Heinkel He 111
The mainstay of the Luftwaffe bomber arm — until there was no bomber arm left.
The He 111 defined the Luftwaffe's bomber force. Its glazed nose gave it an unmistakable silhouette over London, Rotterdam, Belgrade, and Leningrad. By 1943 it was obsolete, but production continued: there was simply nothing else to take its place, and the Luftwaffe's strategic mission was over by then anyway.
01Developed in the mid-1930s as a "civil airliner" in evasion of Versailles restrictions. Combat-proven in the Spanish Civil War; mainstay of early-war Blitzkrieg campaigns.
02Suffered heavily in the Battle of Britain against modern defences. It was never replaced by the planned successor (the disastrous He 177 "Greif" heavy bomber), so the He 111 was pressed into every conceivable role — torpedo bomber in the Arctic, transport at Stalingrad, V-1 launch platform in 1944.
03Post-war production continued under licence in Spain as the CASA 2.111, with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines replacing the original Junkers units. Spanish He 111 lookalikes famously stood in for Luftwaffe bombers in the film "Battle of Britain" (1969).
Theatres of operation
- ·Every theatre of the European war
Principal operators
- ·Luftwaffe
- ·Regia Aeronautica
- ·Hungarian Air Force
- ·Spanish Air Force
Others in the same fight.
Avro Lancaster
B.I / B.III / B.X
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress
B-17E / F / G
Consolidated B-24 Liberator
B-24D / H / J / L / M
Boeing B-29 Superfortress
B-29 / B-29A / B-29B