He 111 restoration

[Zimme83]

A Project unknown to pretty much everyone. a He 111 is being restored in Sweden. It contains parts mainly from 2 He 111, one that made an emergency landing in Norway in 1940 and one that Landed in a Swedish lake (also in 1940). The Heinkel on the Swedish side of the border was recovered in 2006.




(In Swedish)
http://www.forcedlandingcollection.se/LW/LW017-rest1.html

[Devil 505]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

[lyric1]

Your right had no idea.
Glad you posted.

[Mister Fork]

Are they planning to restore this plane to flying condition? A lotta good work done so far.

[Zimme83]

I really doubt that it will fly again, that would require that you built a new airplane, you cannot build anything that flies if you start with this:

[Zimme83]

From the web page:
The main part (except the cockpit) is from the one salvaged in N Sweden in 2008. Designated 1H+DN, a 111 from KG26 that made an emergency landing on the 15nd of may 1940. The plane was one of six 111 on a mission to attack British shipping around Narvik. The flight is attacked by 3 Blackburn Skuas from 800 Sq that took of from Ark Royal. After the initial attack the 111 formation is scattered and 1H+DN is spotted alone by the Skuas. The 111 is severely damaged by the Skuas and is forced to make an emergency landing. The plane ends up on a lake on the Swedish side of the border. The Crew is unharmed and makes it back to the Norwegian side but is captured and spend the rest of the war as POW:s.

The Skuas designated "Red 1" and "Red 2" seems to be the ones that brought it down. Piloted by a Lt. E.G.D. Finch-Noyes and Midshipmen L. Gallagher with the gunners Petty Officer airman H. Cunningham and P/O R. Rolph.

Crew on the 111 was:
Pilot: Uffz. Siegfried Blume
Commander: Feldwebel Karl Grube
Radio operator: Uffz. Helmut Bennighof
Mechanic: ffz. Werner Wamser

[Krusty]

I've mentioned this before, Zimmer, but in my opinion what they're doing isn't really restoration. It's recreation from scratch using 99% new parts and just templates or plans/jigs/designs from the original plane. The pieces that were original are just token pieces.

I suppose it's more of a spiritual rebirth or a link to the past for those doing it, but in all objective consideration it's just creating new parts and assembling them into a newly built plane.

The problem would be the DB engines. None of those around for 109s, let alone for He111s. It would be a Buchon-esque version of a CASA 2.111 or something.

Engines = money. If they have enough money they can get it running and flying. Otherwise it might remain a static shell display until they could finish certain things on it. Although, typically these guys tend to have better (more consistent) funding to finish projects than some American organizations do.

[Zimme83]

Every single pice you see is from the original planes. But they will need to make some new part or use parts from other 111:s since a lot of parts is missing from the wreckage.

As for the engines:

This is one of the engines from 1H+DN, they seems to have at least one more Jumo engine under restoration.

[save]

Nice find Zimme.

[Krusty]

Every single pice you see is from the original planes.

Not to nitpick, and definitely not picking on you, but... No, not every piece you see is from the original. The majority cannot be hammered out our straightened out to a point where they retain their strength. The more you beat a piece of metal out of shape and back into shape, the less strength it has. They will tag certain pieces for re-use, but typically non-vital things and not load bearing ribs, frames, structures...

You don't go from this:



to this:



by pounding out a few dents and just bolting it on. You create those from scratch. The translated article even mentions something along those lines on one of the image captions. The reason these restorations take years is because they are measuring the parts and hand-fabricating replacements and hand-assembling them.

Or do you think they're taking shattered remnants like this:



and just welding the shattered shards back together? Doesn't work that way.

From everything I've seen on restorations from various nations on various sizes from single seats to massive bombers, it's a very painstaking process whereby you strip it down and replace shattered and broken parts with hand fabricated new parts, thus replacing the weakened and/or missing parts from scratch. New metal, new strength, but built to old specs. That's what a restoration is these days. Essentially the Flugwerk Fw190 has as much in common to the original Fw190 as some restored planes do. Same plans, same design, new metal.


It's nice that they have the engine blocks for those Jumos, but getting them running is another matter entirely. We didn't have any DBs for many decades because while we had the engine blocks we literally could not build or fabricate the parts we needed with modern technology that they did back then. All the jigs and parts and stores of materials were gone. We literally couldn't fabricate a new camshaft, for example, because it just wouldn't fit or work in an old WW2 engine. I would say Jumos might be a little easier than DBs, but a wrecked engine sitting around for 76 years is not going to just start up if you clean it.

[Zimme83]

You miss the point, its not about getting back into the air, that will never happen. The engines will most likely never run but they dont have to. It is going to sit on a museum..

And the cockpit is made with parts from 2 planes..

[Kanth]

Great project!!  Also I hadn't heard of "Blackburn Skuas" before so it was a nice introduction to another plane. 

[Zimme83]

I have sent a few mails to some friends, I hope i can dig up some more info about the project..

[Mister Fork]

Reason why I'm asking, after reading their posts on the amount of work and effort to restore the engines, they did a LOT more than is required to simply have it as a sitting museum piece - they rebuilt it with the same quality and effort for the engine to run. Hence me going...gebuz, are they rebuilding this plane to fly again?

I've seen a lot of restoration work here at my cities aerospace museum - especially the lancaster where I got a personalized tour including the workshop backroom. When they rebuilt the Merlins - they didn't take apart the entire engine block, clean out the cylinders, put in new piston rings, remake the cam shafts, polish the lifters. All they did was clean up the outside, remove engine oil - pushed in a type of restoration preservative oil over all components, re-did the engine seals so it wouldn't leak, and then put the engine back in.

These guys went all out on the Jumo's.
Complete cleaning and rebuild the internal structure...


Restored the Jumo hydraulic pump and generator


Propellor replacement mount restored 100%


Side view


Cam put back to factor conditions


And take a look at this gearbox!


Makes one go - holy smokes - its a whole lotta expense and attention to detail for an Jumo engine that will just sit inside of a museum. 

[Mister Fork]

anyways...even if all it does is sit in a museum, it's going to be one AMAZING HE-111.