAF craft, as 6 was overkill

 

Well, up comes this thread from the murky forum depths again....

The first time I ever heard of this aircraft was on the WWII Forum and I never thought I'd have the privilege of meeting someone who actually flew one.

Leutnant Otto Fries was obviously delighted to talk about the He 219 and is proud of his status as the first to survive a combat ejection ( his 219 was shot down by a 605 Squadron Mosquito ). He's understandably biased, perhaps - but remembers the 'Uhu' as the nicest aircraft to fly of any in his logbook. Visibility and ground-handling was excellent, and he enjoyed the power of the two DB603s and the general flying characteristics of the 219.

On the debit side, he felt that the aircraft had suffered from under-development and many aspects of the design were too advanced for German mass-production.

I asked him about the 3-cm cannon and he claimed never to have used them operationally - they were 'too much' for night use with bright muzzle blast and too-powerful explosive effect at close range ( he agreed that the 219 was vulnerable to damage from debris ).

He always used 2 x MG151 in the wing roots and 2 x MG151 under the fuselage and found these weapons quite sufficient.

After all this, I clean forgot to ask how many victories he claimed in the aircraft. Doh !

My own impression was that the 219 was a very effective bomber destroyer, but was vulnerable to the Mosquito....

 

told ya so in past threads guys .......... bah

as I mentioned on numerous occassions the 4 2cm weapons had already been proven through the Ju 88G-1 and I./NJG 1 ground techs pulled the 3cm's out leaving as Martin noted just 4 2cm weapons

 

I'll say this, though - it's a very pretty aircraft !

 

though it also must be mentioned you have interviewed or at least talked to with one of the pilots that flew the Uhu, a very unique venture I must add..........Otto is very charming from what I hae heard. Let's look for his tallies somewhere Martin, would love to send him a fat note of questions in regard to missions.

Imagine what the Uhu would of looked like with Berlin 240 AI ?

 

I have wondered something about night fighters for a long time. This looks like a good place to ask.

What was the basic strategy of night fighters?
How did their radar give them direction and distance information? How accurate was this information? Did they use the radar to get a position and distance and then close and attack by visual sighting or was it possible to attack without visual reference?

It seems dodgy enough just flying in formation, I cannot imagine trying to fly into a formation and attacking in the dark. I also cannot imagine trying to have a dogfight between two night fighters.

 

Wow, bigiceman...that's a big question !

Whole books have ben written on the subject, for example 'Instruments Of Darkness' , etc.

I'm sure that Erich and especially T A Gardner ( who is very knowledgable about radar ) can give a more detailed answer.

Nightfighting WWII-style was very much a team effort and increased in sophistication very quickly as the war progressed.

I'll pick the 1944 era ; German nightfighters were vectored to the area of the target aircraft by ground radar via radio. The target would then be located by the on-board radar whose operator would guide the pilot to the target. The pilot would then make visual contact and press home his attack, often at distances of about 50 metres.

Meantime, behind the German nightfighter is a Mosquito using similar tactics, but without the initial ground radar contact.

Both forces operated individually ; formation-flying was not practicable. 'Dog-fighting' as such really didn't happen ; the Nachtjagd crept up on the bombers, the Mosquitoes crept up on the Nachtjagd, while faster Nachtjagd tried to creep up on the Mosquitoes. A burst of fire from the darkness : frequently the victim literally didn't know what had hit them.

It was a cruel war.

 

You are right that is an awfully big question. Thanks for going so far to answer it though. I now have a better insight and more questions. I will have to get myself a book and see if that is able to give me a better base knowledge and then ask more specific questions. You mention Instruments of Darkness , any other recommendations from anyone?

 

I would add that the RAF heavy bombers flew in bomber streams at night. German ground radar tried to get attackers in the area of the stream and the aircraft's radar got the attacker closer but at some point the pilot had to pick up the bomber by sight. On a few attacks the fighter would hang out at the RAF home base and wait for the bombers to return and shoot them down. In theory the bomber streams were coordinated so they would not bunch up on the target but in reality they dropped bombs all over the place and got off the target as quick as they could. The Short Sterling had the lowest operating alitude and caught most of the flak and on some occausions got bombed on by Lancasters and Halifax's higher up. Also the electronic war was ongoing and when the night bombers got radar detectors the Germans made a device to home in on the radar detectors. Jamming of each others radar happened also.
Then there was the "wild boar" methold of night fighter that went up with no radar in a single seat fighter and blew away bombers.
The British bombers that were able to see the fighter before the attack started could perform a heart stopping maneuver called the cork screw and dive and turn the bomber into the darkness and escape or crash trying to recover from the maneuver. It was a maneuver of desparation that sometimes worked and many times killed the crew.

Early in the war the British tried to use aircraft equiped with search lights to find and shoot down German bombers but it did not work out. I am not aware of any attempts by the Germans to use search lights on aircraft.

Anouther "might have been" is that both the British and Germans had knowledge of infra-red technology but did not spend money to develope it for operational combat use.

And I agree with you Martin, it was a really good looking aircraft.

 

One He-219 survives.

http://www.wingsontheweb.com/vhangar/he219/tour.html

 

hey guys just watching how this thread is developing before I repsond further. ACtually guys infro-red was used by the NJG's ear;ly in the war and then brought back in 1945 with success albeit small

also the NASM He 219 is quite a bit farther than what the older pics show.

E

 

Wilde Sau nightfighter tactics started in 1943 by Hajo Hermann proved very costly in terms of aircraft and pilots for the Germans. The average ran about 50% losses in both per mission. Had the Allies tried this it would have lasted about 2 or 3 missions before it was either:

A. Abandoned and the inventor sacked for incompetence (likely).

or

B. Assessed as to why losses were so high and a 'fix' put into action to alleviate the loss rate before continuing.

The the Germans did neither shows a great deal of incompetence in the operational and strategic art within the Luftwaffe.

As for radar and other detectors used by the Germans:

Naxos for homing on H2S proved marginal due to its short range of detection.

Flensburg worked great on homing on Monica (an RAF tail warning radar) right up until a Ju 88 accidently landed in England with a working set on it. After that it was worthless.

By 1944 the electronic war had reached the point where Adolf Galland stated: Today the nightfigher achieves nothing. The reason for this lies in the enemy's jamming operations, which completely blot out ground and airborne search equipment. All other reasons are secondary.

One of my favorite Allied electronic warfare devices was 'Perfectos.' This little gizmo signalled German fighter aircraft and caused their IFF systems to respond. This in turn, allowed the Allied fighter to home on the IFF signal with the absolute assurance that the aircraft being attacked was an enemy one. Not only were nightfighers equipped with this device but some day fighers as well. I have a photo of a P-51B so equipped.
The problem for the Luftwaffe was then that if they left their IFF on they could be subject to homing on by more numerous Allied fighters and pounced on or, they could turn their IFF off and risk the wrath of their own flak units shooting at them because of lack of identification! A Hobson's choice....damned if you do, damned if you don't.