The major advantage of placing the prop directly behind the cockpit is that any pilot will go above and beyond to try to save the aircraft before risking bailing out into the giant blender just over his shoulder.

B&V's company motto seems to have been, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if..."

Blohm & Voss, the gift that keeps on giving. B&V never seemed to get the memo on "normal"

I don't think Blohm & Voss' heart was really into the Second World War. It doesn't look like they were really trying to win.

Damn, Blohm and Voss really wanted to fill in every space on their weird plane bingo card.

To be fair, this is one of the less bizarre Blohm & Voss projects.

That supposed thin line between genius and insanity? That's where B&V loved to hang out.

I love the way you can give out interesting information and still remain humble. The ending monologue and your " Cool Logo" are great. Even when a fly interupts you.

The cockpit and forward fuselage only have one point of attachment to the rest of the fuselage through the center of the propellor. The forward braces keep it from rotating. They are NOT dive brakes as dive brakes need to be behind the center of pressure/gravity for stability.

Blohm &Voss is like the aircraft manufacturers Kel-Tec.

I wouldn't like to parachute out of it in an emergency!Chop!Chop!Chop!

My guess for those winglet/brace things is that they acted as a guard against walking into the propeller when the plane was on the ground.

The P 192 would have made bailing out of the cockpit somewhat problematic. Probably giving the pilot an extra incentive to avoid getting shot down. German ingenuity!

The canards are for sure structural support for the cockpit. Without them there is no way how integrate the propeller and fixing the cockpit from spinning.

Funny thing, a propeller setup sort of like this was actually used during World War I with the SPAD S.A. The pilot was still behind the propeller, but there was a gunner's nacelle in front of it. Since before the interrupter gear was invented, placing the gun in front of the propeller was the only way you could fire directly forward.

I reckon the B&V office Christmas parties would have been wild, especially if the design office was providing the intoxicants.

The Forward canards are for structural stability. Along with dampening vibration from the placement of the prop which was probably on a gear-driven ring.

Thanks for next bizarre B&V 🎉🎉🎉

Exactly this airplane stood in front of the first company my mother worked at. As a small kid in the late 1970ths the security people let me sit inside it twice while waiting for my mother. I remember the plane wasn't flightworthy at all and most likely only a 1:1 mockup. But it had lots of instruments, two flight sticks, lots of pedals and an incredible soft seat.

Aw hell yeah, another wacky concept by the crazy minds of Blohm & Voss 😍

The works of Blohm & Voss one of the few places that Nazi and Fun come to mind at the same time.

Those canard thingies were likely primarily to route controls through.

I do hope there was some plan to put an ejection seat in either of these designs! Gotta love the insanity/genius that was Blohm & Voss! 😆

Very instructive. Thanks

Pilot survival is considered something of an afterthought with some of these German designs.

Since I was a kid I've always been interested in German WWII aircraft especially their less conventional designs and I've read a few books with numerous builds, models blueprints and sketches and I've never seen this before. That wing, looks like a De Havilland Mosquito's wing. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. =D

Love those quirky ideas folks had.

I love this channel.

The main problems I noticed right off the bat of the P-192 design is that the mid-engine design would have required a huge amount of ball bearings in order for the propeller housing to rotate which were in shorter supply later in the war and secondly, the discharging of spent 20mm rounds would have impacted with the propeller blades. Why newer ground support designs were still being considered even after the introduction of the HS-129 is beyond my paygrade.

This is actually a beautiful plane. Other than bailing out being risky this looks like an amazing design far ahead of its time.

Great video 🙏

Hey Mr Cool. Just sending you a shout out that I enjoy your work. Cerby from Down Under

I agree. Having been in construction for most of my life here in Florida, I, too, always said you can always put on another coat but you can only get so naked before children start screaming and parents start stoning you. lol. Of course now the issue is a kaput AC unit. I can no longer work and the heat still wins. Oh well. Thanks for posting about the "Cuisinart" of planes.

So with the propellor behind the cockpit, there is nothing that could connect the cockpit to the rest of the aircraft unless you had a hollow drive shaft with a structural shaft there, however that would still be very weak and would be highly susceptible to failure in high g maneuvers. The connections from the cockpit to the wings would then be (additional) connection points for the cockpit to the aircraft body. Whatever other features that they could do would be bonus.

Feel you on the weather thing and the bugs. Cool little presentation, never heard of this one. I lowkey think, that the R&D guys were just coming up with new designs to justify their position and not be send to the front lol.

The front wings are supporting bracket to hold the pilot cabin. With out that how do you suggest will be keeping the cabin on the plane with the engine rotating?

I am convinced that Blohm and Voss are either time travelers going to the future and bringing back these designs or they from another universe entirely!

11:20 the 193 has got that A10 warthog vibe going especially the nose section.

It seems that the canard struts were there for additional support to the cockpit section. Where the propeller was there was most likely a fixed tube connecting the two pieces of the fuselage, allowing control cables etc going trough and the propeller fitted onto a hollow shaft turning around the fixed part driven by gears, in the same manner the Germans already did with the gun firing trough the spinner of the ME-109. The tube and shaft didn't need to be of small diameter because the effective area of the prop was outside of the fuselage anyway. From a maintenance standpoint this construction would be a nightmare, imagine changing propeller shaft bearings, it would require taking half the plane apart.

Love all these German experimental aircraft! Some of the wildest designs ever!

The blogger is incorrect to suggest this would be a weak design. The prop should be pictured as blades attached to a rotating ring, gliding on roller bearings, and with gear teeth somewhere on it (inside surface, trailing edge, whatever, that is turned by a gear attached to the crankshaft. You could really have a huge number of structural members inside that ring, with a diameter at most 10cm or so narrower than the plane normally would have had. The thrust of a propeller is proportional to swept area, and the internal part of the normal propeller disc "missing" here is actually quite small by area. It may have needed one extra blade. On the other hand, being between the landing gear, it would have been impossible for it to do a ground strike should landing or takeoff be at the wrong angle, so you could get much closer to the ground than otherwise. Finally, the rendering at 7:24 for instance shows the blades as narrow as if they were attached to the hub. In practice I think the blade would already be at their widest even at the point they attached to this ring. (I used to sketch such planes, albeit with the blades behind the engine, in class as a kid, so I've given this matter some thought!)

Excellent

love the closing comments

Seems the forward wing/supports is what held the cockpit stable, in front of the prop. I expect a spar extended through the engine to provide additional stability to the cockpit/ front gear assembly

OMG... your ending monologue just killed me, exactly my kind of humor! 🤣 Apart from that bit - great choice and presentation as always! P. S. Did you absolutely positively check it actually was a fly and not another B&V secret project just camouflaged as one? 🤔

I imagine one problem would be engine overheating. It's entirely reliant on the radiators, there's no natural airflow over it or through it to help. Even liquid cooled engines often rely to a certain extent on air cooling as well. I remember some rear engined cars like the Hillman Imp were quite prone to overheating.

Unique problems call for unique answers and surely they had all the unique points. Those two wings on the 192 coming out from the nose had to be its major bracing because there is literally only a propeller spinning behind them. They could have gotten a slight spar through the center hub IE the 109 20 mm but that wouldn't have been strong enough. I would guess the whole nose and wings would detach in the case of an ejection. To further my point look at the end proposal, there was no wing or anything coming off the nose. The props could be feathered for a breaking effect, this was used by the best of pilots, so I could imagine that second design not being so bad. At that point they probably already had been working on the Do335 as well, that was doable as seen on it. Hard to tell if they had communications about that. Very nice look into these, well done.

If it had worked wouldn't reversing the engine and having the prop near the trailing edge of the wing be a better design? Or even taking the gun pods back into a twin boom design, so turning it into a sort-of piston powered de Havilland Vampire.

I can't help but imagine a kind of modernised version of the "Pulpit Fighter".

Thank you!

The only way the escape scenario would make any sense would be if the prop had some sort of explosive bolts to remove the prop blades 1st?

That prop in the middle of the fusilage is a good idea as the inner part of any prop produces little forward thrust, just enough to cool a radial engine, maybe ?

Thank you very fascinating! The German sure are a innovative people!

World War II German fighter planes had ejection seats. The first ejection seats were developed independently during World War II by Heinkel and SAAB. The Heinkel He 280 prototype jet-engined fighter was fitted with an ejection seat in 1940, becoming the first aircraft to be equipped with such a system. On January 13, 1942, Helmut Schenk became the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft using an ejection seat after his He 280's control surfaces iced up and became inoperative during a test flight. The Heinkel He 219 night fighter was the first operational aircraft to be equipped with ejection seats in 1942 .

The Stuka was not the only ground attacker fielded. There were also the Bf 110 and 410, for example. Although these got pressed into interceptor roles a lot.

I think she looks great , very cutting edge !

Do you know if the forward winglets?/Canards were intended to be rotatable??

That was great fun in spite the fact that those two planes never made the prototype cut!

6:16 now that you mention it, i could not help but to notice that the propeller has a somewhat unconventionel position😂

Blohm & Voss always thought outside the box.

It would be interesting to see if such a design would be practical, or even airworthy.

What would the undercarriage/landing gear look like on the P192? The landing gear would have to be pretty tall to avoid the propeller striking the ground.

I suppose that the winglets were there to stop the cockpit rotating?

Arming a ground attacker with MK 108 seem to be a strange choice. Any idea why they would choose that gun instead of the MK 103?

Fantastic thats why i love zinn watches they try things no nonsense

The Germans also designed a dive bomber with jet engine. It had a single jet in the upper part of the frame, but unlike He-162, the engine was blended/included in the body. About 2...3 full size prototypes were in very advanced manufacturing stage. That factory fell in the Soviet occupation zine. The Soviets moved the unfinished prototypes to Soviet Union, then finished completely one of them and tested it.

Apart from the engineering issue of that prop placement (not insurmountable.. but added complication for sure) The big issue I see is how does the pilot escape if they have to bail? With a "normal" pusher at the tail there is some chance, especially if the prop is discarded with explosive bolts. But with the prop so close to the pilot seat? Even a decent ejector seat of the time would have problems clearing it. There was method in the "madness" of BV's asymmetrical designs, they were an attempt to overcome the problems of "P factor" (the tendency of an aircraft with a propeller to yaw when pitched up or down) along with the spiral airflow from the prop impacting with the wings, tail plane and fin/rudder. Conventional designs used simple trim adjustments, or offset fins and similar to counteract it partially, with some effect on performance. The asymmetrical design had very little performance penalty. I think eventually contra rotating props largely solved the problem of P factor with the massively powerful piston engines at the close of the war and the centripetal effect of the huge propellors they turned. (Merlin went from around 750 hp at it's conception to well over 2100hp at the end) Jets of course got rid of the issue entirely.

With the fixed canard, the CG and CL can get closer without the tail, reducing the necessity of the tail down-force. The wing is a highly tapered slightly forward swept wing, despite the straight leading edge, the chord registers it a forward swept wing. The wing area around the fuselage is likely to stall at lower aoa, at lower speed. The close coupled canard works like a slot, though the propellers accelerate air and mess up with the upstream & flow. The propwash alone will contribute to the low speed handling of craft, when it comes to the flow attachment. The propeller blades are more efficient at the outboard section due to the unchanged incidence regarding the ratio of combined angles, between the incoming air due to the plane's forward movement, and the propeller's helical motion. Because the propeller's tip moves faster than the root, its incidence is kept unchanged relative to the root. You can have a propeller that resembles that of a helicopter rotor, and it still works at higher speed depending on the propeller RPM. More perpendicular the airfoil angle is, more lift is considered as the thrust. Looking at the designs like P-39, you see the root of the propellers are more rounded. These area never contributes to the thrust, they merely exist as a support for the middle section of the blades. Though the armament is not centered for this particular design to benefit from, guns can be aligned to the center of the aircraft in these kind of "clear-fuselage" construction. Spinners can be made around the thickest part around the fuselage to maximize this masking effect though, simply putting the propeller mid-fuselage does the same thing at higher efficiency in theory. The propeller upstream kind of work like a suction, making it suitable for reducing drag at the most crucial part. Though I highly recommend more narrow aft fuselage to minimize the drag. I'm certain the fuselage could have been made laminar to further enhance the performance.

4:50 I think anytime a feature on a Blohm & Voss aircraft is described as “pretty standard”, it represents the point at which an engineer just started crying during a design committee meeting and the management realized they needed to tone things down to prevent alcoholism, burnout, and intentionally walking into propellers amongst the staff.

11:21 Looks very A10.

It makes me wonder if this BV design influenced the RFB Fantrainer.

Incredible insight for WWII planes. Forerunner of future A.F. aircraft like A-10 and stealth bomber. Good thing they didn't have the budget or time to mass produce.

The canard looking structures are to support the cockpit and stop it rotating as the rear of the cockpit would be mounted on the prop boss. All controls would have to be mounted through this too, so it would have very little area to support the weight of the nose.

Depending on how the propeller was mounted, those cannards might have kept the cockpit inline and ptovided a path for control cables. The propeller could be on a big bearing with the fuselage extending through it, but that would be very heavy. But a small shaft would be lighter, you just have nowhere for the control cables to go, with at best the space for the cannon on a bf109.

I'm a cold weather type of guy as well. Strange thing that I've ended up living in San Diego for 3/4 of my life.

These Blohm & Voss aircraft look like something you'd see in the old Fasa game, Crimson Skies.

2 cannons in the nose, alright, so where does the ejections of the shell casing go, though the props?

I would really appreciate an explanation of this automatic pull-up feature What principle did it use, such as pressure sensor, or a manual setting prior to diving etc.

I think the canard like things - gave structural stiffness to the cockpit sector as the propeller rotating around behind the cockpit wold have weakened the front cockpit sector - and you could rute wires and through them to.

Similar configuration was tried in the previous World War with poor or disastrous results. The last airframe featured; was that the inspiration for the wonderful A-10? Certainly resembles it!

I would love to see how the prop was to be driven on the 192. It does boggle the mind.

Pilots would have a lot of fun bailing out of that thing.

Does that cockpit and nose configuration look familiar much?... A10 Warthog perhaps?

For a conventional Blohm&Voss design, try the Battleship Bismarck!

Those two front pieces have to be for stability, and they could also do something else. With that prop rotating around there cannot be a lot of places for the air frame to run though that gap.

If I was a pilot of a B&V P-192, I wouldn't bother with donning a parachute, because there is no way I would try bailing out with that Cuisinart mounted directly behind the cockpit.

Where is the model kit available?

It seems like these guys just positioned the systems in random places. "Hey, we haven't tried putting the propeller in the 'middle' of the plane yet!"

Cockpit escape pod module. They're obviously small wings to convert the frontal section into a glider when it separates from the fuselage /s

I think it looks like a good aircraft design. The B & V designers/ engineers were thinking instead of copying what had already been done. IF the pilot needed to bail-out, then he could have pulled the ejector gizmo, if the prop was still turning. The pilot had good vision, uncluttered by a propeller blade spinning in front of his eyes on many other aircraft. P.S. - If the Luftwaffe wanted to win the air war, then they should have told the designers to make a German copy of the Spitfire, the Hurricane, the P-47, or the DH 98 Mosquito.

Most sane B&V aircraft proposal:

There are 2 ways in which this could work. Firstly, the prop blades could be mounted on a big donut, which spun around an inner fuselage. The inner part of the donut would thus have a drive gear. But the second way is that the propeller is conventional and mounted on the crankshaft of the engine, albeit with a short shaft added to the front. The cockpit would sit on a bearing on that shaft, free to rotate, however the 'winglets' would prevent the cockpit from rotating. The difficulty with the former would be in adjusting propellor pitch and dealing with the very large bearing surface implied by the donut. The difficulty with the latter would be in getting control cabling to the control surfaces.

The front mini wings appear to be for support the nose because the inner propeller doesn't gives were to attach it to the main body. Regards from Venezuela

Common aircraft have Center of the lift aft of CoG, and the tail compensates it by producing the downforce. This downforce still comes with a corresponding drag, pure tandem designs have no such deficiencies due to the lack of downforce required to balance out the pitch axis. Putting the canard means the point of total CP is moved forward, meaning the location of CoG and CL is closer without the horizontal tail. The wing is a highly tapered slightly forward swept wing, despite the straight leading edge, due to the airfoil shape, the chord actually registers itself as a forward swept wing. The joint section near the fuselage is likely to stall at lower AoA in lower speed due to the sideway airflow. The canard is closely coupled, meaning it will work like a slat, though the propellers accelerate air and mess up with the upstream & flow. The propwash alone will contribute to the low speed handling of craft, because of the region the slipstream is interfering with is the weak spot when it comes to the flow attachment. Also the Propeller blades are more efficient at the outboard section due to the unchanged incidence regarding the ratio of combined angle, between the incoming air due to the plane's forward movement, and the propeller's helical motion. Because the propeller's tip moves faster than the root, its incidence is kept unchanged relative to the root when it comes to the speed regime of the aircraft. More perpendicular the airfoil angle is, more lift is considered as the thrust. So by design, you can think of the propeller blades kind of like an outboard jet turbine section. Though the armament is not centered enough for this particular design to benefit from, guns can be aligned to the center of the aircraft in these kind of "clear-fuselage" construction. Spinners can be made around the thickest part around the fuselage to maximize this masking effect though, simply putting the propeller mid-fuselage does the same thing at higher efficiency in theory. The propeller upstream kind of work like a suction in aerodynamics, making it suitable for reducing drag at the most crucial part. Though I highly recommend more narrow aft fuselage to minimize the drag. I'm certain the fuselage could have been made laminar to further enhance the performance.

i love Blohm & Voss' stufff

11:36 i do wonder what effects it would have in a gears up landing scenario tho ..

SPAD used a similar mid-propeller design in the Great War, so there was precedent. Known as the model S.A., it was produced in S.A.1 through S.A.4 variants. It was a two seat observation biplane with the observer sitting in a nacelle located in front the rotary engine, while the pilot sat in the fuselage behind the engine. The intention was to provide the observer with an unobstructed view, while mitigating the drag and control linkage issues with traditional pusher designs. In addition to structural support for the pilot's nacelle, the canards on the B&V may have housed the electrical harness or other control systems for the wing guns, landing gear and wing control surfaces.. Otherwise they would have been routed through the engine and propeller shaft, around the engine and back forward to the wings. This may have been impractical or at least less desirable for several reasons. When I first saw the B&V, I couldn't help but feel that it was inspired by the mid-propeller SPAD SA.

Anyone who studied HS physics and nothing more than mechanical drawing would instantly realize that there was no realistic way of connecting that cockpit out in front of the engine/fuselage, regardless of the propose leading-edge wing spars. Just try considering transferring the pilot's commands to the various flight, power-plant and TO/Landing systems. Fantasy land.

The wing cannons in this design look like the Mk103, judging by the length of the barrel. The Mk108 due to its very short barrel design had a very low muzzle velocity and is actually the weapon that the Heckler & Koch 40 mm grenade launcher (Mk19) is based on. This was a real problem for pilots who needed to lead a moving target in the air, and the Mk103 as used in some Me410 aircraft was known to be the preferred 30 mm weapon due to its superior ballistics and hitting power. The Mk103 posed a number of problems to aircraft designers due to the recoil of the weapon. For example the extensive wing rework on the Ta152 from its predecessor the Fw190 was a direct result and requirement in order to mount the Mk103. In any case, as strange as the design is, if the Mk103 was the intended weapon for this design it perhaps would explain the support structrure between the guns and fuselage. Edit: The artwork on the B&V 193 clearly shows Mk103 cannons as wing mounted weapons.

The Hs 132 was a jet dive bomber, partly constructed when the war ended.