Junkers EF128

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Hi folks,

A request for good quality 3-view drawings of the Messerschmitt Me P.1101 (or Bell X-5 derivative), Junkers EF128 and other fighter proposals of this ilk.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Greg
 
Junkers EF 128
 

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In my files,

there was intention to make a mixed-powered version of Junkers EF.128 (Jet + Rocket),
but no mixed-powered units were available prevented the progress in this Project by
the last months in WWII ?.
 
From "Luftwaffe Project Aircraft Nº1" by Dan Johnson and Daniele Sabatini, autoedition, 1999.
 

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official drawing regarding the nightfighters version?

Never seen anything reliable about this, it appears to be either a tall story or something Junkers merely had in mind but never actually studied. happy to be proved wrong.
 
official drawing regarding the nightfighters version?

Never seen anything reliable about this, it appears to be either a tall story or something Junkers merely had in mind but never actually studied. happy to be proved wrong.

There is one tiny fragment of contemporary information on it. This comes from the German Aircraft: New and Projected Types intelligence report of January 1946. The sum total of what it says is:

"Junkers EF 128 two-seat development
A variation of the EF 128 was planned as a two-seat night fighter. It was to have a lengthened fuselage."

And that's it.
 
Thank you, Dan. I don't suppose you ever put that in one of your books/bookazines?
 
Thank you, Dan. I don't suppose you ever put that in one of your books/bookazines?

I'm wary of including it because there is no other evidence of the design's existence and German Aircraft: New and Projected Types is verifiably wrong about one or two other things.
A stretched EF 128 would not have gone anywhere near meeting the Feb-April Chef-TLR night fighter requirements - which were for a three-seater twin-jet design capable of carrying a great deal of bulky equipment and fuel for long night missions. Furthermore, converting the Me 262 trainer into a basic twin-jet two-seater night fighter was a relatively simple process (and of course it was also proposed as a three-seater twin-jet design).
I can't really see how a two-seater EF 128 would fit into the picture of last-six-months aircraft development in Germany. If we assume that the line about the two-seater EF 128 is, nevertheless, accurate - when would it have been drawn up? When the earlier EF 128 was created, Oct 44-Jan 45, the night fighter spec was for a large mixed propulsion design - so it doesn't fit with that. The later EF 128 overlaps with the requirements for much larger designs.
I suppose Junkers might have been trying to curry favour by emphasising the potential adaptability of the fundamental design but without any hard evidence it's impossible to be sure.
And what would it have looked like? The drawing usually presented as the EF 128 night fighter, with unusual shading not seen on any other period drawings, offers a cutaway side view which appears to have the crew seated side by side, but the intelligence report only says it was lengthened, not widened. The drawing could be real but we don't know its source and it could very easily be a postwar 'interpretation'. As far as the period Junkers design is concerned, we don't know any dimensions or details of armament, equipment or fuel load.
The two-seater night fighter EF 128 falls into the same category as the Henschel P 132 flying wing fighter - probably real but almost anything you could write about it would be speculation. In fact, as I've detailed elsewhere, a lot more is actually known about the Henschel P 132!
 
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I can't really see how a two-seater EF 128 would fit into the picture of last-six-months aircraft development in Germany.
Presumably as a contemplated "late submission" to the Schlechtwetter/NachtJaeger requirement which spawned the B&V P 215. But I would agree that it could be no more an extended EF 128 than the P 215 was an extended P 212, their competitor to the EF 128.

Oddly, where B&V's assistant chef designer Hermann Pohlmann notes that an order for development prototypes of the P 215 was received a couple of weeks before Hamburg was overrun, he makes no mention of the similar P 212 go-ahead decision made at the same time as the EF 128 go-ahead. Indeed, he remarks that although the P 212 was well received, no development contract was forthcoming and instead one would arrive for the P 215; "Der dementsprechende Entwicklungsauftrag kam dann aber doch nicht, dafür aber einige Monate später, im März 1945, ein anderer für einen großen zweistrahligen und dreisitzigen Schlechtwetter- und Nacht-Jäger — Projekt P 215 — der in seiner Grundkonzeption ein stark vergrößertes und verbessertes Projekt P 212 war."

I have a "what-if" plastic kit of the EF 128 night fighter and it provides two seats in tandem. Many of these kits are based on good research (I also have a B&V Ae 607, which is fairly accurate to the drawing), but I too have never seen a drawing of this. There is also a kit of the single-seater by another manufacturer, which I have on my shopping list.

What I find instructive is to compare the root aerofoil profiles drawn in many of the side elevations with Teutonic thoroughness. On these tailless types, around 1942 there seems to have been a general switch from reflex camber, as typified by the Me 163, to symmetrical aerofoils with higher critical mach number, as on the DM-1 delta glider. The early EF 128 drawing displays the former, the late drawing only a couple of months later has the latter. There seems to be a general abandonment of washout as well (which would have brought back the old problem of stalling first at the tips and losing elevon control for recovery). Designers were clearly sharing the latest wind tunnel findings from the academic researchers; a whole alternative slant on German jet development.
 
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I question the logic of installing rudders at half-span. They would contribute far more to yaw stability and control if mounted farther aft (e.g. at wing tips).

Since those vertical fins do not extend forward of the leading edge (ala. MiG-15) I doubt if they do anything to control span-wise airflow.
 

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