Heinkel He 277

He 277
Role	Heavy Bomber/Amerika Bomber, design only
Manufacturer	Heinkel
Status	RLM airframe number issued by February 1943, cancelled in April 1944
Primary user	Luftwaffe
Number built	none completed, only parts built
Developed from	Heinkel He 177
Variants	Heinkel He 274

The Heinkel He 277 was a four-engine, long-range heavy bomber design, originating as a derivative of the He 177, intended for production and use by the German Luftwaffe during World War II. The main difference was in engine configuration. Rather than using two fire-prone Daimler-Benz DB 606 "power system" engines, each of which consisted of side-by-side paired Daimler-Benz DB 601s and with each DB 606 "power system" weighing 1.5 tonnes apiece — or two of the similar DB 610, each of which used a pair of DB 605 engines in a similar "twinned" configuration on later He 177A airframes (the A-3 model and onwards), the He 277 was meant from the outset to use four BMW 801E 14-cylinder radial engines, each mounted in an individual nacelle and each turning a three-blade, four-meter diameter propeller. The design was never produced, and not a single prototype airframe was ever completed, owing both to the deteriorating condition of the German aviation industry late in the war, and the competition from other long-range bomber designs from other firms, competing for Germany's increasingly scarce aviation production capacity. Although not specifically intended for it at first, partially due to the time-frame in the spring of 1942 in which its ultimate niche was requested for by the RLM, the He 277 design essentially became Heinkel's entry in the important trans-oceanic range Amerika Bomber competition, struggling to compete against both several other designs from rival firms in the competition for a truly trans-oceanic ranged bomber for the Luftwaffe, and Germany's own rapidly degrading ability, from Allied bombing damage to its aviation plants, to produce military aircraft of any sort.

For many years after the war, a substantial number of aviation history books and magazine articles that dealt with late World War II German military aviation developments consistently stated that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, early in World War II, was becoming so frustrated by the 177A's ongoing engine problems, caused by the twin DB 606 "coupled" powerplants selected for the He 177A design in the pre-war years, that he forbade Ernst Heinkel from doing any work on a separately four-engined version of the 177 airframe, or even mentioning a new "He 277" design with four separate engines – by one account, in the late autumn of 1941 – until Heinkel brought the disagreement directly to Adolf Hitler, who supposedly not only approved of calling the new, separately engined version of the 177 the "He 277", but overruled Göring's prohibition on working on the design (previously called the "He 177B" by Heinkel as a "cover designation" to hide its existence from Göring, and the RLM.)

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Wikipedia