Henschel Hs P.135

History

In late 1944, when Allied bombing took a toll on German infrastructure and combat capabilities, the Luftwaffe High Command developed an "Emergency Fighter Plan" to avoid defeat. The program had many contributions, although many did not "see the light" due to the end of the war or other factors. Two noteworthy projects resulting from this initiative are the Arado Ar 234 "Blitz" jet bomber and the Heinkel He 162 "Volksjager" - both of which are detailed elsewhere on this page.

Henschel He P. 135 is an entry that cannot leave the drawing board published by Henschel Flugzeugwerke AG.

Founded in 1810, the Henschel Group has been active in machine and vehicle building for decades, and has been building fighter jets for the Luftwaffe since the 1930s. When the war engulfed Germany and the rest of Europe in September 1939, business was booming, but many of Henschel's existing products date back to the 1930s, so it tried several projects during the war, the most successful of which were Hs became 129. Support/Anti-Tank Platform; more than 800 were produced before closing.

Beyond that, the company had little to offer in terms of its aviation heritage during the war - the P.87 high-speed bomber, P.75 heavy fighter and P.135 interceptor were all eventually abandoned.

When the Luftwaffe needed a single-seat jet fighter, Henschel turned to an earlier design she had been working on privately, producing the frame for the proposed "P. 135". The aircraft is of a "tailless" design, containing only a vertical tail without any horizontal plane at its rear end. The main planes with a wingspan of 30.25 feet are well swept back, but most notably, they are given straight sides with the tips curved upwards to break the swept line. The trailing edge was serrated, very modern for its time.

This "composite" swept-wing approach is designed to disperse the forces of high-speed flight near a critical Mach number, reduce vibration and compression along its span, and create a more stable, safer aircraft capable of flying at extremely fast speeds Speed ??flight. Heavier loads than initially assumed.

The 25.5-foot-long fuselage has a low profile with air intakes in the truncated nose section and engines vented aft under the empennage. The cockpit will be located near midship and feature a raised spine to increase interior space at the expense of aft visibility. The wings should be mounted centrally on both sides of the fuselage.

Modern tricycle landing gear will be used for ground operation.

The proposed armament was a 4 x 30mm MK 108 automatic cannon with two seats under the aircraft's "chin", one seat in each wing root, for powerful strikes against Allied bombers of the time. The engine of choice was a Heinkel-Hirth HeS 011 turbojet, which was buried in the rear of the interceptor.

With its futuristic design and proposed propulsion scheme, the aircraft has an estimated top speed of 612 mph - well beyond the reach of ground fire or interceptor and bomber escorts.

In no event was the P.135 selected for further development, but only existed as a "paper" aircraft for its participation in the war which ended with the complete surrender of Germany in May 1945. Nonetheless, the P.135 deserves a mention in the history of military aviation for its forward-looking design.

Specification

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Performance

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