Heinkel He 112 operational service
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Heinkel's He 112 was a fighter aircraft designed by Walter and Siegfried Günter. It was one of four planes designed to compete for the Luftwaffe's 1933 fighter contract, which was eventually won by the Messerschmitt Bf 109. Small numbers of the He 112 were used for a short time by the Luftwaffe, and small runs were completed for several other countries, but only about one hundred were completed in total.
When it was clear the 112 was losing the contest, Heinkel offered to re-equip the V6 prototype with 20 mm cannon armament as an experimental aircraft. The Technisches Amt (Technical Office) was very interested; at the time many tanks were equipped with 20 mm guns as their primary anti-tank armament, the same armament on a plane could prove to be a powerful weapon.
In September a 20 mm MG C/30L cannon was mounted to the plane, with the breech to the rear of the engine and the barrel lying between the cylinder banks and exiting in the propeller spinner. This is the first experimental mounting of what would later be called the Motorkanone, a feature that would become a standard on most single-inline engined German fighters. She was then broken down and shipped to Spain on 9 December.
After being re-assembled she was assigned to Versuchsjagdgruppe 88, a group within the Legión Cóndor devoted to testing new planes. There she was nicknamed the Kanonenvogel (Cannon Bird), and joined three V-series Bf 109s which were also in testing.
The Kanonenvogel was adopted by Oberleutnant Günter Radusch who started flying the plane on 9 December at Tablada. From then on it joined the Ju 87As and Hs 123s already in service and was used as a ground attack plane. On 6 February the plane was moved to Villa de Prado near Madrid, and then in March, she was reassigned to Jagdgruppe 88 at Almorox near Toledo.
While sitting at Almorox due to a mechanical problem in his He 45C, Oberleutnant Wilhelm Balthasar heard that a Republican armored train was approaching and talked himself into the cockpit of the V6 by insisting he was a Heinkel test pilot. After teaching himself to fly the plane and managing to get into the air, he found the train parked at the station in Seseña and attacked it. On his third pass, one of the 20 mm shells punctured the ammunition car and the entire train exploded. Then on the way back to Almorox he came across an armored car and set it on fire.
His exploit in the V6 made him famous, and Balthasar found himself in command of the newly formed combat group with the V6 and three He 45C recon planes. Over the next few months, the V6 was flown by a number of pilots, and on 6 July Unteroffizier Max Schulze knocked out an additional number of armored cars. On 19 July Schulze was once again flying the V6 when the engine seized during landing. Schultze walked away from the resulting pancake landing, but the plane was heavily damaged and was a written off.
V8 and V9 were then sent to Spain in the spring of 1938. The V8 was the earlier A series model with the larger DB600Aa engine, but it was only in Spain until July when it crashed. V9 was the B series platform and armed with twin 20 mm cannons. Like the V6, it was then used primarily as a ground attack plane, but it was also flown by a number of experienced Spanish pilots before being returned to Heinkel and becoming the show plane.
Luftwaffe
The early stages of the Third Reich's expansion plans consisted of a series of annexations of territory where the majority of the population were culturally German. This started with the March 1938 Anschluss, the annexation of Austria. Next on the list came the Sudetenland, a portion of western Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was not interested in giving it up, and unlike the Austrian example, it did not look like France and the United Kingdom were going to simply sit back and watch. Suddenly the possibility of a military confrontation looked very real.
As a result, the Luftwaffe pressed every flightworthy fighter into service. At the time the Japanese Navy batch of 112Bs was being completed, and these were taken over and used to form IV./JG 132 on 1 July 1938. They were first based at Oschatz, but were moved to Karlsbad on 6 October.
The planes moved again on 17 November to Mährish-Trübau, where they were reformed as I./JG 331. But by that time the crisis had passed, and I./JG 331 received Bf 109Cs in place of the 112Bs. The planes were then returned to Heinkel and then shipped to Japan to fulfill the order.
A number of other 112s at the Heinkel plant were used as a factory defense unit, flown by Heinkel test pilots (all civilians). The planes never saw action in the role, and were replaced with He 100s and then exported.
Japan
In 1937 the Japanese Imperial Navy found itself at a disadvantage in combat over the Chinese mainland. The fact that Navy aircraft were fighting over the mainland might seem odd, but interservice rivalry in Japan went beyond the occasional bar brawl and both services fielded complete air forces with their own types of planes.
At the time the Navy air services were small and equipped mostly with older biplanes. Meanwhile, the Soviets were supplying the Chinese air forces with the Polikarpov I-15bis and Polikarpov I-16 fighters. Although the new Mitsubishi A5M was largely similar to the I-16, they were just starting to enter service and available in small numbers only. The Navy was concerned about the lack of fighters and went looking for new designs that could be purchased off the shelf to bring the squadrons to strength quickly. At the time the majority of modern design work was taking place in Europe, and with England no longer on friendly terms, they turned to Germany for a new fighter.
In late 1937 a delegation visited the Heinkel plant in Marienehe and saw V9 in action. They were impressed and placed an order for thirty of the B series planes, with an option for 100 more. They even purchased one of the older designs to take back with them immediately (according to the primary source below, this was the V5). Upon arriving in Japan the planes were named A7He1, the A7 refers to the 7th navy fighter design (the Mitsubishi Zero was 6th), and the He1 means it is the first version of this particular design, built by Heinkel.
In testing the He 112B proved superior to the A5M2 in many ways, notably in speed where the 112 could easily outrun the A5M by 65 km/h. Yet the test pilots rejected the plane out of hand because the A5M was more maneuverable. Maneuverability was considered to be the single most important factor for any fighter among the IJN pilots; everything and anything was sacrificed to improve it.[citation needed] It could be said that the Japanese were still fighting World War I in the air, and the focus on maneuverability would later prove to be the downfall of their air forces.[citation needed]
In the end the He 112 was rejected and the option for the additional 100 was canceled. The thirty already purchased were delivered over a period in 1937 and '38, drawn from a number of production runs. Upon arriving in Japan they were used for training duties, but the V11 with its DB600Aa was used for testing. As it turns out the A7 designation would later be assigned to the Mitsubishi A7M, a high performance successor of the Zero which never saw combat.
Although Japan phased the A7He1 out of service before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Allies assumed it still was in use during World War II and assigned the reporting name Jerry to it.[1]
Spain
When V9 was sent to Spain in the spring of 1938 it was primarily as a sales effort to interest the Spanish in the He 112 design. It was flown by a number of Spanish pilots in various test and show flights. The pilots reports all praised the plane, but at the same time they all considered it to be underpowered.
Nevertheless, the government decided to purchase the He 112 B and form up a new group under the command of Comandante José Muñoz Jiménez. An order was placed for twelve planes and they started to arrive in November 1938, where they were assembled in León by Heinkel workers. The first two were ready by December, followed by another seven B-1s and ten B-2s in early 1939.
The first seven aircraft were ready by the end of January, and were formed up as 2a Escuadra Grupo de Caza 5-G-5 (2nd Squadron of Fighter Group 5-G-5). When another eight were completed the 1a Escuadra was formed up as well, and the remaining four were split among them as they became available.
1a Escuadra lasted only a short time before they were re-equipped with Bf 109 B and Bf 109 C handed down from the Legión Cóndor as they received their new Bf 109 E. Grupo 5-G-5 was then incorporated into 7a Escuadra de Caza (7th Fighter Regiment) along with 2-G-2 and 3-G-3 with their Fiat CR.32 biplanes. The He 112s were to operate as top cover over the Fiats, which had considerably worse altitude performance.
Operations started on 17 January 1939, and on the 20th the operational plan proved sound when they encountered a number of I-16s over Igualada. The squadron commanding officer, Capitán García Pardo shot one down for his 12th kill, but this would prove to be the only air-to-air victory for the He 112 for the war. From then on they operated almost solely in the ground attack role and moved about the country as the war wound down, sometimes rejoining 1a Escuadra. Two aircraft and their pilots were lost in careless accidents during this time, but it appears none were lost in combat.
The civil war ended on 1 April, leaving Spain with one of the most powerful and modern air forces in the world. 2a Escuadra returned to Léon where they had started off, but on 13 July they were moved to Sania Ramel in Spanish Morocco. Here they were renamed 1a Escuadra and joined a newly formed 2a Escuadra flying the new Fiat G.50s (still no match for the 112s). Together they formed Grupo 27.
When Allied forces landed in North Africa, the Spanish forces in Morocco found themselves once again on alert. Due to the navigational difficulties of the day, they found themselves repeatedly intercepting straying aircraft from both Allied and German forces. For instance, on 8 November they intercepted C-47s dropping US paratroopers on Morocco by mistake. On other occasions they intercepted Spitfire Vs from Gibraltar, and Dewoitine D.520s operated by the Vichy French out of Algeria. None of these incidents resulted in losses.
On March 3, 1943 a formation of Allied planes was seen straying into Spanish airspace yet again, and Grupo 27's alert plane was scrambled with Teniente Miguel Entrena Klett at the controls. After climbing to 3500 m, he spotted the target aircraft and identified them as eleven Lockheed P-38s. He then positioned for an attack out of the sun (which was to the rear of the formation) and made a diving pass on the trail-end aircraft. Several hits were made with the 20 mm rounds (his MGs were later discovered to be unloaded), and the plane started trailing smoke and was forced down on the eastern bank of the Mouluya river, in Algeria.[2]
By 1944 the planes found themselves sitting on the ground more and more due to a lack of fuel and maintenance. By 1945 there were only nine left, and they were rotated out of service for repairs in Spain. They continued to be atrophied due to accidents and cannibalization over the next few years, eventually returning to the mainland and being assigned to training units (where they rarely flew). The last airworthy example appears on the books in 1952, along with another that could not fly. The next year there were none listed.