Luft(hansa) 46 - German post-war four-engined jet airliner

[PALG]

Hi everyone

This post is well overdue, considering I finished it a year ago now. I first referred to it almost three years ago here in the Fatherland 1964 thread here: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,15039.msg210422.html#msg210422. 

I was reminded of it by the posting some months ago of a whiff DC-3 converted to a jet airliner (I am sorry, I cannot recall the poster).

It's a whif post-war German short-medium haul jet airliner for both German defeat and German victory scenarios.  A four-engined airliner with a passenger capacity of 28-36 seats in this configuration with potential for a stretched cabin and increased capacity.

I have two lengthy backstories so I hope no-one minds reading a long monologue – I've put them at the very end, to spare those who don't want to.

The J 100 / JM 100

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0061.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0084.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0063.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0067.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0073.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0082.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/IMG_0086.jpg

Construction

Kitbashed using an Airfix 1:72 Me 262 (among the worst kits I have ever seen – one half of it looked literally like it was detailed by hand by someone using a toothpick) and among other miscellaneous odds and end, engines constructed from tube and with cowlings from several milk straws – those ones containing flavouring granules.

Said engines: http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/DSCN2687.jpg

In short, I broke the nose and reset it: http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/DSCN2245.jpg

I increased the forward sweep of the wings to reflect the designs evident in real world jet airliners (Comet, jetliner etc): http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/DSCN2664.jpg

Cut out and filled the cockpit hump: http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/DSCN2244.jpg

And modified the tail fin: http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/DSCN2245.jpg

Some crapola drilling by hand to simulate cabin windows: http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/DSCN2278.jpg

I used styrene strip to give the impression of cockpit glazing – while not entirely happy with it, I think it emulates a German look suitable to the early post-war period.

Obviously not a lot of skill evident, and thankfully it was more a proof-of-concept job anyway.  But I'm pleased enough with it to have started upscaling it using a 1:48 fuselage with engines from a 1:72 Arado 234-C3/C4: http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh203/PALG/Lufthansa%2046/?action=view&current=IMG_0088.jpg



I'd like to ask a question I just cant resolve myself.  With the upscaled version I am working on, should I use the existing Me 262 tailfin modified as here  – or should I scratchbuild a twin-fin structure instead ?  As you can see,  the tail does look rather oversize.  Due to the design there is not much I can do to modify the design or reduced the size of the existing tail – its hard (for me at least) to work with.  Also, its clear that many Luft 46 designs for large jet bombers and prop liners favoured the twin fin tail configuration.   I'd appreciate any views you might have.

Also...

On a related matter – I only today discovered the experimental Vickers Tay-Viscount (http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/vickers_tayviscount.php). Looks like it might have made a magnificent commercial success if given the chance – based on the information provided, anyway.  Along with the Avro Aston and the Avro Jetliner, an intriguing post-war commercial jet whif.



Backstory 1 – German Victory

As German forces consolidated their hold on eastern gains as far as the Baltic, aviation planners began preparing for the challenge of maintaining an efficient occupational and postwar administration for the new territories both east and west, as well as the promise of post-war commercial opportunities inside the expanded Reich and beyond, on the Meditterranean, African and Near Eastern commercial routes.

In 1942 the Reich Aviation Ministry issued specifications for short to medium haul commercial passenger designs that could also be further or jointly developed for military transport or bombing requirements. Propulsion requirements were left open, to evolved prop  or jet propulsion.

The selected design would fulfill Lufthansa and military air transport requirements to service lebensraum colonial centres in the east  and the occupational administrations across Europe, from France to the Governate-General of Poland and beyond, to the Ukrainian and Baltic occupied territories.

The foremost result of this was the JM 100A, a joint response by Messerschmitt and Junkers using the former's emerging expertise with jet propulsion and related airframe design (and that bureau's desire to spread to the civil market) and the latter's expertise with large civil commercial and transport designs.

A four-engined 28-36 seat passenger transport with a cruise speed of 695 km/h, range 1800 km and ceiling of 11,800 mtrs, the JM 100A first flew in January 1946 and was in Lufthansa service by August 1947 servicing all routes from Germany to western, northern, central, southern and eastern Europe, northern and north-eastern Africa, and further afield with requisite refuelling to Iraq and other Middle Eastern destinations.  Longer range and stretched developments were soon underway culminating in 1952 with the 72 seat JM 100C on routes to the Far East with a cruise speed of 800 km/h and 5050 km range.

Luxury variants were immediately taken up for the VIP role, starting with the Fuhrer's personal flight, though he only used the aircraft for the furthest destinations.

Though not immediately adapted for military strike use, the JM 100 was used as the starting point for post-victory medium to long range heavy bomber development, including for the Luftwaffe's second-generation atomic strike capability.


Backstory 2 – German Defeat

P.O.D. from reality – in Germany's post war economic nadir, the allied authorities in the western zones resolve to lift  restrictions on the Germany's high end industries as a key measure to stimulating the western German economy and bolster the inevitable West German state – which was was looking more and more likely as a necessary economic and military bulwark against the Soviet sphere.

Western Allied governments allow the return to Germany of a range of lower-end designers and specialists from all the major design bureaus and gave limited approval for the development of civil aviation projects.  The remnant design houses of German aviation seize this opportunity and formed the Jumo syndicate with the genuine intention of pursuing excellence in civil aviation design and demonstrating German industry's capacity for  technological achievement in peacetime. 

In mid-1948 approval is sought and granted for the development of commercial airliners.  The Allied approval is tentative due to the budding ambitions of their own respective post-war domestic aviation industries, but the project is justified as a worthwhile and even necessary demonstration of the success of peacetime western Germany under the US, British and French authorities.

The German syndicate got underway at breakneck speed, obviously benefitting from the recent wartime experience and unfulfilled late-war jet design projects – as it was expected to do.

The nascent West German Government encouraged the project. With a prototype under construction by late 1949, the Jumo design enterprise appeared set to pull off a post-war miracle.  At this point the project began to attract increasing and ongoing attention in the western press from aviation and foreign correspondents. 

In July 1950, Jumo unveiled the J 100 prototype – a four-engined 28-36 seat passenger transport with a intended speed of 695 km/h, range 1800 km and ceiling of 11,800 mtrs.  Ascetically, the J 100 was immensely pleasing with its sharp-nosed, elegant, tapering form and early demonstration flights looked extremely promising. There were of course flaws and shortcomings, most notably the underpowered engines which didn't quite meet targets, evolved military designs from the war.  It was in this respect and others that the absence of Germany's  leading senior designers was most felt. 

But none of the shortcomings evident in the prototype were at all regarded by aviation observers as overwhelming, but as the usual manifestations of any aviation development process. Jumo technicians got on with the job of attending to engine power issues and drawing up plans for stretched versions with increased capacity, determined to make this miracle project a serious contender against Britain's Comet and other emerging designs such as Canada's very promising Jetliner. Few industry observers doubted that the Jumo syndicate would very soon equal and then surpass contemporary projects in other western countries.

However, the western public in France and especially Britain and the USA were increasingly hostile to the project, fuelled by tabloid rumours of Nazi gold being funnelled into the project and the shadowy involvement of the bloodied hands of Germany's leading wartime industrialists. The aircraft's obvious design inheritance from Germany's wartime jet aviation  projects was poured over in western media to an absurd extent.

The aviation industries in all three countries were delighted by the public outrage, and applied growing pressure on their respective governments to throttle the project.  As a still sensitive western public whipped itself into a frenzy, what had been tabloid sensationalism now loomed as the stuff of government enquiries.

When questions were asked in Congress, the US Government decided to act and by March 1951, the West German Government shut down the J 100 research and production lines and forcibly broke up the Jumo syndicate into its constituent parts, who all pursued smaller projects – such as Messerschmitt, who went onto to make the 3-wheeled bubble car  thing (just kidding – I love those things).

[bluedonkey99]

 
The J 100 / JM 100  - I'm liking it, a lot! 

[ysi_maniac]

Very nice and imaginative!

[Brian da Basher]

It may have been my DC-J you saw which is on today's Silly Week update over on ARC that jogged your memory. Your four-engined Lufthansa jetliner is a wonder to behold! This is some incredible kitbashing!

Here's one of my favorite pics:



Excellent work!

Brian da Basher

[kitbasher]

Now I'm no airliner buff but that's very, very nice.  My own take on a Luft(hansa) '46 jet has always been modifying a 1/72 Me 262 (or more likely the Me P1099) but staying with the two engines.  This scales out almost exactly the same as a 1/144 B737 so it'd have to be called an Me 737!   

[PALG]

Thanks for your comments.

Brian, that was your DC jet then - I liked it it a lot. 

Now I'm no airliner buff but that's very, very nice.  My own take on a Luft(hansa) '46 jet has always been modifying a 1/72 Me 262 (or more likely the Me P1099) but staying with the two engines.  This scales out almost exactly the same as a 1/144 B737 so it'd have to be called an Me 737!   

I think yr absolutely right about using using a P1099 basekit - its fuselage may be the best suited for adapting to an airliner, its got the right shape.  I had thought of using an He 280 but there were none easily available to me that were cheap enough, and that fuselage would have actually required quite  bit of work - especially as it was such a narrow airframe.  But GREAT twin-fin tail config tho - would have been great for this model.

So did anyone have an opinion on how I should do the tail for my upscaled version - should i go twin fin and scratchbuild? would that look better than the existing design i'v followed using the Me 262 tail ?

[sequoiaranger]

The "commercial" jetliner from an Me-262 came out better than I would have expected. I like it!

[batmancustoms]

Very nice!!!!!!

[dumaniac]

I like your Luft 46 airliner - one alternative is to use something like the triple tail from the airliners in 72 scale.  But otherwise the current tail fin looks fine - it is after all Luft 46 - or Luft 56.  cheers Dumaniac

[ElectrikBlue]

Lovely jetliner! 
It makes me think of the 'Avro Canada C102' with swept wings!