Heinkel He 111 H-3

In the guise of an airliner

After the First World War Germany was forbidden to build military aircraft. The He 111, designed at Heinkel by the Günter brothers, was therefore developed with two faces: a civil aircraft for Lufthansa carrying a few passengers and mail, and a bomber built on the same airframe. Early versions had an elliptical wing; it was later replaced by a straight-edged wing that was easier to build.

The greenhouse nose

With the P and H versions the stepped cockpit gave way to a fully glazed, slightly asymmetric nose, with the pilot sitting on the left behind the panes. The view was excellent, but reflections from the sun and from searchlights caused problems. The bombs were carried inside the fuselage, nose up, in eight vertical cells.

The Battle of Britain and the Blitz

The He 111 fought in Spain, Poland, Norway and France. In the Battle of Britain it formed the Luftwaffe’s bomber force together with the Do 17 and the Ju 88. Its single, hand-aimed MG 15 guns were no match for the eight guns of the Hurricanes and Spitfires; daylight raids were costly, and more guns were added later.

From the autumn of 1940 the German bombers mostly flew at night. The great raid on Coventry in November 1940 was led by specially equipped He 111s that found the target by following radio beams.

A long service

During the war the He 111 also served as a torpedo bomber, a transport and a glider tug, and in 1944 it launched V-1 flying bombs from the air. In Spain, CASA 2.111s built with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines flew into the 1970s and played the He 111s in the 1969 film “Battle of Britain”.