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Heinkel He 111 — Germany’s Jack of All Trades by Will Dabbs MD

Lt. Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev was a Russian P-39 Airacobra pilot during World War II. The peculiar mid-engine P-39 offered fairly poor high-altitude performance and was subsequently relegated to second-line duties by the US Army Air Corps.

However, the Russians desperately needed a nimble ground attack plane. The massive 37mm cannon that fired through the Airacobra’s propeller hub was just the ticket. The Soviets gratefully received 4,773 of the little planes under Lend-Lease.

Heinkel He 111 bombers on a mission during World War II
The Heinkel He 111 was widely used by the Germans in a variety of roles throughout the Second World War. Image: NARA

Lt. Devyatayev had a successful combat career. He flew some 180 combat missions during the war, downing a Stuka dive bomber as well as an Fw 190 in the process. However, in the summer of 1944, his luck ran out. Shot down near Lviv, Ukraine, Devyatayev was taken prisoner by the Germans.

A Hard, Brutal World

Life on the Western Front during World War II was horrible. The fight between the Germans and the Russians in the East was absolutely feral. The Western Front was a fight for domination. The Eastern Front was a fight for extermination. At 27 years of age, Lt. Devyatayev ended up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Heinkel He 111 as a torpedo bomber in the North Atlantic
Germany used the Heinkel He 111 as a torpedo bomber in the North Atlantic. Image: NARA

Had the Germans in the camp discovered that Devyatayev was a fighter pilot, they would have killed him outright. As a result, the resourceful young flyer took the identity of a Soviet infantryman who died in the camp and successfully passed himself off as a conscript. In this capacity, he was shipped to Peenemünde to work as slave labor building V2 missiles for the Germans.

German Heinkel He 111 E bombers in flight
German Heinkel He 111 E bombers in flight during fighting on the Eastern Front. Image: Polish National Digital Archive

Administered by the SS, the German slave labor program consumed millions of lives. Russian POWs were maintained on starvation rations and then worked until they died. Realizing that he and his mates were doomed if they didn’t do something drastic, Devyatayev began actively looking for a way out. He found it at an airfield adjacent to their work site.

Their Ticket Home

The Luftwaffe flew Heinkel He 111 bombers out of the nearby airfield. Lt. Devyatayev had never flown a twin-engine bomber and had never seen the inside of a He 111. However, one day when the sentries broke for lunch, Devyatayev and a handful of his mates killed a German guard with a sharpened crowbar and stole his uniform.

One of the Russians then donned the dead man’s bloody clothes and proceeded to march his fellow prisoners across the tarmac. The Luftwaffe ground crewmen took little notice.

German pilots in cockpit of Heinkel He 111
A crew in the cockpit of a Heinkel He 111 of Kampfgeschwader 4, a German bomber wing. This photo was taken between June 1940 and June 1941 while stationed at Soesterberg Air Base. Image: Dutch Ministry of Defence

The first He 111 they came to was locked and had no batteries. Devyatayev and his friends pried the door open while one of their group secured a ground power unit. In the process, they encountered another small group of Russians and invited them to come along. With a total of 10 Russian POWs packed into the plane, Lt. Devyatayev got busy.

The desperate Russian aviator did get the big plane cranked, but he had no idea what he was doing. He inadvertently spun the aircraft around the parking apron before getting it roughly pointed in a takeoff direction. On his first attempt, he failed to attain flying speed and had to abort. Snapping the big plane around, he tried again and finally broke ground.

crewman mans MG 15 in He 111 during the invasion of Poland
A Luftwaffe crewman mans a MG 15 machine gun in a He 111 during the Invasion of Poland, 1939. Image: Public Domain

Devyatayev successfully avoided a Ju 88 launched to intercept them, as well as Russian fighters they encountered en route. Upon landing in Russian-held territory, Devyatayev and his men were arrested as traitors by the NKVD. When they related all they knew about the V2 program, they were eventually released.

Heinkel He 111 on the tarmac at Vliegbasis Eindhoven
This Heinkel He 111 sits on the tarmac at Vliegbasis Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Image: Dutch Ministry of Defence

Lt. Devyatayev was finally recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1957. He died in 2002 at age 86. The German medium bomber that spirited him and his buddies to safety formed the backbone of the Luftwaffe’s bomber fleet early in the war.

The Machine

The He 111 was originally designed in 1934 nominally as a fast airliner. The Germans were still pretending to be constrained by the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I and restricted their military aspirations. However, the sleek, fast, twin-engine Heinkel was clearly a warplane. What had begun as a mandate to create the world’s fastest passenger airplane soon morphed into an overtly military project.

scale drawing of Heinkel He 111 K
Two-sided scale drawing of the Heinkel He-111 K, a bomber aircraft of the German Luftwaffe from World War II. Image: Dutch Ministry of Defence

The twin-engine He 111 evolved from the single-engine Heinkel He 70 Blitz (Lightning). The He 70 was also considered a passenger aircraft. Powered by a 599-horsepower BMW VI engine, the He 70 would carry four passengers and sported a maximum speed of 240 mph. The He 70 pioneered the characteristic elliptical wing that was eventually used in the larger He 111.

The He 111 was a fairly big machine. With an overall length of 57 feet and a wingspan of 74 feet, the production version of the He 111 packed as many as seven 7.92mm machineguns and 4,400 pounds of bombs internally. A further 7,900 pounds’ worth of bombs could be included on external racks. However, when fully loaded, the He 111 typically required rocket-assisted takeoff units to get aloft.

Details

The He 111 sported a fairly unconventional layout. The He 111 was a single-pilot airplane with the pilot sitting on the left per custom. The corresponding right seat was reserved for the bombardier/navigator.

This crewman was expected to leave his seat and slide forward into the nose when it was time to drop ordnance. The control column was arranged on a pivoting mount that could be rotated over to the navigator position in the event the pilot was incapacitated. Three other crewmembers operated the radios and defensive machine guns.

German Heinkel He 111 E bomber begins dropping ordnance
A still image from the film showing a German Heinkel He 111E bomber in action. Image: Polish National Digital Archive

The wide, glazed nose offered superb visibility…under certain circumstances. The pilot’s position had no floor so as to provide an unobstructed view. The rudder pedals were mounted on arms so the pilot could see the terrain below.

The engine controls were mounted above the pilot’s head, also to keep them out of the way. All that was great, but the rounded Plexiglas panels glared badly in bright sunshine. Some of the bottom transparent sections were removable so as to allow rapid egress in an emergency.

Bombs rode in the bomb bay in magazines held vertically nose up. This made them easy to load and maximized space in the streamlined fuselage. Once deployed, the slipstream caught the tail fins on these devices and upended them in short order. He 111s were fitted with a variety of different defensive armament options during the course of the plane’s operational history.

Variations

Most He 111 planes were used as medium bombers. In this capacity, the He 111 played an outsized role in pummeling the UK during the Battle of Britain. However, this workhorse of an airplane did a lot of other stuff as well.

Heinkel He 111 of KG 3 fitted to launch V1 flying bomb
A Heinkel He 111 of Kampfgeschwader 3 is shown fitted with a V1 flying bomb. Image: U.S. Air Force

The He 111 was adapted to deliver aerial torpedoes for use in the North Atlantic. The plane was also used to emplace sea mines from the air. Experiments were undertaken using the He 111 to launch V1 buzz bombs in-flight as well.

Hungarian Heinkel He 111
A Hungarian Heinkel He 111 bomber is shown parked at the Tüzér Street Airport during World War II. Image: Fortepan

The Germans developed a truly bizarre version of the He 111 called the He 111Z Zwilling (“Twin”), in which two standard fuselages were mated along a common central wing section. The resulting plane carried five engines and was used as a tow aircraft for the massive Me 321 glider. The single set of pilot’s controls was located in the port-side fuselage. Despite the bodged-together nature of the design, the pilots who flew these machines said they were a dream in the air.

Ruminations

A total of 6,508 Heinkel He 111 planes rolled off the assembly lines before production was curtailed in 1944. By then, the He 111 was badly obsolete. As a result, the plane was used primarily for transport duties until the end of the war. In a world liberally populated with MustangsThunderbolts, Typhoons, Spitfires, and Lightnings, the lumbering He 111 was easy meat.

groundcrew checking a Luftmine B under a Heinkel He 111 of KG 4
A member of the ground crew working on a Luftmine B (LMB), a 2,200 pound parachute bomb, under a Heinkel He 111 of KG 4 at Soesterberg Air Base. Image: Dutch Ministry of Defence

Of those 6,508 machines, five German versions and twelve Spanish-built Casa copies survive today. None of them are flyable. The classic 1969 British war film Battle of Britain has some awesome aerial footage of these Spanish He 111 copies in action.

Sleek, cool, rugged, and versatile, the He 111 served the Luftwaffe on all combat fronts during WWII. It was also adequate to spirit 10 resourceful Russians away from their slave labor camp and almost certain death. In so doing, the Heinkel He 111 became an iconic part of World War II history.

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Some Red Hot Gospel there!

You Can Return to 1950’s America Anytime by Aaron

The 1950’s is incredibly telling of the quality, caliber and sanity of any American today.  You either view it as an ideal, a goal, a target to shoot for, or you loathe it, detest it, hate it, and view it as the epitome of evil.  The first group of people are true Americans.  They love the nuclear family, booming economic growth, progress, fashion, beauty, low crime, excellence, achievement and all that is classically American.

The later are nothing more than parasitic socialists who fear the 1950’s more than anything else because it is the single largest, brightest, and blinding bit of empirical evidence that contradicts their socialist religion.  If you point out the virtues of 1950’s America they rush to tell you it’s racist, while tripping over themselves to nervously-laugh at the presupposed “barbaric sexism” of the 50’s.

You can try to reason with them and point out you’re talking more the familial stability, economic growth, low unemployment, fashion, etc., and would do away with the bigotry of the times.

But they will have none of it because if they concede that the 50’s were better times in general, then that would mean they were wrong about their socialist ideology and can no longer collect their government checks.  Alas, they will always cower and hypocritically hide behind the 50’s being racist and “You just want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” (you ignorant neanderthal you) because otherwise they’d have to get real jobs.

Sadly, with a high enough percentage of the population voting for socialism, not to mention an increasing percentage of the population preferring to celebrate inferiority over excellence, we as a country cannot return to the “glory days” of the 1950’s.

Millennials are not capable of living on their own at 18.  Women prefer to outsource kids to day care instead of raise them.  Men have been replaced with government checks.  And what men are present in their nuclear families are usually Soy Boy jokes which cannot compare to a strong, but fair 1950’s Ward Cleaver.

Without the based, anchored, and galvanized WWII generation, the generations of Americans that remain are simply too inferior and lazy to achieve what Americans did in the 1950’s.  And so you assume we can never return to those halcyon days of yore and are condemned to Enjoy the Decline.

However, I have a bit of good news for you, and it is one of those rare bits of good news indeed.  For while “we” as a country can’t and never will return to the 1950’s, YOU as an individual can.  And there’s nobody who can stop you.

The main reason anybody can return to the 1950’s at any time is because while on a national or macro level the US may be turning into a childish, socialist shithole, on the local or micro level the average American still holds considerable sway and control over their immediate and local environment.

You don’t have to live in California where the insane people put cancer warnings on coffee.  You don’t have to live in Seattle where the city council obviously loves parasites more than the producers.

You can simply choose to live in towns that aren’t socialist, have low crime, low traffic and don’t vote to tax their citizens all the time.  But returning to the 50’s goes well beyond simply picking the right municipality to live in.

It boils down to individual life-style decisions that are even more personal, more “micro” and will more directly affect the quality of life you live.  And if you make the right decisions, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy a 1950’s life replete with 2020’s technology and conveniences.

Location, Location, Location

The first and most important step in attaining a 1950’s lifestyle is refusing to live where liberals and leftists are.  Leftists and liberals are simply antithetical to a 1950’s lifestyle and mindset.

This obviously eliminates entire states like California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, but also eliminates nearly every major city in the United States.  Being away from major metro areas and America’s centers of commerce may put a crimp on your career opportunities, but less so than you might think.

The suburbs exist for a reason – hard working people who want safe communities, good schools, low taxes, and low crime, also want to be reasonably close to these hubs of commerce for their careers.

This is possible if you’re willing to commute or simply take the bus.  Furthermore, advances in internet technology has made an increasing number of jobs location independent.

This allows you to move yourself (and your family) to smaller, even safer, even lower-taxed hamlets where you can still do our job remotely, occasionally dropping in on the city for whatever culture or entertainment you may want to take in.

These small towns can offer a 1950’s “Andy Griffith Mayberry” lifestyle for you and your family…assuming you’re done living the “Sex and the City” or “Friends” lifestyle that you were sold on TV.

Career Choices

Closely related to where you live and work is your career.  To be blunt, if you want to return to the 1950’s that means a one income household.

One person is going to go out and make the money, the other is going to keep the home and raise any would-be children.  This means you have to major in the right thing and today 2/3rds of American students major in worthless, unemployable slop.

So it is vital you choose the right profession be it the trades, joining the military, majoring in engineering or becoming a dentist.

If you don’t, you condemn yourself to a life of the typical Millennial; constantly begging for work, pulling teeth to get a decent wage, crippled by student loans you’ll never pay back, living paycheck to paycheck…heck, living at home at 30.

The (evil racist) 1950’s American dream of homeownership will simply be out of your reach as you opted to major in an easy hobby rather than a rigorous, industrious and EMPLOYABLE profession.  You can make it even easier on yourself if you choose a profession like computer programming or networking which will not only pay, but give you the added benefit of location independent employment.

The 1950’s Budget

In my book “Poor Richard’s Retirement” I was amazed how people in the 1950’s managed to raise full, nuclear families on incomes that are a third of today’s household income.  When people say “it takes two incomes to raise a family today” what they really mean is…

“When you account for my student loans for my worthless masters degree in human development and my husband’s MBA, and the luxury SUV lease, and our McMansion mortgage, and the kids’ day care, and the pool boy and the lawn care and our annual vacations to Disney World, Mazatlan, and Italy and the designer clothes for all our children, we need two incomes to pay for everything.”

In short, people today replace people with stuff.  In the 1950’s the parents actually raised a family and spent their money on people.  Not things.  They knew family was more important than materialism and consequently put it at the center of their lives.

This translated into budgets that were mere fractions of what people spend today, but even more shocking to modern Americans, families in the 50’s had money left over.

This frugality required living in homes that had 1/3rd the square footage of today’s modern homes, owning only one car, taking the bus, children sharing rooms, cutting coupons and budgeting, hemming and darning clothes, and not outsourcing your children to daycare which (ironically) usually costs more than what paltry income a wife brings in when she goes out and works whatever part-time non-profit job her liberal arts degree affords here.

Thankfully today’s housing technology allows you to buy more home for the same inflation-adjusted dollar and automotive technology allows you to afford more than one car.

But buying vanity in the form of BMW’s, McMansions, designer clothes, trips, and pointless masters degrees is what enslaves most people to their debts and prevents them from living a 1950’s, person-focused lifestyle.

If you simply buy what you need, spending less than you make, all the financial problems that plague modern debt-addicted Americans will go away and happier families will be the result.

Yes, You Will Raise Your Own Damn Children

I’ve always wondered why the majority of people in my generation even bother having children.  They don’t raise them.  They simply have them and then juggle them in between both of their careers, hobbies, vices, and daycare.

Half of my parental peer group took a page from the Book of Baby Boomers and end up getting divorced and so now the kids are raised in broken homes…optimistically assuming the mother and father were married in the first place.

So why did you even bother to have kids?

More important than location, more important than your career, more important than you yourself is the children you decided to bring into this world.  I cannot logically deduce anything except that your children should be the most important thing in this world.

Ergo, I would presume if you had them you would like to actually spend time with them, certainly before they turn 18 and you don’t see them again.

So please, if the Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers taught us anything, it should be that you should raise your own damn kids.

Don’t outsource them to daycare.  Don’t outsource them to pre-pre-pre K.  Don’t put your career ahead of them.  Actually spent time with them and raise them.  You’d be surprised how well-raised children bring happiness into your life.  You might even be shocked to find out they’re more rewarding than your masters degree.

Yes, You Will Remain a Nuclear Family

Appalled as I am watching friends have kids they simply don’t want, it enrages me when parents obviously decide they are more important than their children and get divorced (or “split up” because, why get married before having kids anyways, amirite?)

Not only does this wreak havoc upon the psychologies of any children you might have, single parent households are the most inefficient way to raise kids.

The sheer calories of energy I see divorced parents spend not only trying to time-share their children and maintain multiple homes, but battle and fight one another over pure selfishness, pettiness, and pride is argument enough that you should fake being married until your youngest is 18 no matter how much you hate each other.

It would be less painful, less costly, less time consuming and much better for all parties involved (including those kids you had – remember them?).

But there is a much more important argument to maintaining a nuclear family and one that is based in the selfless consideration of others in society – the quality of your children.

The consequences of divorced or broken homes is the scourge of ill-reared children that are then released into the real world.  At best they might be slightly depressed, faking a mental illness like “social anxiety disorder” or whatever the new one is this week.

But at worst (and more typically) they are the cause of nearly all sociological problems.  Poverty, drugs, crimes, STD’s, high taxes, mental illness, murder, lost economic production, deficits, future illegitimate children/single parent households, nearly EVERY major problem society faces today has its genesis in broken homes, single moms and dead beat dads.

Failing to maintain a nuclear family results in raising liabilities in the form of your dysfunctional children that you then send out into the real world where they proceed to wreak trillions of dollars worth in damage.

I’m going to assume that the love of your children is argument enough to guarantee your children will be raised under a nuclear family.

The peace, calm, serenity and love that comes from the resulting familial stability would also be a convincing fringe benefit to ensure this trait of 1950’s America.  But if that’s not enough to convince you, perhaps the guilt that your failure to raise your children properly is guaranteed to cost society trillions will ensure you keep your family together.

Choose a Traditional 1950’s Man/Woman

Key to having a stable marriage and a nuclear family is choosing the right person as your spouse.  And to be perfectly honest, the qualities and traits that make a good spouse have been bred out of Americans the past three generations.

This forced-political denial of the differences and thus complimentary natures of the sexes in today’s America is laughable and should be ignored if you wish to life a 1950’s lifestyle.

Millions of years of human evolution, billions of years of the evolution of life on our planet, and our environment has made it PHYSICALLY CLEAR there are indeed (and in general) two sexes.  And not only are there two distinct sexes, there are some major differences.  In the 1950’s these differences were used to help form a nearly-unstoppable duo in the form of a husband and wife with their own unique strengths and specialties.

With their strength, energy, resolve and mathematically inclined brains, men would work and make money.  And not only work and make money, but innovate, create, and experiment resulting in dramatic increases in standards of living.

Women with their care, compassion, kindness and acute awareness of resource management would typically raise the children (don’t know if you noticed those things called “boobs” they have), maintain a home, support the husband, but also through budgeting and economic guile make the money the husband made go far as possible, increasing standards of living for all family members.

This isn’t to say that men couldn’t cook or women couldn’t be scientists, but in general these two roles took advantage of the division of labor, playing to each others’ strengths, while compensating for each others’ weaknesses.

Now that has all be abdicated in the pursuit of the political lie that men and women are not so much equal (which they are), but that they are interchangeable (which they certainly aren’t).

Regardless, the point is not one against the folly of feminism or socialist politics, but that if you do indeed want to live a 1950’s life you need to find a traditional masculine man for a husband and a traditional feminine woman for a wife.

Not only will this result in a more successful marriage, you have 2 million years of human evolution working for you which is better than the 50 years of delusional feminist slop theory that’s been peddled since 1968.

But what makes a traditional man or woman?  Simple, you simply pursue traditional values.

A traditional man supports himself, doesn’t rely on a government check, works out, is physically fit,  demands sex, and is going to demand that his wife stays in shape.

He is also fair and just, puts his family ahead of himself, will die for them if necessary, but in the end will inevitably insist he is the head of the household and is going to be the final arbiter of all decisions, not for tyrannical or dictatorial reasons, but simply because there can only be ONE leader and it is in the best interest of everybody to only have ONE leader.

A traditional woman also supports herself, learns a skill or trade, doesn’t rely on a government check, and also loves her family more than herself.  However, she is also acutely aware of the sexual demands of men.  She ensures she remains physically attractive for her husband knowing that is one of the most important things in his life.

Additionally, instead of questioning, nagging, contesting and arguing with her husband she supports him. She cares about him and wants to make his life easy as possible whether that’s through love and compassion, remaining the physically beautiful muse to inspire him, or simply permitting him the calm serenity and peace in life that comes without having a nagging harpy for wife.

In short, it is selflessness and loving your spouse more than yourself that makes for a stable and happy marriage.  Today that has been bred out of us.  We love ourselves, our careers, our educations, our soy, and our things more than we do our spouses.

But if you want a happy and successful 1950’s marriage you will revisit traditional values of excellence, selflessness, beauty, physique, and support.  And I strongly suggest you do because you will be spending the majority of your time with your spouse which will make it the #1 determinant of your happiness.

Friends and Colleagues

Finally, it is not only your family and location that can ultimately provide you with a 1950’s life.  It is the friends, colleagues and associates you surround yourself with.

This is somewhat accomplished in choosing smaller, conservative, traditional towns far removed from the country’s tallest buildings.  But in addition to your family it is your friends and other non-familial (brotherly) loved ones that will also play a major role in the quality of the life you lead.  And it is here there is one simple rule – no low-quality people in your life.

One might think “no leftists” in one’s life would be a rule to follow, but there are some good democrats out there who are good honest souls, simply misinformed or perhaps too optimistic about the reality of people and the economy.

Blue collar democrats, factory workers, union workers.  These are honest men and women who can make great friends and add great value to your life.  But when it comes to welfare recipients, SJW’s, activists, politicians, non-profit workers, professors, students, or people who think they’re entitled to a free ride, it’s very simple – ensure they are not a part of your life.  Life is too short for parasites and ensuring none are around will go a long way in recreating a 1950’s lifestyle.

In general, the point is that whatever happens in Washington or your state capitol ultimately doesn’t matter because it is the people immediately around us that determines the majority of the quality of the life we live.

It may be annoying what the idiots of California vote to do to themselves.  Or it may make you shake your head that Seattleittes really like punishing themselves.

And you can only sit and wonder at times why college students pay $100,000 to essentially destroy themselves.  But you do not have to participate in their delusional worlds.

With today’s technology, old school frugality and wisdom, and simply seeking out traditional people with traditional values you can enjoy a 1950’s life very easily.  And while the leftists and liberals mock and ridicule you for having a house paid off, a pretty wife/handsome husband, well-reared kids, as you “live in the sticks,” let them enjoy their traffic jams, their $7 mochas, the $125,000 in student loans, and their miserable anti-American lives.  Life is just to short otherwise.
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