My father had an aircraft identification book printed in the UK at the start of the war. It contains the He-100.

The 100 is a beautiful airplane, but looks only get you so far, you did very well in explaining it's weaknesses against other aircraft at the time in particular other German aircraft.

In war thunder, this thing leaks coolant after being hit by a pebble, so at least they got that right.

I felt like I was watching a history documentary, keep up the good work!

Excellent video. The evaporative cooling had been tried before - the Supermarine 224 / Goshawk of around 1934 used it and some lessons were learned by Mitchell which fed into the spitfire design. Evaporative cooling seems to have been something that excited designers but was in itself a dead end in a warplane.

Who needs millions of dollars to do a documentary.

excellent!

But would it cool a GTX 1080 oc ?

Maybe an idea for a future video can be the advantages and disadvantages of radial engines and inline engines? I feel like a lot of people would appreciate some clarification in that area. Also that radiator idea is absolutely genius even if it isn't practical. Classic German engineering! :)

Not only a informative but well made. The History Channel could learn a lot from you...like...for instance....how not not make their videos dumbed-down and boring long winded andddddd ... saying stuff in 8:30 instead of 45 minutes. great job THANKS!

Finally, an explanation of the German evaporative cooling system that I can understand!

This was very well done, I learned a lot about an obscure aircraft. This also help give insight into not just the research and development of a single aircraft, but advancement in aviation of an nation as a whole. I really hope you make other videos about obscure aircraft of all nations that give the same insight like this one has.

I decided to give you oak leaves with the Iron Cross

Excellent video - again. From the sources I've read, it was superior in all aspects to the ME109. The HE100 v8 version removed the experimental radiator for more conventional one and still showed excellent characteristics. Its range was also superior to the ME109 and used fewer parts. It's a pity/lucky it wasn't produced at the time of the original completion to realise its true potential.

Absolutely fantastic audio/visual lesson Bis! It was on par easily with most history documentaries.

I've never heard of this airplane. Thanks for the information. Very well presented.

According to Nowarra the reason for the He 100's cancellation was quite simple: Having a prototype fighter be the fastest in the world stole the 109's spotlight, which cast a bad light on Udet's Luftwaffe. That's also why Heinkel's team wasn't allowed any other record flights after the 209 (which was called 109R to make it look like it was a deviation of the serial production 109). It should also be said that Udet presented the craft to the French as "the newest German fighter" and then asked Heinkel "How are you doing with the serial production?" This annoyed Heinkel greatly as no order had been given to get the factories up and running, and there never would be one, of course. Additionally, the surface cooling was more resistant to damage than the normal cooling cycle since a hole wouldn't leak as much water as one in a standard water-cooled powerplant. NEvertheless, an amazing video.

3:30 "Before we turn our attention to the actual plane design.... let me introduce our new sponsor, Raid: Shadow legends." :D

Fascinating, I knew nothing of the 100.. I'm a big 109 fan, which is how I discovered this video. I found it compelling from start to finish... Keep it up!!

He 100 was and still is one of my favourite German Aircraft I have in War Thunder

thanks again for these interesting documentaries-I believe RJ Mitchell; designer of the Spitfire, used the wing/floatplane structure of the Schneider Trophy S5/S6 aircraft for heat sink/heat dissipating of engine coolant thus removing the high drag associated with external radiators. I am sure the practical aspects of such systems in the field plus combat vulnerability would rule this approach out.

I watched this good and informed discussion of inline engine liquid cooling. You have to admire the quality of draggy giant-displacement air-cooled radials doubling as bullet-shields for their pilots. They also have much shorter crankshafts that get along better with all the inertia of a giant propeller. Stories abound of Allied aircraft returning home with entire cylinders shot off their radial engines. My uncle was a P-47 pilot so I grew up knowing about it.

That is a really informative, impartial factual piece of cool history. And excellent delivery with the VO (voice over)

The visuals are a bit suspect, but the commentary is top notch and informative. Thanks!

by your brief description, the cooling system of the he-100 seems much like the cooling system of a refrigerator.

Excellent, well balanced and researched presentation!

Excellent video - done with integrity and apparently well researched, best results of any endeavor always acquired by the love one has for the work that goes into it, soberly objective ... Thanks again Bismark!

I do like the passion you express thought your way of telling the storie...I really like it.

Great video Bismarck, you now have your latest subscriber. One thing i'd like to point out is that the Supermarine S6B had the same type of cooling system as the He-100. Mitchel designed the S6B as the fastest racing aeroplane of it's day with liquid cooling within the skin of the airframe for the ultimate in streamlining... However when he designed a fighter aeroplane, in the form of the Spitfire, he deliberately chose to use a coolant radiator with the 'Meredith Effect' instead! That may well have been for practicality and also serviceability, at the small cost of just a few knots. The Spitfire was designed with a radiator and not such a cooling system for a reason, and not because the manufacturer did't think of it or couldn't produce it. So the He-100 as fantastic as it most certainly was, perhaps wasn't robust enough for service life along with diplomatic and other technical issues.

Very good insight. I had no idea about the clever but highly vulnerable cooling system in the He100 design.

Superbly composed video with clear, informed, well structured narration. Top notch.

I kept seeing Your videos popping up on my feed, usually dismissed them since I had something else to watch and usually they were gaming videos, of which I had plenty to watch.. I never imagined I missed out on so many excellent quality (informative, coherent, visually enticing) documentary styled videos.. wunderbar my dear friend

this is an amazing video, thx for the clear explanation!

"Come, Heinkel, show us the meaning of haste"

Concise and thorough explanations. Altogether excellent work! Keep up the great jobs of all your videos. Thanks.

Thank you for making these videos. I didn't know I was missing this information in my life. It's great to learn more!

Well done and educational. I've been a long time subscriber and you never disappoint. Thanks for this Bismark!

The He-100 with surface evaporation cooling system was an amazingly fast aircraft, but not suited for a fighter aircraft because of its extreme vulnerability to any kind of battle damage. However, that version of the He-100 would have made an excellent high speed photo reconnaissance aircraft, like the British PR Spitfires. In that role, its job would be to avoid combat, especially since it would be completely unarmed, carrying extra fuel in the wings instead of guns and ammunition. The Luftwaffe really needed a high speed photo reconnaissance aircraft during the Battle of Britain, for low level work especially. The old photo recon Dornier Do 17’s were just too slow and vulnerable. And the ultra high altitude Junkers Ju 86R was very difficult to intercept, but the extreme altitude (36,000+ feet) made for low detail photos, even with huge cameras - you could tell the difference between a single engined and a twin engined aircraft from that altitude, but you couldn’t tell the difference between a Hawker Hurricane fighter and a Fairey Battle target tug. Often the Luftwaffe ended up bombing British airfields that didn’t have fighter aircraft!

Great video! I had never heard of the He-100 before.

That cooling system is very interesting! You never see much about this plane, an intriguing little gem.

I love videos like this! I actually read about this plane just the other day when I was reading about the test pilot Fritz Wendel.

Great documentary, amazing English speech. I had never heard of this plane before so this was very interesting. Yes, Willy did seem to get more orders than his fair share!

A very obscure topic and an interesting analysis. I always enjoy and appreciate your productions for your insugbts anspd clear explanations. Thanks!

I am never disappointed with your videos, another excellent presentation. Thank you.

Very informative video! More like this would be cool! Love all your other videos too! : )

The he 100 is probably one of my favorite low tier planes in war thunder

Very well done. Excellent work!

The cooling system is known as Wing Cooling Evaporation System (WCES). It was also tried experimentally by the Japanese for their army air force Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien (allied code name Tony) which also used a license built version of the DB-601 engine. The Tony had a large ventral radiator (similar to the P-51). Imagine a Tony without the ventral radiator and that's what the experimental version looked like. Kawasaki also experimented with this system for their prototype Ki-64 (allied code name Rob). The Japanese dropped development of the system for the same reason the Germans did.

Its funny to hear you talk about some of the reasons the He-100 was likely not adopted by the Germans. Especially the coolant being so spread out. When I viewed the X-ray view in War Thunder I was like "Shit.... one shot by an enemy plane or stray bullet from even rifle caliber ground AA guns and I'll have to RTB immediately!" Great innovation to give maximum performance but a huge Achille's Heel. Ty for video. Well edited and put together.

I will bet they never lost one of these due to wing Icing.

Another excellent and informative video. Many Thanks Bro.

Love your videos. They are so informative, intelligent and entertaining. Please keep up the great work. Greetings from Austin, Texas.

Hey Bis, you missed something in your overview... the final model of the He 100, the D-1, abandoned the evaporative surface cooling system and instead used a larger version of the retractable underbelly radiator. It was inserted in a "plug" below the cockpit, leading to a wing with slightly more span. It wasn't as retardedly fast as the original of course, but still capable of around 644 kph in level flight... a number only approached, but not reached, by the Bf 109 with the F version in 1941! It also had a third more range than the Bf 109, which would have made it much better suited for escorting bombers during the Battle of Britain. This could have offset the need for the Bf 110 as an escort fighter, which also used the DB 601... and thus, the problem of engine supply for the He 100 basicly solves itself... especially considering that the Bf 110 needed 2 of the engines. Speakling strictly about engine supply, for each Bf 110 C built, 2 He 100 D-1s could have been built! The D-1 is also the version that is now implemented in War Thunder... at least it is named a D-1... but its actually a D-0, still using the fragile evaporative surface cooling system and with the engine MG FF replaced by a third machinegun. Want to guess the battle rating? It's 1.7. Yes. You read that right. A plane that can keep up with the ingame Griffon Spitfire XIVe at 5-6km altitude is fighting pre- and early war monoplanes and biplanes... The He 100 is now officially the most criminally undertiered plane in War Thunder. One last thing about the cooling system... it turned out that the cooling capacity wasn't sufficient for more powerfull engines like the later DB 605, and there was no way to increase the performance of the coolant system at all... it was recognised as an evolutionary dead end. The Bf 109 is already labeled as a fighter that didn't have as much development potential than the Spitfire or later fighters, with this cooling system the He 100 would have had basicly NO development potential at all! Which is, IMHO, one of the main reasons for why it was abandoned on the final D-1 variant. Whenever Ernst Udet is mentioned, I can't help but get angry about him... what an arrogant, ignorant and spineless bonehead! He might have been a good fighter and stunt pilot, but he totally failed in any other capacity, be it as test pilot, as the man responsible for the excessive dive bomber focus of the Luftwaffe which lead to such grand things as the He 177 requirement for dive bombing capability, and lastly... at life itselt, by becoming an alcohol, tobacco and methamphetamine(Pervitin tablets in germany at the time) addict and finally comitting suicide after the failure of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Maybe I am a bit harsh on him, he didn't choose the responsibility of becoming Generalluftzeugmeister, it was forced on him, and the fat bastard Göring also shifted the blame on him... but he didn't have the courage to stand up to anyone, either! And instead of confronting the people responsible with the fact that he just wasn't fit for this job or that the failure in the Battle of Britain wasn't his fault, or at least not his alone, he just consumed increasingly excessive amounts of alcohol and meth, which made him even more easily manipulated by Göring, and spent his time privately drawing reaaaally toxic caricatures of his superiors. He was a child in a mans body.

Fantastic production

I've always said that war is the best innovator for technology. It pushes R&D to the absolute limit. This video shows that, and Heinkel is an absolute genius for this novel cooling idea, but like you said, it doesn't work well in battle, so it was never used. Loved the vid, keep up the good work. Wish I could give you a Knight's Cross instead of an Iron one for this video.

Excellent documentary and analysis.

One of the most beautiful fighter aircraft

1:53 Notice the single landing gear, which, although slightly tricky to use during take off and landing, gave the plane a critical advantage in weight and drag, reducing weight by approximately 30kg and thus increasing acceleration by 3415% and top speed by 856mph. True story, I saw it on the History Channel.

That was an excellent video Bismark....keep it up mate....

Thanks for a great video about a plane I had been interested in. I always wondered why it never made it into production as a fighter. You explained it very well.

the cooling system would be problematic in a dogfight or sustained steep climb since that would mean high engine throttle and low airflow. the plane would burn up.

If I remember correctly this plane was originally a racing plane which is why it's covered in coolant or something like that.

Fantastic clear narration and great content!

Very well done video!!

That cooling seems like heat pipes of some sort.

Lol wish I would have watched this sooner, I got the He-100 the day it came out and spaded it in about 2 ours and never cared to look at a x-ray of the plane, I was amazed at how fast it was and it was almost impossible to over heat, I didn't even notice that the cooling system was so vulnerable until I finally got shot at by a spit and noticed all the leaks, the plane was just so damn fast the enemy never had a chance to shoot me ... now I'm done with the he-100 XD

Excellent analysis of a beautiful aircraft that never fought. I made a 1:72 Heinkel-100 model as a teenager and the lines were absolutely gorgeous.

Well written and put together.

You've taken a very rational look at what was once, to my eight year old eyes back in 1979, a very clear case of "injustice against Heinkel". Perhaps it was, and perhaps Willi Messerschmitt really did have the inside track, but you've given some very good technical reasons why the decision NOT to put the He-100 into mass production and combat service turned out to be for the best. Have you also covered, or would you consider also covering, the He280 in this regard?

I misread the title. I read wanderwaffle. My appetite clicked before I could.

This is an excellent analysis! Too may people have one or another "romantic" bias towards anything WW2, but this simply looks at logical facts. Well done! Das ist eine erstklassige Analyse! Zu viele Leute haben eine "romantische" Voreinstellung zu allem was mit WK2 zu tun hat, aber das hier ist einfach ein auf logischen Fakten basierender Blick. Gute Arbeit!

Very well done! You have your work cut out for you good sir. Expertly conducted research, easy to understand due to a well written text, and great archive video material! Have you considered documentary journalism as a career?

Have yourself some oak leaves with that iron cross. This was a great video.

can you imagine how hard that cooling system would have been to maintain in Russia?

great video. I was about to like it when I found that I already had. ahhhhh, now I know why the story was familiar. And yet, enjoyable all over again.

Wow, I learned a lot and you did a great job with a documentary.

The bf109 was a good aircraft, but it did have its drawbacks. Limited armament, range, view from the cockpit, especially towards the 6 o`clock was some of the drawbacks. Liquid cooled engine was another, but many aircraft suffered from this - Spitfire, Hurricane, Mustang, Lightning and so on... The bf 109 always climbed very well, from the E-model had fuel injection so it could do a negative G dive, it turned ok, but not as well as the Hurricane and Spitfire, however it seems to have been able to out turn the P-51 Mustand (when flown by a capable pilot). When the Fw190 came onto the scene in late 41 early 42 it "flew rings" around the Spitfire mk V...which may seem strange to some as the Spitfire could easily out turn a Fw. However in aerial warfare speed, firepower and roll is more important than turning, as turning is only usefull if someone is on your tail trying to shoot you, and turning for any amount of time makes you predictable and an easy target for a second bandit coming into or slashing through the fight. The Fw 190 A-models and the P-47 did normally stand a better chance of returning home after hits as they were air cooled, and there are stories of P-47s making it home after pieces of the engine being shot off. I think the He-100 and He-112 might have been better aircraft, the Luftwaffe went with the bf109 and the rest is history. The Heinkel aircraft might have solved one of the major problems of the bf109 and that was its narrow landing gear, which did kill a lot of new pilots.

That cooling system in the he100 would be far to big for war. 1 hit to the wingtips could have taken out the plane.

Awesome vid. Keep up the good work.

Fantastic analysis. Thanks for sharing

wasn't this added in the new war thunder patch?

this was posted on my birthday :D

You have a new subscriber. Very interesting video and analysis!

Good stuff Bis, keep them coming.....

Built a semi-scale rc model of this aircraft...flew like a dream. Just saying!

Liked for the iron cross :p

The cooling system you describe(or anyway something extremely close to it) was used also on the Macchi M.C.72 Idrocorsa. The exact same airplane holding the record the He-100 was trying to beat (or better the absolute record, the one for piston engined floatplanes still holds) On almost every image(or with your own eyes going to the museum in Vigna di Valle, where it's preserved) of M.C.72 you can see it is colored in the tipical italian "race red" but has a lot of different "golden"(actually brass or copper) patches on the fuselage, wing, floats and even struts, these patches are the cooling surfaces for the impressively powerful 3100 hp FIAT AS.6 engine (with no additional traditional radiators). In an interview the designer Castoldi wrote:(I roughly translate from Italian) «Problems about engines cooling are very important. An engine cooling system with liquid circulation on a fighter plane, which tends to minimize every dimension, poses special problems, but in the M.C.72 I had to face and solve even harder requirements, this was done in a very smart way. At 700km/h the system exchanged more than 600 calories per square meter every minute with a total weight of circulating water of only 15kg. Water circulation was provided by 4 centrifugal pumps, these pumped 900 liters of water per minute, this means that every minute the same water passes almost 8 times through the radiators. the water circulation was under pressure, mantained by special very sensitive valves controlled by barometric capsules. Without valves, as water temperature approaches 90° pumps disengage and stop working. Keeping the circuit at high pressure the water is prevented from boiling and pumps can keep providing flow even at temperatures exceeding 100°, temperature which is related to the pressure level set into the valves. I think that the pressurized water circuit cooling system was used for the first time in the M.C.72 »

Very informative video and excellent research.

For you Bis, your own Medal - The Order of Leni- umm I mean Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords... yes definitely NOT the Order of Lenin

I guess it would be interesting to compare the prices of the 109 and He 100. You would probably find the 109 was favoured for being a real cheapo in comparison.The rather primitive structure of the 109 was fairly optimal for low cost mass production. With the 109´s main advantage being a modest speed advantage over the Spitfire (until the Mk.IX outdid the 109G in that respect as well…), the 109 had very little going for it from the start. Especially due to the fact that the speed advantage only lasted until the 109 had to fly a steep turn, in which it would bleed off speed very quickly. What I also wonder is what the flying characteristics of the He 100s at high lift coefficients were. The small chord in the outer wings suggest to me that they were prone to flic rolling in accelerated stalls and at low speeds. The very thin wing does suggest the same characteristic, so I guess the He 100 would have been a bit of a beast when not flying straight and level at high speed. That obviously is no good for a fighter! The quote from a post war meeting of 109 and Spitfire pilots probably makes the strongest point, I guess. When a former 109 pilot claimed that "In the hands of an expert, the 109 was a superior plane!", the Spitfire veteran replied "See? Every idiot could fly the Spit!". Just doing number will ignore such vital factors. You may be interested in a book "Testpilot auf Beuteflugzeugen". (I forgot the name of the author) It tells of the experiences a German test pilot made with all the various types of aircraft he got to fly at the Erprobungsstelle at Rechlin, where captured fighters were compared to German designs. He especially admired the P47 for its comparatively low noise level and comfortable cockpit that made it much more bearable to fly for hours on end than sitting in a crammed 109 where the pilot would be permanently busy keeping his jumpy plane on course, for example. A plane that will wear out the pilot´s awareness with merely keeping it flying will not help the fighting! Did the pilots who flew the He 100 find her to be a problematic plane that would not be safe in the hands of freshmen from flying school? If the He 100 was that demanding beast, even more so than the 109, this probably would have been a show stopper. In the book series War Planes by MacDonald from 1961, you learn that out off the 3500 Me109E produced, some 800 were lost without enemy interaction. Mainly take off and landing accidents due to the narrow track main gear being nasty to handle. (That equals the number of Spitfires and Seafires lost to accidents. Counting some 800 accident losses out off some 25000 produced. This includes aircraft carrier operation, a high risk scenario *no* German fighter was even capable of, not even mentioning the 109!) Now imagine what records a plane more dificult to handle than the 109might have ended up with. I would bet on price and handling chracteristics being the reasons for the He 100 not being introduced into service by the Luftwaffe, thus.

As always, Outstanding job! Thank you

Thank you. That was very well done.

Very good video. Any chance you could do some non-german planes, just for variety and information? Or even more german planes, I'm easy.

It looks just like the Japanese Kawasaki Ki-61 "Tony".

You should start your own documentary channel. I enjoyed that. Tanks for the upload.

Liked! Always good to learn something about aircraft and aeronautical history ;)

Point of interest: the crazy cooling system you point out here that is so inappropriate for a fighter aircraft and that was probably the reason for the death of this one... Is built into a modern airplane. The F-35 uses the same system. Not to cool the engine, but too cool it's Electronics. And it doesn't move water around, to the edges of the Wings, and everywhere else, no, instead, it moves jet fuel. Which really doesn't sound like a great idea for an airplane that might get shot at. But there it is.

Testflew it in War Thunder today, great plane.

Appreciated your video very much - thank you!

Very well done and presented!