july 2016 AH 41ILLUSTRATION: STEVE KARP; PHOTOS: COURTESY OF WOLFGANG MUEHLBAUER
verted V-12s—was buried behind the cockpit and drove contra-
rotating props on its nose. The entire fuselage was cleanly cigar-
shaped, and the pressurized cockpit was the fully glazed tip of
the cigar, with the prop shaft running at biceps height between
the two pilots.
Lusser took a new cut at the concept and came up with a
tricycle-gear twin that also had a pressurized cockpit and ejec-
tion seats, plus remotely controlled defensive armament of the
sort that would later appear on the Boeing B-29. Many pub-
lished sources say the He-219’s nosewheel was steerable, which
would have been another notable innovation. But the Uhu’s
nosegear was in fact free-castering, swiveling only in response
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The ejection seat, however, was another matter. It was a major
advance that predated anything of the sort in Allied aircraft,
even though the British Martin-Baker company would go on
after the war to set the standard for fast-jet ejection seats. The
Germans and the Swedes had been working in parallel on
ejection-seat design. Both Saab and Dornier were designing
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would Cuisinart a pilot making a conventional bailout, and
Heinkel had the He-280 jet in the works. The need for assisted
bailout was becoming increasingly apparent; in the case of the
He-219, the crew sat well ahead of the propellers, and since the
reliability of Heinkel’s Katapultsitzen was questionable, those big
props would remain a fearsome obstacle throughout the air-
plane’s brief career.
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ent for a “bungee-assisted escape device” that fortunately never
went beyond the patent application paperwork. Saab accom-
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later, a German test pilot did it for real, punching out of an
He-280 proto type after encountering icing in a snowstorm. In
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Heinkel awarded each of them 1,000 Reichsmarks (equivalent
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ejected three times, his back-seater twice—unfortunately toolate for the Heinkel bonus.
Heinkel’s ejection seat
was operated not by an
explosive charge, like Saab’s,
but by compressed air stored
in an array of grapefruit-size
spherical tanks for each seat.
The system was vulnerable
to leakage and, of course,
battle damage to the pneu-
matics. About half the crew
departures from He-219s
were conventional jumps due
to inoperable ejection seats.T
he He-219’s entry
into combat was
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Only one Luft-
waffe night-fighter group,
162/PILJMMVIXXWZ-
tioned nearly all the existing
He-219s, many of them still
production prototypes. On
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the outfit attacked a huge
stream of RAF bombers
headed toward Düssel dorf.
In an hour and a quarter—CALCULATING THE RISK
An He-219 crew participates
in ejection-seat trials. Note
calibration markings and
lack of rear canopy.KATAPULTSITZEN
A German pilot
prepares to test the
Uhu’s ejection seat.IN APRIL 1944, AN
HE-219 PILOT AND
RADAR OPERATOR
EJECTED DURING
AN ATTACK BY A
MOSQUITO —THE
FIRST-EVER
COMBAT EJECTION.