Henschel Hs 129
Close support and ground attack aircraft

Henschel Hs 129 B-3/Wa

Henschel Hs 129
Type: Close support, ground attack and anti-tank aircraft.
History: Though there were numerous types of specialised close support and ground attack aircraft in World War I, this category was virtually ignored until the Spanish Civil War showed, again, that it is one of the most important of all. In 1938 the RLM issued a specification for such an aircraft - ­the whole purpose of the Luftwaffe being to support the Wehrmacht in Blitzkrieg-type battles - to back up the purpose-designed Ju 87 dive bomber.
Henschel's Dipl-Ing F. Nicholaus designed a trim machine some  what resembling the twin-engined fighters of the period but with more armour and less-powerful engines (two 495hp Argus As 410A-1 air-cooled inverted-vee-12s). The solo pilot sat in the extreme nose behind a windscreen 3in thick, with armour surrounding the cockpit. The triangular-section fuselage housed self-sealing tanks, guns in the sloping sides and a hardpoint for a bomb underneath.

Test pilots at Rechlin damned the A-0 pre-poduction batch as grossly underpowered, but these aircraft were used on the Eastern Front by the Romanian Air Force. The redesigned B-series used the vast numbers of French 14M engines that were available and in production by the Vichy government for the Me 323. Altogether 841 B-series were built and used with considerable effect on the Eastern Front but with less success in North Africa.

A Henschel Hs 129B-2/R2 of Schlachtgeschwader 9 on the Eastern Front, spring 1943 but still in winter colours.

The B-1/R1 had two 7,92mm MG 17 and two 20mm MG 151/20, plus two 110lb or 48 fragmentation bombs.
The R2 had a 30mm MK 101 clipped underneath and was the first aircraft ever to use a 30mm gun in action.
The R3 had a ventral box of four MG 17.
The R4 carried up to 551lb of bombs.
The R5 had a camera for vertical photography.

The B-2 series changed the inbuilt MG 17s for MG 131s and other subtypes had many kinds of armament including the 37mm BK 3.7 of the Ju 87 G. The most novel armament used against Russian armour with results that were often devastating, was a battery of six smooth-bore 75mm tubes firing recoilless shells down and to the rear with automatic triggering as the aircraft flew over metal objects.
The Hs 129B equipped also the three squadrons of the 8th Assault Wing of the Royal Romanian Air Corps.

In May 1944 this Hs 129B-2 was fitted at Travemunde with a mockup of a 75mm BK 7.5 (Pa K40) cannon installation for testing. About 24 or 25 Hs 129B-3 were fitted with this anti-tank weapon. In emergency, the entire installation could be jettisoned.

But the most impressive weapon was the huge PAK 40 anti-tank gun of 75-mm calibre. This gun weighed 1,500 kg (3,306 lb) in its original ground-based form and fired a 3.2-kg (7 lb) tungsten-carbide cored projectile at 933 m/s (3,060 ft/sec). Even at a range of 1,000 m (3,280 ft), the shell could penetrate 133mm ( 5 1/2 in) of armour if it hit square-on. Modified as the PaK 40L, the gun had a much bigger muzzle break to reduce recoil and electro-pneumatic operation to feed successive shells automatically. Installed in the Hs 129B-3/Wa, the giant gun was provided with 26 rounds which could be fired at the cyclic rate of 40 rounds per minute, so that three or four could be fired on a single pass. Almost always, a single good hit would destroy a tank, even from head-on. The main problem was that the PaK 40L was too powerful a gun for the aircraft. Quite apart from the severe muzzle blast and recoil, the sheer weight of the gun made the Hs 129B-3/Wa, almost unmanageable, and in emergency the pilot could sever the gun's attachments and let it drop.

The Hs 129B-3/Wa anti-tank aircraft fiited with the 7.5cm anti-tank gun with electro-mechanical loading. This aircraft served on the Eastern Front with Schlachtgeschwader 9 during the winter of 1944-45.

In late September 1944, the entire manufacturing programme was abandoned, along with virtually all other German aircraft except for the 'emergency fighter programme'. Total production had amounted to only 870, including prototypes. Because of attrition and losses, the Hs 129 was never able to equip the 'flying guns' anti-tank force that would have been needed against Soviet tanks.

Users: Germany, Hungary, Romania.

3d model of Heinschel Hs 129B-3/Wa.