Ryś Marek Boeken

A French World War II fighter aircraft that saw combat service in North Africa, Bulgaria, and the Eastern Front.

Although the German Me 163 Komet rocket fighter was created as a remedy for the mass air raids of the Allied air force on Germany, its origins date back to 1938. Alexander Lippisch then began work at the DFS factory on a tailless rocket-propelled aircraft, designated as DFS 194. At the beginnings of 1939, the project was handed over to the Messerschmitt factory and there it developed into the Me 163A. Two prototypes of this aircraft - V4 and V5 - were completed in 1941 and flown as gliders. Then the V4 received a Walter HWK R.II rocket engine with a thrust of 7.5 kN, and on October 2, 1941 H. Dittmar achieved a speed of 1003 km/h on mentioned plane. Thirteen Me 163As were built for training.

The Dornier Do 335A did not meet all the Luftwaffe requirements. First, the cockpit armor was too weak, which excluded the machine from the role of a fighter intercepting heavily defended Allied bombers. Therefore, in the summer of 1944, a modified version of the Do 335--marked with the letter "B"-- was developed. The main difference was to be an armored pilot's cockpit with a new, easier to manufacture windscreen. The front wheel had larger tire. To be able to retract it without any changes in the landing gear bay construction, it was rotated around the leg axis by 45° during the retraction. The rest of the equipment and weapons were to be the same as in the case of the Do 335A-1. The developed version was designated Do 335B-1, but it was quickly abandoned in favor of heavily armed versions B-2 and B-3, known as Zerstörer. The prototypes of the version B-2 were Do 335M-13 and M-14 powered, like the A-1, by the DB 603E (front) and DB-603QE (rear) engines, but with significantly reinforced armament. The 15 mm MG 151/15 cannons above the engine were replaced with a 20 mm MG 151/20, and the wings were fitted with two 30 mm MK 103 cannons with 70 rounds per barrel. The same cannon fired through the propeller axis.