Focke Wulf Schnellflugzeug

Focke Wulf Schnellflugzeug

The Focke Wulf Schnellflugzeug was a design for an experimental aircraft.

Professor Henrich Focke of the Focke-Wulf company was one of the greatest and most creative pioneers of autogyroes and helicopters of his time. He left Focke-Wulf and formed Focke Achgelis.

After manufacturing (under license) the German version of the La Cierva C.19 and C.30 autogyros, he created the Fw 61, the world’s first practical helicopter, flown by Hanna Reitsch and gaining worldwide fame in the Deutschland Hall Stadium in the 1930s.

He subsequently manufactured the heavy-lift transport helicopter Fa 223, and designed the Fa 224, Fa 266, Fa 269, Fa 283, Fa 284, and the Fa 336 during World War II. Only a few of the large Fa 223 Drache ("Dragon") helicopters actually were produced, but even the prototype set a new helicopter speed record of 182 km/h (113 mph) and climb record of 8.8 m/s (1,732 ft/min) in 1940. Subsequent war models were primarily used as mountain troop transport, rescue, and crashed aircraft recovery. The helicopter had provision for a nose-mounted machine gun, and could carry one or two bombs, but the Drache was never used for combat.

Among autogyros Focke built the Fa 225 using the fuselage of a DFS 230 glider and a rotor of a Fa 223. It was an experimental machine but it worked. Focke also was the originator of the Fa 330 kite with rotor, capable of being deployed by a submarine at a moments notice and then used as a towed spotter. It was stored in a watertight container on the deck of the U-boat and used with great success during the war. A powered version of the kite would have been the Fa 336 which was in the design phase when the war ended and built in France postwar for testing.