Heinkel He 280-B1, France September 1940

[nönöbär]

Heinkel He 280-B1

The Plane:

The Heinkel He 280 was the first Jet fighter build. First flown as a glider on Sep. 22. 1940, the first jet powered flight was made on March 30, 1941. The plane never got into full production, only 9 prototypes were build. it's performance was inferior to the Me262 - which was of a more modern design - however if the contruction of this aircraft would have been pushed, it would have been possible to get it in full scale production by the end of 1941.

The Story (what-if):

After the flight of the first jet powered Heinkel aircraft, the He 178 on Sep. 27 1939, the new kind of propulsion system had a huge inpact on the Luftwaffe high command. Therefore, a new fighter aircraft, the He 280 was planned to test the capabilities of the new jet eninges on a real combat aircraft. The first prototype flew in Feb 1940 and it was rushed into production soon. Armed with 3x 20mm cannons, but with a lower range than the standard Me 109E fighter, the first production aircraft entered Luftwaffe service in August 1940. With the ongoing Battle of Britain, the B-model was developed including a drop tank and bigger internel fuel load, trippling the range to over 650 miles. On September 13th 1940, the first flight of four He280 were used for an offensive fighter sweept over southern England, shooting down 2 Hurricanes and a Spitfire without a single loss.  In the follwing weeks, more He280 were used in this role, but the new engines required much more service than the well known piston ones. Therefore the operational status of those jet fighters was only 40% of the Me109 or Me110.
A total of three He280 were lost over Britain, two crahsed into the Channel and one of them made a belly landing new Royal Turnbridge Wells. The remains of the aircraft were transported to Farnborough for further investigation.

With the intruduction of the Me 242 in late 1942, the production of the He280 was reduced and finally stopped in April 1943.









German Jetfighter collection


France, September 1940

The Model:

The model is a 1/72 Huma kit. Huma was a German manufacturer who produced a lot of German prototype aircraft of WW2. The kit is pretty basic, with less than 30 parts. It was build OOB, just adding an adiditonal drop tank. It was painted with Revel Aqua colors and I tried a little bit of weathering to it for the first time. Despite what I read about the Huma decals, they were quite good and were extended with some additional decals.

[NARSES2]

Now that's nice  I still have a fair few Huma kits in the stash. Some nice subjects and quite nice builds