Blohm und Voss P.170 a bizarre design for fast bomber and ground attacker from 1942, three engines, broad wing, and tandem cockpit astride the tail. Payload consided of 2000 kilo of jobs or 65 rockets, no defensive armament was planned

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Nonions@reddit

Was there something in the water at the B&V design offices? Or a minor gas leak that went undiscovered?

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Atholthedestroyer@reddit

Maybe a laboratory that made the Pervitin was near by?

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leeluss14@reddit

I was just gonna say they must have been having Pervatin for breakfast ,brunch,lunch and freaking dinner at the B und V design offices…Vorsprung Dorch Pervatin!

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leeluss14@reddit

My mistake as well as spelling Durch wrong.

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A lot of B&Vs reputation for weirdness is probably down to its chief designer, Richard Vogt, who came up with the BV141. Post 1945, Operation Paperclip took him to the US and he finished up working at Boeing, where he did early work that proved winglets were a good idea.

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buddboy@reddit

Near the end of the war, when they were desperate as hell, the engineers did wacky shit like this to make it look like they were inventing wonder weapons so they could appear to be useful. And frankly, given their dire situation I guess it's a valid strategy, maybe they would have stumbled on something actually useful. But not with stuff like this, more like jet engines or engines that use alternative fuel. There weren't really any good ways to rearrange standard plane parts that somehow makes a way better plane. They were always gonna be limited my engine performance and fuel

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ReasonableDonut1@reddit

But this was from 1942. They weren't exactly on the back foot yet.

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buddboy@reddit

Well then wtf were they smoking?

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bacondesign@reddit

Most likely meth

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TacticalCowboy_93@reddit

maybe they would have stumbled on something actually useful.

If I recall, one of those paper projects was a tilt-rotor VTOL transport plane which allegedly was one of the inspirations for the V-22 Osprey. IDK if that's actually true, but it's definitely possible.

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buddboy@reddit

They did have very interesting vtol concepts which would have actually been useful since they were running out of runways but none of the designs really "took off"

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TacticalCowboy_93@reddit

I know none such projects ever got built, but some did inspire postwar designs that did see service in other countries. I forget the name of the aircraft in question, but it was a late-war paper project that had the same basic layout as the V-22.

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One-Internal4240@reddit

Normally I'd say, "The same stuff they put in the water that makes you want to avoid getting teabagged by T-34s in a frozen hole with your pecker frozen off and consumed by flesh eating rats." But this is 1942 so hell knows, man.

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postmodest@reddit

Maybe they were just seeing which way the winds were blowing towards the end and were just grifting the Nazi high command?

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TheOriginalJBones@reddit

I believe this was it exactly.

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Wahgineer@reddit

Yeah, it was called "make us wunderwaffen or go to Stalingrad."

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SS_Gero@reddit

A decade in Japan had its effects on Richard Vogt. Atleast he trained a sucessor Takeo Doi (designer of the Ki-45, and Ki-61) before he went into full Avant-Garde

his designs when he was the Chief Designer at Kawasaki were tame compared to his later ventures

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hippolytebouchard@reddit

Ground handling would have been swell from the cockpit as would spotting and bombing targets. Best part is you can't see either to the front or the rear...

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BoarHide@reddit

It looks like there may have been a dedicated bomber in front of the cockpit? No idea how two people would effectively coordinate in a ground attack role though. That’s not level bombing we‘re talking about

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R_Rush@reddit

The guy the conservatory in front of the cockpit?

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itsmejak78_2@reddit

Zoom in

there's definitely a compartment for a dedicated bomb operator

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whywouldthisnotbea@reddit

Also imagine an engine out with all that asymmetrical thrust and lil baby rudders. You'd just have to shut down the opposite engine and hop you're light enough to remain at altitude on the center engine.

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workahol_@reddit

The manual just says "Vmc: Ja"

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Kookie_B@reddit

With minor changes, it looks like it could be turned around into a canard configuration.

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skyeyemx@reddit

The fact that they specifically went out of their way to refuse to place a vertical stabilizer just behind the cockpit (the perfect location for one thanks to leverage), and instead unnecessarily extend the outer engine pods into booms for two vertical stabilizers, tells me this thing was explicitly designed to look cool and not much else.

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graphical_molerat@reddit

If they had moved the outer engines as far inboard as they could (leaving some wing on the outside, obviously), removed the rudders on the engine nacelles, and put a large rudder behind the cockpit, this thing might actually have flown. More than once, I mean.

And might even have been a decent-ish design for mid to late war Germany, which had a shortage of big aero engines. Put three smaller engines (radials, perhaps, of which they apparently did not have a shortage) in such a weird configuration, and you get something which might still move fast enough to survive on the late war battlefield, with decent carrying capacity. While not being a totally unflyable deathtrap, like the thing on the photo.

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Old_Sparkey@reddit

Looks like it’s got a two day turn radius.

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kraftwrkr@reddit

Looks like Burt Rutan's Nazi Uncle's fever dream.

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MadjLuftwaffe@reddit

Lol,this made me chuckle.

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ViktorGavorn@reddit

Visibility is for pussies

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AvariceLegion@reddit

Still waiting for the snail to fork over any of the German pod racers 😮‍💨

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OneOfManyParadoxFans@reddit

I don't know what the engineers there were smoking, but I want some of that.

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captainwacky91@reddit

This would have likely been so easy to see from either the ground or the air, just due to the size.

This would also have likely made it easier to hit.

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jjamesr539@reddit

Desperate designers trying to appear on the verge of a breakthrough so they didn’t get a visit from the SS. Safer toward the end of the war since Germany no longer had the materials to build much, so drugged up nazi leaders just got pretty pictures and unrealistic promises.

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MrAppleSpiceMan@reddit

this is a hotwheels plane

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put_on_the_mask@reddit

Alcohol + Kerbal Space Program

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thejesterofdarkness@reddit

Kerbal Space Program without the alcohol.

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OptimusSublime@reddit

That's just any day ending in y

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oskich@reddit

Very Kerbal design indeed

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Worker_Ant_81730C@reddit

I imagine their job application forms had a multiple choice test, where the correct answer to the question “The best way to deal with thrust asymmetry is…” was

“Thrust asymmetry is not real. It cannot hurt you.”

(“Die like men” was probably acceptable too.)

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GrafZeppelin127@reddit

My thoughts exactly. The sheer leverage here is insane.

For context, when the Navy progressed to the N-class airship from the M-class airship after World War II, the increase in distance between the port and starboard propellers from twenty-something feet to thirty-something feet was sufficient for the pilots to be able to, with differential thrust alone, practice making nosewheel landings and maintain position on a single spot without a ground crew.

And that was sufficient to pivot an airship which is longer than a damn football field! This thing looks like a 4% thrust differential would send it spinning like a top!

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