AP 118 · No. 11 Section II · Aircraft Plate 142 / 356

Plate 142 of 356 · Second World War · Armoured ground-attack aircraft and tank destroyer

Henschel Hs 129 B-1

Hs 129 B-1/R2 FE-4600, painted as Henschel Hs 129 B-1/R2 Werknummer 0385, formerly of 8.(Pz) Staffel, Schlachtgeschwader 2, captured at El Aouina, Tunisia, in May 1943 and photographed at Freeman Field, Indiana, in 1945–46 as the US Army Air Forces’ foreign equipment aircraft FE-4600: a single-seat armoured ground-attack aircraft with a triangular-section fuselage, a tiny armoured cockpit with a narrow framed canopy, two Gnome-Rhône 14M fourteen-cylinder radials driving three-bladed propellers, a low wing spanning 14.2 m, a single fin and rudder, nose guns in troughs each side and a ventral 30 mm cannon pack, shown tail down on its wheels: dark green splinter camouflage on the upper surfaces, light blue underneath, dark fuselage sides and fin with a fine mottle, pale engine nacelles with dark tops, a white Mediterranean band round the rear fuselage, a white chevron and an outline cross on the fuselage, crosses on the wings, a white-edged black swastika on the fin and ‘FE-4600’ in white across the fin, rudder and tail cone; the colours are the standard ones that fit black-and-white photographs, and the port side, which no photograph shows, mirrors the starboard (shape from a Hs 129 B three-view scaled to the published span and length, checked against a second three-view and photographs of this aircraft).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Henschel Hs 129 B-1/R2 Werknummer 0385, formerly of 8.(Pz) Staffel, Schlachtgeschwader 2, captured at El Aouina, Tunisia, in May 1943 and photographed at Freeman Field, Indiana, in 1945–46 as the US Army Air Forces’ foreign equipment aircraft FE-4600: a single-seat armoured ground-attack aircraft with a triangular-section fuselage, a tiny armoured cockpit with a narrow framed canopy, two Gnome-Rhône 14M fourteen-cylinder radials driving three-bladed propellers, a low wing spanning 14.2 m, a single fin and rudder, nose guns in troughs each side and a ventral 30 mm cannon pack, shown tail down on its wheels: dark green splinter camouflage on the upper surfaces, light blue underneath, dark fuselage sides and fin with a fine mottle, pale engine nacelles with dark tops, a white Mediterranean band round the rear fuselage, a white chevron and an outline cross on the fuselage, crosses on the wings, a white-edged black swastika on the fin and ‘FE-4600’ in white across the fin, rudder and tail cone; the colours are the standard ones that fit black-and-white photographs, and the port side, which no photograph shows, mirrors the starboard (shape from a Hs 129 B three-view scaled to the published span and length, checked against a second three-view and photographs of this aircraft). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.5 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Hs 129B); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Hs 129 B-1/R2 FE-4600 modelled here.

History

The Hs 129 B-1

In 1937 the German Air Ministry asked for a small, heavily armoured twin-engined aircraft to attack troops and vehicles close to the front line. Henschel’s design, by Friedrich Nicolaus, wrapped the pilot in a welded steel nose with a windscreen of thick armoured glass, and gave the fuselage a triangular cross-section to keep it as small as possible. The cockpit was so cramped that there was no room for a full instrument panel or a gunsight inside it. The first prototype flew on 25 May 1939, but the Hs 129A, with two small Argus inline engines, was so underpowered and hard to see out of that test pilots rejected it.

After the fall of France Henschel redesigned it around the captured French Gnome-Rhône 14M radial, which the occupied factories could supply in quantity, and gave it a slightly larger canopy. The Hs 129B went into action over the Crimea and the southern Soviet Union in 1942, and with Schlachtgeschwader 2 in North Africa from late 1942, where the desert dust wore out its French engines. As Soviet tanks grew in number, it was given ever bigger guns: a 30 mm MK 101 or MK 103 cannon in a pack under the fuselage, and finally, in the B-3, a 75 mm anti-tank gun.

The Hs 129’s best-known action came during the Battle of Kursk: on 8 July 1943 Hs 129s of IV./Schlachtgeschwader 9 attacked a Soviet tank brigade in the open near Belgorod and broke up its advance. Hs 129s also flew with the Royal Romanian Air Force, on both sides of the war after Romania changed sides in 1944. About 865 were built, too few to make much difference on the Eastern Front, and no complete Hs 129 survives.

This airframe

Hs 129 B-1/R2 Werknummer 0385, FE-4600

FE-4600The airframe modelled

Werknummer 0385 is a Hs 129 B-1/R2 of 8.(Pz) Staffel, Schlachtgeschwader 2, the anti-tank squadron that fought in Tunisia. It was captured at El Aouina airfield near Tunis in May 1943, given the British number EB-105, and shipped to the United States, where the US Army Air Forces tested it as the foreign equipment aircraft FE-4600 and showed it at Freeman Field, Indiana, in 1945 and 1946. It is modelled because no complete Hs 129 survives, and FE-4600 is the best-photographed single Hs 129, seen from the side, from both quarters and head-on. None is in a UK museum. The model shows it standing tail down on its wheels, as it was photographed at Freeman Field: dark green splinter camouflage on the upper surfaces, light blue underneath, dark fuselage sides and fin with a fine lighter mottle, pale engine nacelles with dark tops, a white Mediterranean theatre band round the rear fuselage, a white chevron and an outline cross on the fuselage, crosses on the wings, a white-edged black swastika on the fin, the small stencil ‘EB105’ and ‘FE-4600’ in white across the fin, rudder and tail cone. It has the standard nose guns and the R2’s ventral 30 mm MK 101 cannon pack, shown without its barrel as in every photograph. Its shape comes from a Hs 129 B three-view scaled to the type’s span and length, checked against a second three-view and the photographs. The photographs are black and white, so the colours are the standard ones that fit their tones; the port side, which they do not show, mirrors the starboard, and the positions of the crosses under the wings follow standard practice.

Where to see one

Not on charge

No complete Hs 129 survives.

All 356 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.