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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- In this video, we talk about the Heinkel He 177 Greif, a German heavy bomber constructed as part of the "Bomber A" project, a project that called for a new long range strategic bomber. We first talk about military strategy in Nazi Germany before and during World War 2 and why many in military leadership disliked the idea of a heavy bomber, exemplified in the results of the previous Ural Bomber project, and why they liked light bombers and/or so-called schnellbombers. We than talk about the designing of the He 177 and how it differed from most other heavy bombers in that it was a two-engine design, which was done to decrease drag and increase performance.
We then talk about the incredibly poor performance of the He 177 prototypes and how many of them either crashed or suddenly burst into flames, a problem that continued into pre-production and production models. We go over why this problem occurred so frequently and how the quest for high speed and performance played a major role in it. We look at how they attempted to remedy the issue and how the He 177 performed in combat (poorly, as it turns out). We conclude by talking about a British-captured He 177, British test pilot Eric Brown, and his opinion and experience with the plane.
Some sources on the He 177 (archive links):
Heinkel He 177, 277, 274: archive.org/de...
Famous Bombers of the Second World War: archive.org/de...
The Luftwaffe Album: archive.org/de...
Wings of the Luftwaffe (Eric Brown): archive.org/de... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I really enjoy that your editing is reasonably kinetic. It follows with the script and also has some quickness to it that encourages visual engagement. I also appreciate that your narration doesn't require watching the video. It's very clever and I think you're doing a great job!
Honestly half of the time I'm not even looking at my screen so that's a huge plus to me
Agreed, this is why i quickly subbed IHYLS from the first time i found his video.
When the germans want to build a new ciggarets lighter but over engineer exist.
When germans wanna make cigarettes lighter but somehow it can fly
@@fajareraim6136like 😅😅😮😅😅😅😅😊😊😊
@@fajareraim6136 7:19
MAN - you hvn't ANY IDEA !
The Reichsluftfahrtministerium spoilt that thing , german bureaucracy. They insited on " 2" engines and diving-capability . Each child would understand - that would be nonsense !
Problems with engine's overheating persecuted american II war aircrafts and never were solved....
As far as I know, the bomber was originally planned as a four-engined aircraft, but a genius at the RLM demanded dive bombing capability and so two engines were coupled in each nacelle. That´s where the trouble started. All in all it was a stillborn child.
Conceptually, it was a great idea. The drag of two engines, and the power of 4. No different than doubling up a 9cy radial to 18 cylinders (and beyond) which had been done to great success. I'm designing scale functioning landing gear for this right now in 1/10th scale for R/C. Somehow people think doing something super complex in a short time should still be perfect. Seems like a normal deveopment cycle to me, and at a time of super limited resources is still pretty impressive.
There were 2 versions which used 4 engines in separate nacelles. The He 277B and the French assembled He 274, which was completed postwar and several served in the French AeroNavale until the early 1950s, where they were reportedly superior to the Lancasters supplied by the UK for the same tasks, being faster and having longer endurance. The He277 in Germany made a few test flights, but was destroyed by U S bombers on the ground.
@@spinnetti Postwar, the Brabazon is also this.
@@teslashark - The Brabazon had coupled engines but they were in the wing and not crammed into the nacelle.
the dive bombing shit came straight from Gröfaz (AH), who was enamored with the idea of precision bombings.
Milch and Udet who took over procurement and development after Wever's death, were also fans and so it ended up poisoning a lot of great ideas, including the Swallow (ME 262) that would have been way better without that meddling from amateurs.
Greif in German is pronounced with the long I sound, as in "life".
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Nice and informative video, thank you. Reportedly a follow-up version with four separate DB603 engines in four nacelles has been envisaged as the He 177B. However that variant obviously came to nought although it might have been a promising improvement over the twin nacelle 177, not unlike the way the Lancaster evolved out of the Manchester.
You may want to talk about the He 177's "Sequel" aircaft: The Heinkel He277 and He 274. Heinkel did try a MUCH simpler solution by converting the twinned engines into 4 sepaerate engines, like a Lancaster orr B-17 and dropping the requirement for dive bombing. The He 274 was developed in France during the occupation and a number Flew in the French L'Armee de L'Aire post war, lasting until the 1950s. Apparently it was quite popular and the range made it suitable for Maritime Patrols and SAR duties. The 277, using BMW801 engines (Radials) was also relatively trouble free in testing but ended as a casualty of the Termination of Bomber production in 1944 with only a couple built. The RLM was very "down" on this idea and tried to cancel or delay, it several times
What's ironic is that the requirement for dive-bombing was rescinded when its effect on overall weight was finally acknowledged by the RLM, but it was too late in the design process to change without delays and cost. Goering hated the idea and said "It is a straightforward idiocy to ask of a four-engine bomber that it should dive. Had I been told of this for one moment, I should have exclaimed at once, 'What kind of nonsense is that!' But now we are stuck with it." Goering had also wondered publicly why it had two, inaccessible, "welded-together" engines, when he had thought the engines would be mounted in tandem.
Udet gets a lot of flak, and well-deserved, for his fascination with dive bombing, but even he had a boss - General Hans Jeschonnek, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe. Their time in the Spanish Civil War apparently showed them where level bombing was too inaccurate. So Jeschonnek wanted the 177 to dive bomb, Udet was all about it, and Goering and; in a display of uncommon (for him) common sense; Erhard Milch, were furious about it.
There was also some hubris in the Heinkel factory about this; Goering had asked Ernst Heinkel if the engine problems could be resolved, or if it was hopeless, and Heinkel assured him the engines were fixed. Of course, they really weren't. Goering addressed a meeting of German aircraft makers around May 1942 and asked why they just didn't go and make a pure 4 engined bomber and he was told: "No, four engined types are passe now, it is far better to have only two airscrews." To which Goering made a wry comment that the Allies' passe four-engined bombers were proving a deadly nuisance.
The more I read about WWII German aircraft design, procurement, and usage, the more I believe that the Almighty was directly assisting the Allied war efforts. Never before in the field of human conflict was so much squandered by so many for so little result.
The idea behind dive bombing for army support did make sense for something like the Ju-87 (assuming air superiority can be assured), allowing precise (for the period) bomb delivery, something not possible with level bombing. This allowed for an economy in bombs used (see for example the Luftwaffe bomb shortage during the Battle of Britain). The Ju-87 was also an effective anti-shipping weapon. Applying the same logic to the Ju-88 made rather less sense. Expecting something the size of the He-177 to make steep dive attacks was sheer madness.
Just a bad design. Testing, shakedown & problem solving is difficult when the enemy is already dominant in your airspace.
Not to mention a leader who fancied himself the greatest weapons designer. His meddling delayed the excellent 262 for how long to make it a dive bomber...🙄
Such a futuristic design for mid 30s. Pity they didn't have 2 engines per nacelle and have one a puller engine ,the other a pusher. They could have put cooling slats in the leading edge of the wings. The dive bomber aspect was pure stupidity...
Those pusher puller nacelle designs were significantly prone to overheating too. From what I understand.
As others have pointed out; they got the engines, mostly sorted out and the B-29 had similar issues. Big ass engine in a tight cowl with poorly designed fuel and oil line routing. Plus the R-3350's crankcase was made out of magnesium which really burns well!
That being said, the entire German bomber force was really a waste of time and resources. They couldn't possibly produce enough to carpet bomb anything at night and never developed escort fighters to protect bombers in daylight. That's also why the Ju-88 was largely used in other roles, eventually. It was too good an airframe to waste, so they used it for just about everything, but it just wasn't an effective pure bomber, even as early as the Battle of Britain.
Cheers!
I bet if they made the engine nacelles P4M-1 style they would have had less issues with heat and get the bonus of jet engines. Making it again technically a 4 engined aircraft. If I were a german engineer I would suggest replacing the engines with four Fw 190D engines likely would have each engine behind the other running either a counter prop system in the front or a propeller on the front and back side of the nacelles like the F.222.2,
Usa has done something similar to the fast bomber with mixed propulsion bomber / patrol aircraft like the Neptune or P4M-1, 4 engined Aircraft, twin piston and jet engines. The latter had them in the same nacelle pods. On the griff’s platform this would be very helpful, it could also support reinforced wings due to having a large nacelle section, Getting rid of the need for fuel in other places if needed.
Interesting to contrast the He-177 with the Avro Manchester. Both were designed with coupled engines, with at least a shallow dive capacity, aimed at producing a twin with a heavy bomber capabilities. The German’s rejected the Do-19 and Ju-89 strategic bombers as pedestrian in performance as well as beyond the capacity of German industry to create in number or fuel. (When KG-1 got 90 He-177 operational, an operation needed 480 tonnes of fuel, at the time the entire daily output of aviation fuel)
The Rolls-Royce Vulture, (coupled Peregrines) were as big a disaster as the DB-610, but the British had the common sense to see the thing was a loser, redesigned the Manchester to use four Merlins to produce the Lancaster. The Germans kept trying to fix their mistake, the possibly effective He-274 with four BMW801s emerging way too late. A classic example of those in charge of a program refusing to admit they’d made a mistake.
I worked for a couple of companies that were the same way. Me and a maintenance man were observing one contraption we had at a unit and he summed up their refusal to change it by saying; they just can’t let go of a bad idea.
"Greif" rhymes with "wife".
It was conceptually flawed: they wanted a four-engine Stuka. No amount of technical changes were going to overcome that. So they wasted resources builting over 1,000 of these flying failures that could have gone into thousands more proven designs.
I saw that Revell 1:72 kit box art!
I read somewhere that eventually the He177 was developed enough so that it was actually a competent design and decent machine of war, however by that time it was mod 1944 or so and the Germans' days of massed bomber attacks were over. During Operation Steinbock it didn't do too badly in its limited numbers, operating singly and at night.
Just been reading about steinbock. And it was still a death trap. ...
@@animaltvi9515 It had the least losses during this operation.
@@animaltvi9515it had the lowest loss ratio of all german bombers during Steinbock.
And it flew a few very successful raids against the soviets with minimal losses and it proved its capabilities.
Over a thousand made, operated in combat for several years. So, not as unsuccessful an aircraft as many believe.
Subbed and liked, great content.. thank you for your passion and what you do sir
It had exactly the same problems as the Avro Manchester, bolt two engines in the same Nacelle, they overheat. It also had the same cure, a prototype 4 engined version was brilliant, but as usual did not meet the Nazi paranoia and was rejected. They could have called it the Heinkel Lacastereich.
Reichslancaster.
At 25:00 are those the henikel self guided X-1? Bombs under the wings?
Just one thing. Don't say 6,000lb of explosives when you mean 6,000lb of bombs. For example an SC500 bomb would weight in at 500kg (1,100lb) but less than half of it was explosives 220kg (490lb) of 40% amatol and 60% Trotyl for use against ground targets or Trilen (15% hexogen, 70% Trotyl andb15% aluminium powder) for use against ships.
Explosives is official shorthand for explosive thingies, but I admit I'm being a bit overly pedantic.
@@nopenheimer for whom? Most sources say bombs, ordnance or munitions. Bombs is always going to be shorter than explosives.
The shortcomings were made up in the flammability of the engines.
They could have reduced stress off the engines by removing the stupid idea of dive bombing with a 60,000 lb metal monster
*He 177 Operations in Russia*
The end of He l 77 operations in the West was by no means the end of the He 177 in Luftwaffe service. During the late spring of 1944, Kampfgeschwader l under Obstlt Horst van Riesen began converting to the aircraft, the first Gruppe moving to its operational airfields in East Prussia in May. Before the end of the month, 1./KG 1 was joined by II and III. Gruppe, and the Geschwader now comprised some ninety He l 77As, undoubtedly the most powerful striking force on the Eastern Front.
Operations began almost at once, the bombers striking at troop concentrations and Soviet supply centres in support of the German army. No attempt was made to strike at strategic targets although many were within range. The bombers attacked in daylight at about 6,000 m (20,000 ft) and losses were very low. The few Soviet fighters that managed to reach the bombers' attacking altitude rarely pressed home their attacks because of the formidable defensive armament of the He 177. Also, very few He 177s were lost because of engine fires; constant modifications had ensured that troubles suffered by the coupled engine installation were reduced to a minimum. The machines that did crash due to this cause were mainly those flown by inexperienced pilots who mishandled the throttles, causing the engines to overheat.
At one time, KG 1 made several pattern bombing attacks, the only time such tactics were employed by the Luftwaffe. During one such operation, von Riesen led 87 bombers in a mass attack on the railway centre of Velikye Luki. Flying in three waves, each comprising a Gruppe of some 30 aircraft, the He 177s must have been a most impressive sight.
From:
“German Aircraft of the Second World War” by J. R. Smith & Antony L. Kay
Pages 187 to 188
Copyright 1972
ISBN 85177 836 4
Excellent !
„Brennender Sarg“, „Reichsfackel“ oder „Reichsfeuerzeug“ 😂
B-29 engine fires downed more than the Japanese. Wasn’t just the Germans whose engines caught fire predicably
This is what happens when new tech is pressed into service before it is fully developed and mature enough to be reliable. 😎👍
@@lancerevell5979 …. Three rows of cylinders and the engines overheat. Surprise? Not. But include magnesium engines just to ensure combustion
No, two rows of nine in the R-3350 engine - 18 cylinders…
Had to upgrade things drastically, e.g. going to *Forged* Aluminum cylinder heads, with the fins cut by ganged slitting saws, to get usable reliability.
Great video, you kept it entertaining! Thanks.
Great video! Ignore any of the morons that try to give you GREIF over any mispronouciations. Cheers from Toronto.
I won't give him grief about the German word rhyming with life.
"mispronouciations" of German names is quite *m o r o n i c* tho, but I guess Mericans and Canuckians don't even know their own language... actually they don't really have their own language...
Very enjoyable. 👍🏻 I have always liked the aggressive look of the He-177. 😊
Like an aggro B29
Rule 1 new engine or new plane. Never both!
I have always wondered why not have both tractor and pusher engine props still get 4 engines with drag of two!
Great and informative video. The DB605 was a good power plant and was used on earlier aircraft, the BF-261 and He-119, with no issues. The He-177 was simply asked to do too many things and the Germans tried to turn it into a "super bomber", capable of doing everything. The concept could have worked better if Heinkel didn't take short cuts on the engine instillation and didn't try to make their new heavy bomber dive. By the time the He-177 became a competent design the Germans would have a greater need for more fighters and interceptors.
no self sealing fuel tanks
Great video
Worth an upvote just for the subtitle.
Ernest Heinkel proposed to rebuild the He 177 into an aircraft with 4 individually mounted engingine called the He 274 I eliminated the overheating problems of having g two motors driving g one propeller of the He 177 but Hitler interfered and project cancelled
The Nazis disliked Heinkel.
French aircraft factories and design bureaus were used to supplement Nazi aircraft manufacturing. The He-177 was one of those aircraft but the French made the changes to the He-274 layout of four motors similar to American and British heavy bombers.
Easy way to remember correct German pronunciation is that at any ie or ei pair one pronounces the second letter. Here "ee" and "eye", respectively.
Can you imagine Avro insisting the Lancaster would be a dive bomber. Udet was a bit hyper focused
Yeah, like Avro tried with the Manchester...
I understand that the paired engine design meant running fuel supply lines really close to hot exhaust manifolds.
I am not an engineer, but that seems like a problem waiting to happen.
The Avro Manchester was built with paired engines - and it liked to catch fire a lot.
So the Brits rebuilt it with 4 separate Rolls Royce Merlin engines and re-named it the Lancaster - and that worked just fine.
Avro Manchester was a twin engine design. From Wiki:
"Powerplant: 2 × Rolls-Royce Vulture I X-24 liquid-cooled piston engine, 1,760 hp (1,310 kW) each"
The Vulture engine was underdeveloped and unreliable.
@@lancerevell5979 Its even worse it's an 'X' engine specifically four 6 Cylinder Rolls-Royce Peregrine engine cylinder block in an X configuration, so prone to many similar issues 24 Cylinders in one engine unit that was not designed to be that from the outset seems like a bad idea to me anyway.
Where as the Merlin was a V-12 so had space to separate it's parts out more & I guess making the X 24 Cylinder engine gave them some idea what NOT to do as well..
@@lancerevell5979 I suspect that if Rolls Royce had put the development effort into the vulture it would have eventually become a mature design. What damned it was the decision at the beginning of the war to severely curtail or abandon development work on everything apart from the Merlin and Griffon as these engines were the most needed. You could build 2 Merlins for each Vulture and Merlins were much more useful, it was same with the Peregrine, why build a Peregrine when you can build. Merlin which was in much greater demand?
The flying touch
Nice pfp.
@@merafirewing6591 thx
@@KgaogelokhumoMojalefa you're welcome.
Sounds like the top of the list of the 10 worst WWII.
Two well spaced engines on each wing.
This video is a rather tired and exaggerated story. The HE-177 had serious teething issues, something it shared with the early B-17s and B-29s. The B-29 certainly killed more of its crews and American civilians on the ground. Seriously, the HE-177 wasn't even close in terms of losses, aborted missions, and crew fatalities. The B-17 was not much better until after the C model. Of the first 22 combat missions the B-17 flew on, nearly half were aborted due to mechanical and electrical problems. By 1944, the HE-177 was quite reliable. The Germans did not put nearly the amount of resources into perfecting the HE-177 as the allies did the B-29, mainly because they had limited resources and production capacity. The claim that it is not known how much damage the HE-177 did on the Eastern front is not correct. Both Soviet and German sources state they were quite effective against railyards and munitions depots disrupting Soviet supply efforts and timelines. On July 25, 1944, at the Bug River, near Brest-Litovsk, the HE-177 bombers of KG1 also destroyed the headquarters of the Soviet 80th Army Corps, killing the Soviet commander in the process. These planes hit the Soviet supply bases at Molodechno, southeast of Vilnius, Minsk, Velikiye Luki, Molodechno, and Novosokolniki. These raids entailed very few combat losses and minimal technical issues. Although not mentioned in the video, it is also falsely claimed in many English language accounts that HE-177s suffered very high losses when used as dive bombers against the Soviets, this is false, the units involved suffered loss rates no higher than on many B-17 squadrons routinely did, although they were not very effective when used as dive bombers (In the three days of intense divebombing operations during June 1944, II Kg.1 lost a total of 5 aircraft). At this stage of the war there were few reliability issues, as mentioned the lack of fuel grounded them.
When you compare the magnitude of B-17's built to the amount of He-177's built I feel like that can account for some of the difference in reliability and performance, much less of a sample size to work off of
Found the wehraboo! No way the B-17 had more issues!? Even though way more 177s were made? You are soooo right.
I’m happy to be corrected, but every example I can recall of ww2 aircraft designers coming up with the brilliant idea of “ coupling 2 piston engines together” ( rather than just adding additional engines or using a bigger more powerful design) always failed 😮...just a bad idea it would seem 😉
Two engines in the same nacelle with them behind each other might lower the profile and drag without quite so much heat build up perhaps. I suppose 4 propellers (2 of them pusher) is an option too or even just pusher props with wing leading edge radiators.
It's kinds like communism,
they just didn't do it well those times... 😅
Coupling 2 engines together was very successful when it came to radials. That's all a multi-row radial engine is... IIRC they started running into problems around 4 rows, but the 2 row was extremely successful.
One of those rigs where you want to get to bailout altitude ASAP
Why was the projected speed of the aircraft so far below the actual speed? Are there any history buffs that have any additional information? The high projected top speed could have been wishful thinking to get the contract to build the aircraft but the original calculations could have assumed that a certain level of surface finish was going to be achieved which did not materialise in the finished product. I am only guessing on that situation. The aircraft looks like it should have been faster than a 300mph aircraft. One additional area of increased drag was the German industry building higher drag radiators than the equivalent allied version due to using a lower pressure system.
The concept to reduce drag by coupling engines to one shaft and one propeller was not new. Avro had a unsuccesful try years earlier with the Manchester heavy bomber project. After the war Tupolev had another try with its TU95 Bear heavy bomber. Like the British (Lancaster), the Germans (He 277) earlier , the Russians transformed successfully their TU95 to a 4 engined 4 propeller driven airplane , which is used until today. In case of the Germans the He 277 came to late, bomber production was stopped in favour of emergency production of fighters and fighter bombers.
11:20 The Nazi “Good Idea Fairy” significantly contributed to the Allies victory in the war. 😂
Real shame about the 177, i honestly think its one of the best looking and on paper, best bombers if the war. Easily better than b-17's. Anyway its a real shame the whole engine issue never got ironed out. Much like the Tiger snd the Panther tanks that did get improved throughout the war.
The Griffin brought the Luftwaffe plenty of grief. Also, among bomber types were, dive, attack, and torpedo. Not to mention the kamikaze .. But the He-177 is proof that German technology was not always the greatest.
Catches fire? I knew that , everyone knew that , wait I thought we were talking about the jadgpanzer Elefant , we aren’t? I’m starting to sense a theme.
Jeremy "The Feck Wit Bully" Clarkson: IMMEDIATE TURNOFF.
What is interesting is the number of apologist for rushed design, bad design, or ineffective/dated design by the loosers of ww2. Intersting indeed.
I know the He 177 Greif under the nickname "Reichsfackel", i.e., Reich's torch.
As far as Axis use of anti-shipping aircraft, could be countered by effect patrols by escort carrier aircraft. They were the workhorses of the navy at the time.
For all their technical prosess, if there one thing the nazis never grokked thankfully, was to build bombers... They got close a couple of times but ultimately they were too puny with the He 111 being an honorable exceptions, their bombers were too weak, at least on the western front
reich lighter or even they called it "flying coffins".oh btw Greif means "Griffon" in German.
The Greif caused a bit of grief for some Germans. He He He
It looks like the engineers over at Arado took this for their jet powered AR-234. Thats one way to get more power!!
I almost laughed my way into an asylum with how much I started laughing at the dive bombing requirement.
German Air Crews continued to fly and die ...
knowing they were flying a Coffin.
A fun lesson for German pronunciations, if you have an ei, it's an I sound. Ie, gets an e sound 😁
We should always remember to thank the reich armaments industry for their assistance to the allied cause.
that dang heat thing.
it just keeps happening to ICEs,
doesn't it?
A normal person would have made a push pull configuration or made it contra rotating
The HE 177 was a rather nice looking bomber, but the DB 605 and DB610 engines were too tightly cowled and prone to catch fire at the most inopportune times, not a good thing.
Jeremy Clarkson, when top gear was good.
LOOK LUKE, it's the 'LOOFVAFA'.
Your map shows post-1992 Russia, but in WW2, there was no state called Russia, only the (larger) Soviet Union. Please don't create anachronisms.
Russian SFSR: Ah hmm…
@@haley746 Again, by WW2, the Russian SFSR was part of the Soviet Union.
One of the worst ww2 aircraft
There is a plane missing when it comes to the HE 177, the HE 277 Heinkel built at his own expense as a true four engined version.
Mmmhmm? The "rural bomber?" Not a single bit of foreshadowing, there, then?
G4M
... good grief.
RAMMSTEIN // REISE, REISE // 2004
The thing was a death trap. Dont know why the allies bothered shooting them down. They managed to set fire to themselves. . First the cooling system was bad causing them to overheat and catch fire they sorted that, then the conrods kept breaking causing holes in the crankcase causing fires. Sorted that then the propeller pitch mechanism started malfunctioning causing fires. . Because the engines were out of the pilots view , by the time he realised it was to late.
How about videos on WWII helicopters?
At least the crews wouldn't be cold in Russia....
@20:55 what is that!? a towed fuel tank on a glider? looks like a drop tank for a 109 but mounted on top of an airfoil.
Thought it was an external stabiliser for some test.
It is exactly that, a towed external fuel tank on a wing.
@@animaltvi9515 I've never seen one like that before. I knew that the US experimented with them in the early 40s, but I had no idea the Luftwaffe used them operationally.
I’ve read in the south pacific in 1942 the USAAF tried dive bombing with a B-17. I think General Kinney was the only commander who did that
617 Squadron RAF tried divebombing with Lancasters but at the time precision and Tallboys were their thing.
Seems this fine machine, along with the Avro Manchester & it's ruptured Vultures, basically amounted to a 'no-score draw' badly affecting both sides equally . . . apart from the Lanc's emergence. : )
Did anyone ever consider mounting the engines in a pusher-puller configuration? I am not an engineer, so I am making assumptions with very little knowledge, but it would seem that, while likely having more drag than the original layout, it would still be superior to a traditional 4 engine layout, while addressing, if not solving, the overheating issues.
That would actually increase the problems of overheating. As an aircraft mechanic the worst plane I had to work on was the Buick Skymaster. It has a push pull engine configuration. The rear engine has a heat problem due to the air being heated by the front engine. The advantage of this configuration is that if you lose an engine you still have thrust in line with the centerline of the aircraft. In fact many pilots will shut off the rear engine in flight if they don't need the extra thrust.
@@spyersecol0013 Much appreciated!
There's CG issues, too. Center of gravity, center of lift, center of drag, all have to be right and right with regards to one another. The front of the nacelle would have had to move forward a long way, the rear would have to be really close to the trailing edge of the wing.
Plus you're messing with room that's being used for things like oil tanks, hydraulics, landing gear, etc. It'd be easier to just change it into a 4 engine/4 nacelle design at that point.
WW2 BMW
"Pooooooowwwwwweeeerrrrr!!!!!!" J.C.
Any idea what is being towed in the photo at 21:10? Something that looks like a flying wing with a pod on top and twin landing gear?
Found a single picture on Flickr which calls it "flying fuel tank". Did a quick 5 minute search but couldn't find any details.
An experimental towed fuel tank perhaps? Drawn from first, it could be jettisoned before going over the target. 🤔
Please watch an episode of Nova and note what good narration sounds like.
A close family friend flew the 177 out of Brandenburg Briest in 1942 for First Group of KG50 in long range reconnaissance missions over Russia. They operated with 2 flight crews due to the very long duration of these modified 177s.
I love how the German word for the plane is very nearly 'grief'. As it was...
The plane was also griefed (in the modern slang sense) into being a dive bomber too.
Watch the video, it's not pronounced that way.
And learn a language, or at least a word.
Start at Forvo.
@@kiereluurs1243 It is a pun not a language lesson.
It's pronounced like "GRYPHE" and it is the german word for Gryffin/Gryphon. It has nothing to do with "grief", that would be "Kummer" or "Trauer" in german.
I still like the He177 Grief , even for all its Faults .. Good vid an time I Sub'd.
Good thing the americans never had this problem
...what about the superfortress
...i said no problem at all