Amerika Bomber
|
|
The Amerika Bomber project was an initiative of the German Air Ministry to obtain a long-range bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe that would be capable of striking the continental United States from Germany. Requests for designs were made to the major German aircraft manufacturers early in World War II, long before the US had entered the war.
The most promising proposals were based on conventional principles of aircraft design and would have yielded aircraft very similar in configuration and capability to the Allied heavy bombers of the day. These included the Messerschmitt Me 264 (an all-new design), the Focke-Wulf Fw 300 (based on the existing Fw 200), and the Junkers Ju 390 (based on the Ju 290). Prototypes of the Me 264 were built, but it was the Ju 390 that was selected for production. Only two prototypes were constructed before the programme was abandoned, although it is widely claimed (and widely disputed) that the second prototype made a trans-Atlantic flight to within 20km (12 miles) of the US coast in early 1944.
Other proposals were far more exotic jet- and rocket-powered designs. Perhaps the best-known of these today is Eugen Sänger's Silbervogel ("Silverbird") sub-orbital bomber. Slightly more conventional, the Horten brothers designed the Horten Ho XVIII, a flying wing powered by six turbojets based on experiences with their existing Ho X design. The Arado company also suggested a six-jet flying wing design, the Arado E.555. All of these projects were deemed too expensive and ambitious and were abandoned, although the British Air Ministry considered development of the Ho XVIII for an airliner after the war, and the theoretical groundwork done on the Silbervogel would prove seminal to lifting body designs of the space age.de:Amerika-Bomber