Sorry for the delay, had a super busy week, but here's the video! Feel free to join our Discord community! - discord.gg/WCevgcufwJ Consider supporting us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/AviationDeepDive Donate to the channel! www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=U3F6D98ZXY48N
Good job!! You managed to make a very interesting video about a plane that many would pass off as "meh" for its looks and performance. I think in popular documentaries the "aquatic" theaters of war, where air, sea and land forces mingle, are generally underrepresented because they are so complex.
The Küstenflieger, while part of the Luftwaffe, were sort of a seperate Mini-Air Force tasked solely with coastal flying. A bit like the RAF Coastal Command. The idea of attack floatplanes goes back to WW1 when the Imperial German Navy had used floatplanes as Seekampfflugzeuge in a variety of roles from long range fighter to submarine hunter to light bomber.
@aviationdeepdive I have a channel about aviation also. If you have time please check it out.i would like to hear your opinion Thanks and good luck Ps. I subscribed to your channel and will watch your videos regularly
The rest of the planes in the Küstenflieger were old biplanes and whatever could be found that was left-over from the inter-war years. This plane was, by comparison, quite modern. It achieved a good record for sinking British ships with torpedoes in the North Sea - but there was a shortage of torpedoes. Goering hated the navy and progressively took back all the planes and pilots allocated to the Küstenflieger. As a result, there were few crews trained in naval co-operation and some desperately needed German destroyers were sunk in a daylight attack by these men. They were replaced by Ju-88s used by a Luftwaffe gruppe specially trained in anti-shipping strikes that did a lot of damage.
At least one-off the Norwegian ones was used for shipping agents into Vichy North Africa from Malta. Commander Charles Lamb in his great book “War in a Stringbag” describes how such a mission went wrong and he was prisoner appalling treated by the Vichy French.
One theatre in WW2 that is terribly ignored is the battle of the east coast convoys. For the dirty British coaster with their salt caked smoke stacks there was no ‘phoney war’ The RAF was useless as usual and the RN over stretched and waiting for the RNPS to come up to speed to provide cover. Consequently, the Coasters and colliers from the north east and Scotland were sent up and down the east coast to keep the south east from panicking from a lack of coal (coal for the south was brought down from the north via the colliers down the east coast as London alone needed 25000 long tonnes of coal a week). These He 115 would attack the coastal convoys with mines, bombs and torpedoes while they fought back with old Lewis and Savage guns welded onto the bridges of the colliers and manned by hastily trained sailors. The poor colliers were slaughtered.
Heinkel describes in his memoirs how in one of the HE 115 delivered to Sweden one tank was filled with about 1000 liter SCHNAPS, as there was a high tax on alcohol in Sweden.😉
The finns used atleast two of these. The norwegian one and as leased from the germans where the numbers are kind of shady fog of war. The finns liked it very much that much that they made ski and wheel kits to it so no wonder that they blasted the one ditched in that lake. The finns also made lot of bombing sorties with the Heinkel He115 not loosing a singel one. He 115 is one of them planes that makes me belive that by ideology the german was pretty single minded fellow. A good template to work on, develope but no instead other types not that much better if all. The finns liked it and they where in to quality picking so they asked for the He 115 and they got them an leasing contract whiles the germans ??? hahaha..wait an minute.. what a F#! There is a twist to it, the finns awaked the germans and the He 115 saw an revival getting upgraded.
Years ago, I read that a He 115 was flown to an Siberian ialand, to set up a base there, in order to conduckt recon of the northern passage, and attack coastal ships. It was supplied by submarine, both fuel, food and weapons. It lasted only a few months, until the winterweather closed in on them. But talk about feeling alone, and a long way from home, sitting on that island...
I remember that story but in an article about the BV.138. I have to look it up but I think they even had a small seaplane base and where refused by submarines
Hi, thanks for the video. Very interesting. I recall having built one of these in 1/72, don't remember the kit brand. I' ll have to look for it now! I was also impressed by the footage on the flight simulator. Can you please share which one are you using ? Thanks! Looking forward for more videos. Cheers, António