Messerschmitt Me 323 D-1 Gigant

The Gigant began as a glider. In the autumn of 1940 the German Air Ministry asked for a huge assault glider that could carry a tank or an 88 mm gun with its tractor, and Messerschmitt answered with the Me 321, a high-winged giant of steel tube, wood and fabric with clamshell doors in its nose. It first flew on 25 February 1941, towed by a Junkers Ju 90. Getting a loaded Me 321 into the air was the problem: it needed three Bf 110 fighters towing in formation, helped by rockets, a risky business that cost several crews, and later the five-engined He 111 Z built for the job.

The answer was to give it engines of its own. The Me 323 was the Me 321 with six Gnome-Rhône radials taken from French stocks, complete with their French nacelles and propellers, and a fixed undercarriage of ten wheels in two rows of five under the fuselage. It first flew in early 1942, and the D series reached the transport units that autumn. Two flight engineers sat in small cabins in the wing, between the engines, watching three engines each, and the flight deck sat high above the nose doors, which opened to swallow up to 120 troops, about 10 tonnes of freight, or a light tank.

From November 1942 the Gigants of KG z.b.V. 323 carried fuel, guns and vehicles across the Mediterranean from Italy and Sicily to the Axis forces in Tunisia. Slow and hard to hide, they suffered badly once Allied fighters ruled the Sicilian Narrows, and on 22 April 1943 Spitfires and Kittyhawks shot down most of a formation of more than twenty off Cape Bon. Later Me 323s served in Italy, Corsica and on the Eastern Front, and the E series added more armour and gun turrets in the wings. Production ended in April 1944, after 213 had been built, and no Me 323 survives.