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The Focke-Achgelis Fa 269 was a design for a convertiplane that would have taken off and landed like a helicopter but flown in level flight like a standard fixed-wing aircraft.
The aim of the project was to produce an aircraft with the VTOL capabilities of the helicopter but the faster cruising speed and more economical flight of a fixed wing aircraft. Focke-Achgelis hoped to achieve this by rotating the propellers. In normal flight their aircraft would have been a fairly conventional mid-wing twin-engined monoplane, although with pusher propellers. The engines were mounted in fixed nacelles. The drive shaft was connected to a pivoting gearbox at the front of the nacelle, and in level flight would have run backwards along the nacelle to power the pusher propellers. Focke-Achgelis hoped that the aircraft would have a top speed in level flight of 373mph.
For take-off and landing the drive shaft would have pivoted downwards by 85 degrees, so that the propellers were facing downwards, centred on the wing leading edge. The propellers would then have acted as rotors. Because the aircraft would have landed with the propellers facing downwards it needed an unusually tall undercarriage to keep the blades from striking the ground.
The design appeared in 1943 and it was clear that it would take a great deal of effort to produce a prototype. Special engines, with room for the moveable drive shaft, would have been needed. The pivoting gearbox would have taken a great deal of work and special flight controls would have been needed for vertical flight. Very little development work appears to have been carried out and no prototype was built.
Aircraft of the Luftwaffe 1935-1945, Jean-Denis G.G. Lepage.
Combines a good background history of the Luftwaffe with a comprehensive examination of its aircraft, from the biplanes of the mid 1930s to the main wartime aircraft and on to the seemingly unending range of experimental designs that wasted so much effort towards the end of the war. A useful general guide that provides an impressively wide range of information on almost every element of the Luftwaffe
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