Potentially one of the Luftwaffe's most effective night-fighters, the Heinkel He 219 Uhu (owl) was another aircraft which suffered from misjudgements by senior members of the government and Luftwaffe high command. It derived from Heinkel's private-venture P.1060 fighter-bomber proposal, which received little encouragement until 1941 when it was seen to have promise as a night-fighter. An all-metal shoulder-wing monoplane, the He 219 seated the pilot and navigator back-to-back, was the first operational aircraft in the world to introduce ejection seats, and was also the Luftwaffe's first operational aircraft with tricycle landing gear. The first prototype was flown on 15 November 1942, powered by two 1305kW Daimler-Benz DB 603A engines; the second prototype, flown in December, had a different armament installation. Following evaluation of one of the prototypes in mock combat against a Dornier Do 217N and a Junkers Ju 88S, an 'off the drawing board' order for 100 aircraft was increased to 300; further prototypes were used in the aircraft's development programme. From April 1943 a small number of He 219A-0 pre-production aircraft flew with 1.NJG 1 at Venlo in the Netherlands, and on the night of 11 June 1943 Major Werner Streib shot down five Avro Lancasters in a single sortie. The first six operational sorties flown by the unit resulted in claims for 20 RAF aircraft, including six de Havilland Mosquitoes. Despite cancellation of the programme in May 1944, production deliveries of a number of versions were made, principally to 1./NJG 1 and NJGr 10.

3-View

A three-view drawing (1625 x 1115)