Top speed 800 km/h Length 9.4 m Weight 4,500 kg | Wingspan 4 m Cruise speed 553 km/h Engine type Reciprocating engine | |
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Il21946 heinkel lerche
The Heinkel Lerche (English: Lark) was the name of a set of project studies made by German aircraft designer Heinkel in 1944 and 1945 for a revolutionary VTOL fighter and ground-attack aircraft.
Contents
The Lerche was an early coleopter design. It would take off and land sitting on its tail, flying horizontally like a conventional aircraft. The pilot would lie prone in the nose. Most remarkably, it would be powered by two contra-rotating propellers which were contained in a donut-shaped, nine-sided annular wing.
The remarkably futuristic design was developed starting 1944 and concluding in March 1945. The aerodynamic principles of an annular wing were basically sound, but the proposal was faced with a whole host of unsolved manufacture and control problems which would have made the project highly impractical, even without the materials shortages of late-war Nazi Germany.
Specifications (Lerche II)
Figures below are given for the 'Lerche II' plan dated 25 Feb 1945.Data from
General characteristics
or 2 × Daimler-Benz DB 603E V-12 liquid-cooled direct fuel-injected piston engines 2,400 PS (1,800 kW)(1 PS (Pferdestärke) = 0.736 kW = 0.98632007272 hp)
Performance
Armament