Heinkel He 274 - Development

Development

The first proposal for what would become the He 274 started with six airframe orders for what had been known as the He 177H, which were requested from Heinkel as early as mid-October 1941, all to have four individual engines, and intended to use what were essentially production He 177A-3 fuselages mated to longer-wingspan, four-engined wings. These proposed aircraft were shortly thereafter officially given the project number 8-274 by the RLM, and due to the heavily preoccupied Heinkel factory design offices and aircraft manufacturing facilities, this new "He 274" high-altitude bomber was to have its prototypes built in France by the Societe des Usines Farman (SAUF) firm in Suresnes.

Two He 274 prototypes were ordered built in France by the Farman Brothers and four pre-production prototypes by Heinkel at its Rostock-Marienehe facility. SAUF at Suresnes, began their prototype development.

Work on the requested half-dozen He 274 prototype airframes was leveraged off Heinkel aircraft production at AIA Breuget, Toulouse where French factories produced Heinkel components and Junkers aero engines. French production facilities at Toulouse for Heinkel aircraft were severely damaged by Royal Air Force(RAF) air raids on the night of 5/6 March 1944 and again by the US Eighth Air Force on 25 June 1944. This frustrated completion of the French prototypes as the design work in Germany and Austria had been ongoing during 1943, on what had emerged as the Heinkel-designed entry in the trans-Atlantic range Amerika Bomber strategic heavy bomber design competition, the He 277, had been progressing at the Heinkel-Sud facility in Vienna, which had been cancelled by RLM orders back in April 1944. The "Typenblatt" drawings for the never-completed He 277, with a heavy design influence for the fuselage's geometry from the smaller Heinkel He 219 night fighter, however show that it had also adopted many features from the He 274, especially its twin tail empennage design.