Hs 132

[dy031101]

What if the dive bomber made it into service and was later reverted to conventional seating arrangement?

Prone cockpit had been brought up by quite a few countries during their aeronautics research, but none ended up adopting it for military service.  I mean, there's no telling if Germany would have arrived at the same conclusion......

[Jschmus]

Put a conventional cockpit in it, and you've got another version of the He-162, perhaps built to more strenuous standards.

[dy031101]

There is a scale problem here. Using engine length as a rough guide, the He-162 cockpit looks more like this ...

Dang, I didn't think too much of it. 

If we keep the original landing gear bay locations, the nose gear wouldn't be retracted below the cockpit...... of course there're still the question of where to put the cannons.

[dy031101]

Moving to a general ground-attack role might make more sense.

I've been wondering if dive-bombing would still have been as much as or more useful than heavy cannons and rockets to the Luftwaffe by the late stages of the WWII.

I've added a heavily armoured canopy since there's no rear view anyway (a factor in choosing the prone position cockpit in the first place.

Much better!