36 HEAVY FIGHTERS OF WW2
T
he aggressive-looking Henschel
Hs 129 could be considered the A-10
of its day. The only aircraft of World
War 2 to be designed as a dedicated ground
attack and tank killer, this twin-engined
fighter was hampered by lack of power and
unreliable engines. In the event it was never
available in sufficient numbers to have any
significant impact.
The Henschel Hs 129 was born out of a 1938
Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) specification
for a twin-engine ground-attack aircraft. It was
to be heavily armed and to have extensive
armour plating protection for crew and engines.
Since the aircraft was expected to be attacking
its targets directly in low level strafing runs, the
cockpit had to be located as close as possible
to the nose in order to see the ground. Finally,
the RLM insisted on the design being built
around twin Argus AS410 engines. Henschel’s
resulting tank-killer was built around a single
large ‘bathtub’ of steel that made up the entireHenschel Hs 129
nose area, completely enclosing the pilot up
to head level. Even the canopy was steel, with
only tiny windows on the side to see out of and
two angled blocks of glass for the windscreen.
In order to improve the armour’s ability to
stop bullets, the fuselage sides were angled
to form a triangular shape, resulting in almost
no room for the pilot to move at shoulder
level. There was so little room in the cockpit
that the gunsight was mounted outside on
the nose. The prototype flew in the spring of
1939 and was flown competitively against
the rival Fw 189. Both aircraft performed
particularly badly in the tests, showing sluggish
performance, but the Hs 129 eventually won
because it was cheaper to produce and was
smaller. Eight pre-production Hs 129As were
sent to a Luftwaffe trials unit for evaluation,
but pilot reports were damming because ofthe lack of power and visibility. Consequently,
Henschel modified its design to be fitted with
captured French Gnome-Rhône 14M radial
engines. Other improvements centred on a
revised cockpit, which was given larger areas of
armoured glass and improved vision.
The production Hs 192B-1 series went into
service in April 1942 and became operational
on the Eastern front, where it was to see most of
its success employed primarily as an anti-tank
aircraft. However, on-going engine unreliability
would continue to haunt the design. This
became even more of an issue when the aircraft
was sent to North Africa and it encountered
sand ingestion.
By the end of 1942, the growing capability
of Soviet tank battalions made it essential to
develop a version of the aircraft with greater
fire-power, leading to the Hs 129B-2 series,
Below: To keep the risk of damage by small arms fire to a minimum, the Hs 129 was designed to have a
small cross-sectional area, giving its fuselage a very angular appearance. Captured in North Africa, this
Hs 129B was flown to the US for evaluation and carried the ‘Foreign Equipment’ registration FE-4600.