Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

THE GIANT TRANSPORT GLIDERS
At the other end of the performance scale, two projects
to develop heavy-lift gliders capable of carrying
up to 22,000kg (48,5001b) of cargo - the approximate
weight of a combat infantry company, with all its
equipment - were ordered up by the RLM: one of
them from Messerschmitt, as the Me 321 'Gigant'
('Giant'); the other from Junkers, as the Ju 322
'Mammut' ('Mammoth'), originally named 'Goliath'.
The Messerschmitt aircraft was ultimately to be the
most successful by far, with about 200 built, but the
Junkers 'Mammut' was the more interesting of the
two, despite being a constructive failure.
THE Me 321'GIGANT'
The Me 321 was conventional in that it had a fuselage
to which the high-set wings and empennage were
attached. It was constructed from welded steel tubing
and wood with a covering of fabric and wood, and its
fuselage was rectangular in cross-section, very tall
towards the nose (which had clam-shell doors for
loading and unloading vehicles) and tapering towards
the tail, with side doors at the rear for passengers. The
cockpit was located on top of the fuselage, level with
the leading edge of the wing, which was straight and
tapered, with a span of 55m (180.5ft), braced by struts
to the fuselage floor at the point where the fixed
wheels were mounted. The tail was composed of a tall
fin and a braced tailplane. The aircraft performed perfectly
from the first flight, which took place at
Leipheim in March 1941, and was quite capable of
lifting the design payload. The first examples entered
service in May 1941, when a squadron of 18 was
formed. Originally, the 'Giants' were towed either by
a trio of Bf 110s (the so-called 'Troika-Schlepp') or
HYBRID AIRCRAFT AND GLIDERS
by a single Ju 290, and later by the specially developed
He l l 1Z 'Zwilling' ('Twin'), which was, in
effect, two He Ills joined at the wing, outboard of
the engines, the junction being effected at a fifth
engine, thus giving one outboard of each fuselage,
and three in the wing area between them. Rockets of
various types were mounted to assist take-off, and
there were plans to mount Argus pulse-jets to increase
the aircraft's gliding range after release. The principal
work of the 'Giant' was to transport material to the
Eastern Front. It had a crew of two and was armed
with four 7.92mm machine guns.
Even before the prototype glider had taken to the
air, work was in hand to transform it into a powered
aircraft. This consisted mainly of strengthening its
structure and contriving mountings for engines, initially
four supercharged Gnome-Rhone 14Ns, which
produced around 1150hp each. The prototype flew in
April 1942 and since it was considered to be underpowered,
the next aircraft had six engines, as did the
aircraft of all subsequent productions. The Me 323, as
it was designated, was something of a handful in the
air, requiring two flight engineers to keep the engines
balanced, and two gunners, with a total of five 7.92
mm (later 13mm) machine guns, plus locations for 10
MG34 infantry machine guns in the fuselage sides. It
often needed the assistance of a tow-plane or rocket
motors to get off the ground, especially when heavily
laden. It could carry around 16.25 tonnes (16 tons) of
payload, and had seats for 130 passengers (though
many more were carried in evacuation operations, for
Below: The heavily laden 'Gigant' - this is an Me 323 -
proved sickeningly vulnerable to air-to-air attack. In April
1943, no fewerthan 20 were shot down in one operation.
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