Heinkel He 111 V 8

Gallery Article by Fred Amos on Jan 7 2013

 

 

(Ie He 111 V ==Verdreifachen ) = In triplicate. 

With the proven but limited success of the He 111 Zwilling the Heinkel Aircraft Works began development of a larger and hopefully more successful version of the He 111 H.

The RLM had called for a bomber capable of reaching the United States and bombing it’s larger cities and industrial facilities. Since the Zwilling had proven itself capable of long range and heavy load capacity it was decided to expand the concept with an additional fuselage and center wing section. This concept gave the He 111 V (verdreifachen) three fuselages and a total of eight engines.
With the larger center wing section tanks and the two external drop tanks under each fuselage came a higher fuel capacity for the extended range. And the bomb capacity was greatly improved with the third fuselage section.

Development by the Heinkel engineers and production staff was greatly hampered by the constant day and night bombing campaign of the USAAF and the RAF so that the first He 111 V was not completed until May 5th,1945. By this time the Russian Armies had captured the Heinkel complex and the He 111 V. The Russians saw this as a supreme war prize and kept it hidden under wraps for about two years. 

One night in the summer of 1947 the He 111 V was rolled out of it’s hidden bunker in Russian markings and fueled up for the long flight to someplace in Eastern Russia. Three elite crews were selected it to fly it out of Germany after being convinced by captive Heinkel engineers that the aircraft was fully air worthy.

The Heinkel took off at about 10:00 PM local time for an approximate 13 hour flight to the East of the Ural Mountains.

The last radio contact from the Heinkel, at about 9:00 AM German time, indicated that they were being attacked by Russian fighters somewhere over the Ural mountains.

The wreckage of the Heinkel was never found, the pilots who had shot it down said it went down in heavy clouds. The pilots said that they had not been advised that a German bomber in Russian markings was being flown over it’s homeland and assumed it was flown by die hard Nazi pilots bent of bombing the motherland again. The whole incident was kept quite until one of the surviving Russian pilots told his family about it from his death bed. Needless to say the Soviet Union Government denies the story.

No photographic evidence of the He 111 V is in existence.

Fred Amos

      

Photos and text © by Fred Amos