To the group of relative novices at the stick and rudder bar in which the writer was included on that cold winter morning early in 1943, the rakish biplane on the hard standing was little short of awe inspiring. Its close-cowled twelve- cylinder vee engine and fixed-pitch two-bladed propeller seemed immense to those of us whose experience was limited to such low-powered, lightly-loaded and readily forgiving types as the Biicker Bii 131 Jungmann or the Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz. If no longer in the first flush of youth indeed, long since overtaken by technological development and by now something of an anachronism this elegant aircraft to which we were being somewhat nonchalantly introduced by our instructors was, nevertheless, a very different bird from those to which we were still barely accustomed. It was this self-same aircraft, the Heinkel He 51, that had entered service as the first genuine fighter of our then still-clandestine Luftwaffe some eight years earlier and, soon afterwards, had been flown in combat over Spain to provide the platform from which most of our leading ‘aces’ had gained their first ‘kills’ small wonder that our awe was tinged with something akin to reverence.
The He 51 was not a large aircraft by the standards of theday, but with its steep ground angle resulting from what seemed an inordinately tall undercarriage every inch of which was, in fact, needed to provide adequate clearance fo the massive wooden propeller it towered above us, the leading-edge of the lower mainplane reaching almost toshoulder height. It was allegedly mettlesome; it was said to beunforgiving and none suggested that it sufTered tyros gladly.Small wonder if we tyros experienced some trepidation at thethought that we would soon be clambering into this monster.Powered by a glycol-cooled BMW VI 7,3Z twelve-cylinder
vee engine which was coaxed into giving a shattering 750 hp for one minute at 1,700 revs but possessed a normal rating of 550 hp at 1,530 revs, the He 51 had a rectangular welded steel-tube fuselage structure which was faired to an oval at top and bottom, and covered forward by detachable light metal panels and aft by fabric. The metal two-spar wings were fabric covered, the upper planes carrying the ailerons and the lower planes carrying the plain trailing-edge flaps. A pair of synchronised 7,9-mm MG 17 machine guns were irtstalled in the upper decking of the forward fuselage, ammunition tanks containing 500 rpg being attached to the rear face of the firewall, and a 46 Imp gal (210 1) fuel tank was mounted beneath the pilot’s feet, provision being made to supplement this with a 37-4 Imp gal (170 1) drop tank on the fuselage centreline.
My tum finally came to hoist myself into the cockpit of an He 51, comforted somewhat by the obvious age of this fearsome beast, or, rather, by the thought of the number of ham-fisted pupils that must have fiown it and survived the experience over the four or five years that had elapsed since it had been pulled out of first-line service and relegated to the training role. The open cockpit proved surprisingly commodious, the T-shaped instrument panel seemed hardly more complex than those of the very much lower-powered trainers that I had been fiying and the cockpit drill was as I was to appreciate in later years extremely simple. After a somewhat erratic start, the big BMW engine settled down to a comforting deep-throated growl, the propeller flailing apparently slowly around and the aircraft rocking gently against the chocks. Forward visibility in the three-point attitude was totally obscured by the broad engine cowling and any attempt to peer around the tiny excuse for a windscreen set one's cheeks literally flapping in the slipstream. The chocks were signalled away, a quick precautionary check of the control surfaces, a shouted Hals-und-Beinbruch from the instructor, and I was gathering speed in this totally stränge, powerful and still seemingly enormous aircraft.
My take-off was not too untidy as 1 experienced little difficulty in keeping the He 51 straight and once the tail came up forward visibility between the centre-section struts and bracing wires was not too bad. Acceleration was greater than I had anticipated and 1 was quickly airborne and making a tightish climbing tum. While it would be untrue to say that I immediately felt at home in the cockpit and thereupon initiated a series of aerobatics with gay abandon, the first few airborne minutes were by no means as traumatic as I had
anticipated. The Controls were light and very responsive and for a beginner such as myself the maximum attainable speeds in excess of 200 mph (320 km/h) were breathtaking, being twice as high as anything that I had fiown to that time. The Circuit of the field — which was the ordered extent of my initiation seemed to take no time at all and I was making my approach before I had even mentally adjusted to having successfully taken-off.
At this stage in my training I could risk nothing more than a conservative straight-in approach and attempt a three-pointer.
The He 51 was prone to bouncing severely on touch-down and a ground loop was a serious hazard. It was by no means uncommon to see one of the Heinkel biplanes traversing the field in spine-jarring leaps as a result of a poorly judged approach and touch-down. However, with stick held firmly back into the pit of the stomach I succeeded in restricting the incipient bounce and keeping the grass more or less firmly under my wheels while I mentally recovered from my first experience of a 93 mph (150 km/h) approach speed.
That the Heinkel had its eccentricities I knew, but at least it had been ladylike enough not to reveal these during our first acquaintance and having successfully accompanied this bird into the air and regained terra finna intact, my earlier trepidation was forgotten and I looked forward to further experience with the He 51 with pleasurable anticipation. We were now required to carry out a dozen so-called aimed landings each from an altitude of 2,300 ft (700 m) and each occupying no more than three-four minutes, and then two Spitzenfiuge, or “ceiling flights”, with a barograph, climbing to an altitude of 9,840 ft (3 000 m) and then gliding down in a total elapsed time of no more than 15 minutes.
By this time, I had established considerable rapport with the elderly Heinkel fighter and savoured every flight. It undoubtedly possessed its faults but, having had no opportunity to fly other aeroplanes of comparable vintage, power and intended röle, I was unable to assess its merits as compared with its contemporaries. One thing that I am sure was common to virtually all aircraft of similar configuration was the poor forward and downward visibility offered from its cockpit. This restriction in view was dramatically demonstrated in tragic fashion at an early stage in our training course. One of our group of trainees was far too high during a landing approach, two red flares being fired as a signal for him to go around again. He attempted to comply but because of the poor view forward and downward he failed to see a slower trainer that was still climbing just after taking oflf, and his propeller chewed through the cockpit of the other aircraft, killing its pilot.
The climax of our training programme with the He 51 was reached with two so-called high-altitude flights of 45 and 55 minutes duration respectively at an altitude of 11,800 ft (3 600 m), and it was customary to complete the second of these flights with a near-vertical dive to circuit flight altitude a sort of adieu to the Heinkel biplane. This practice was officially frowned upon but unofjicially permitted. At 1630 hours on 21 February 1943,1 took-off for my final flight in the He 51 and, of course, my diving finale. Conditions were absolutely ideal with a perfectly cloudless sky essential prerequisites for these graduation flights which had to be observed con- tinuously from the ground but after 30 minutes a bank of doud moved in from the south-west and rapidly obscured the field. The cloud was unbroken but for a funnel which, though it seemed to fluctuate in diameter, remained almost stationary over a nearly-circular lake some six miles (10 km) south of the airfield at Königsberg. By this time, I had completed the specified endurance flight and so I put down the nose of the He
51, aiming at the small blue-black lake framed by the cloud.
Plummeting down that funnel in the cloud was an eerie and unforgettable experience; the surrounding vapour rendered everything unreal and distances deceptive, and although I believed the aircraft to be standing on its nose, I suddenly began to wonder if I might not have actually passed the vertical I was told afterwards that the most difficult thing in diving is to avoid overestimating the dive angle which invariably feels much steeper than it actually is. What really got the adrenalin flowing, however, was the realisation that my altimeter was not unwinding as rapidly as it should have been and thus I would not know if I still had sufficient altitude to recover from the dive until I broke through the cloud level!
Less than half-a-minute elapsed between putting down the nose of my aircraft and screaming out of that cloud funnel, with, happily, sufficient altitude for a safe recovery. My only problem was a splitting headache as, in my excitement, I had forgotten to swallow to compensate for the change in pressure on my eardrums, and the dressing down that I received from my instructors on landing hardly served to alleviate the condition. From their angle on the ground they could not see the cloud funnel that had afforded me a reasonable safe descent and had been under the impression that I had committed the Cardinal folly of putting my aircraft into a screamer through solid cloud.
Altogether, I had flown the He 51 a total of 26 times and although I was subsequently to fly a variety of aircraft types, ranging from maritime reconnaissance flying boats to Me 262 jet fighters on which I was being schooled at the war’s end, few flights were more exciting or more memorable. I still have a self-portrait that I made with a camera that I secretly took along with me on one occasion when I was flying the Heinkel biplane. I held the camera at arm’s length above that tiny windscreen and in the full force of the slipstream which very nearly whipped it from my grasp. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to wind on and my helmeted head is superimposed on an aerial view of the sun-shimmering River Oder that I had taken a moment or two before. That now-faded double-exposure brings back vividly my attempt to hold the camera steady against the slipstream while gripping the control column with my knees so that the barograph would reveal no sudden change of altitude; it also recalls the aflection that I felt for that ageing Heinkel fighter which, by rights, should have long been consigned to some technological scrapheap.
