Although the firm is best known
for building Germany's World War II flying boats, Blohm & Voss is most
notorious for its profoundly eccentric Bv-141. It was precisely this eccentricity
which doomed an otherwise operable and reportedly reliable airplane.
The story of the poor, deformed
Bv-141 began in the late 1930s when the Luftwaffe was shopping for a light
ground attack aircraft to supplement the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, which was
already in production. Focke Wulf proposed its Fw-189, while at Blohm &
Voss, designer Richard Vogt came up with what is certainly the most asymmetrical
airplane ever flown.
It would have been intriguing
to know what Vogt had in mind when he conceived her, as it would be interesting
to know what charisma he must have brought into play in order to convince
his employers to take such a design to the Reich Luftfarhtsministerium
(Air Ministry). In any case, the RLM was predictably appalled by this strange
contrivance and refused to appropriate a single pfenning for its production.
There were scowls and snickering and suggestions that Blohm & Voss
stick to flying boats. Focke Wulf's Fw-189 won the production contract.
Blohm & Voss was, however,
sufficiently impressed with the Bv-141, that they actually undertook to
build it at their own expense. The airplane that emerged from Vogt's drawings
was remarkably aerodynamic, the fact of which he'd already known. It was
39 feet 10 inches long, with a wingspan of 50 feet 8 inches and a weight
of 8600 pounds, putting it in almost exactly the same size and weight class
as the familiar Messerschmitt Bf-110. Powered by a BMW132 865 hp radial
engine, the Bv-141 had a respectable top speed of 248 mph and a ceiling
of 29,530 feet, while its 700-mile range was almost twice that of
the Fw-189.
Its first flight, on 25 February
1938, proved the Bv-141 to be more airworthy than its detractors wanted
to believe. Over the next two years three prototypes and 10 Bv-141A production
aircraft were completed, but the poor bird never shook the stigma of its
disfigured appearance.
Richard Vogt designed the Bv-141 as though he were writing an engineering
thesis.
It worked, but pilots refused to trust such unorthodox lines
and the British laughed at them.
from The World's Worst Aircraft, Bill Yenne, Barnes & Noble
Books, New York, 1999 ed.,
pp. 64-65