End of The He 277 Project
The last competing aircraft design that threatened the He 277's chance for increasingly scarce production capacity was the Junkers Ju 488, a composite of earlier developments of the Junkers Ju 88 twin-engined fast medium bomber design, with a few core components being purpose-designed solely for it, that were brought together to create a four-engined heavy bomber while using already-available components. Two prototype Ju 488s had been completed by the start of the summer of 1944, but were each sabotaged to unairworthy status by the French resistance by mid-July 1944, before either one had ever been flown.
In April 1944, simultaneously with the four He 177B prototypes either flying (He 177 V101 to V103) or nearing completion (V104) at the Heinkel-Süd facility at Schwechat, the RLM ordered Heinkel to cease any further work on the He 277 project, and all components were also ordered to be scrapped, without any complete examples of the 277 ever having been completed by Heinkel.
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