Heinkel He111 H-16/H-20

Description

Product

Heinkel He111 H-16/H-20

Description

In the mid-1930s, after Hitler’s rise to power and Germany’s effective departure from the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, the aircraft manufacturer Ernst Heinkel Fleugzeugwerke developed the successful He 111 twin-engine medium bomber. Initial versions of the design had an elliptical wing shape and a classic fuselage layout, but later versions such as the He 111P were built from the outset with a simpler and better engineered trapezoidal wing, as well as a new fuselage to improve aerodynamic performance and optimizing the location of the crew inside the aircraft.
In 1938, there was a problem with a shortage of the Daimler Benz engines installed on the He 111P and so the designers had to replace them with another type, the Jumo 211, while leaving the rest of the structure unchanged. This modification of the type was designated He 111H. At the beginning of 1939, the production of the He 111H first equaled that of the He 111P and then surpassed it. By September 1939, and the initiation of full-scale combat operations, the numbers of the H variant was already half of all available He-111 aircraft.