Top 10 best-looking German aircraft

In the 19th Century, one Otto Lilienthal studied birds, built a hill to fly his gliders from and did much to further the study of flight.

Since then, Germany has remained a big name in the development of aviation. Not all its aircraft have been beautiful; most have veered wildly between appearing utilitarian, evil, cute, and totally mad. We asked our readers to decide the 10 best-looking, and here are the results:

10: Extra EA-300

Anyone who has seen the Extra 300 flying will be impressed by the tiny aeroplane’s astonishing ability to fling itself around the sky. Whereas other aircraft in this list may have a deadly or commercial role, the Extra 300 is all about the joy of flying.

Designed in 1987 by Walter Extra, a West German pilot, the 300 is a master of aerobatics, the breath-taking art of performing extreme aerial manoeuvres in sequence. To survive such violent manoeuvring requires great structural strength.

An object at rest on Earth's surface is subject to 1G; modern fighter pilots reach 9G in the most violent dogfight manoeuvres where the acceleration will make them feel and move as if they weighed nine times more. The Extra 300 is rated at an alarming 10G (positive or minus G!) or a still bewildering 8G with two onboard.

Along with the great strength of the aircraft, the 300 has other features to aid aerobatic performance, including an airfoil (the cross-sectional shape of the wing) which is designed to work equally efficiently, whether in upright or inverted flight. A sleek work of art weighing less than a metric ton, the 300 is a joyous aeroplane often in bedecked in bright colourful schemes.

9: Albatros D.V

With very few exceptions, First World War aircraft are not the prettiest. But then, the aeroplane was only just over ten years old at this stage and virtually all of them were made of canvas wrapped around a wooden frame, little more than a motorised kite.

However, the Albatros Flugzeugwerke in Berlin started to use plywood for the fuselages of their aircraft, which quickly gained a reputation for great strength amongst their flimsy contemporaries. Though boxy at first, it was soon realised that a plywood skin could be steamed around formers to produce complex compound curves.   

 Through a succession of fighter designs, Robert Thelen, the chief designer of Albatros, refined the shape into the sharklike and remarkably modern profile of the D.V. With not a straight line in sight, the semi-monocoque fuselage, culminating in a beautiful, curved tailplane, was well streamlined, immensely strong, and looked sensational.

Unfortunately, the slender wings, attractively swept back at the tips, failed to match the strength of the fuselage, and under certain conditions the lower wing could be wrenched off the aircraft. Despite this flaw, thousands were built, and many pilots were highly successful with the Albatros, which were as elegant as a racing yacht adrift in a sea of tugboats.

8: LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin

To modern eyes, the appearance of a silver flying ship over three times longer than a Boeing 747 would be utterly amazing, so imagine how it would have looked to an onlooker in the 1920s who may have never seen any kind of flying machine before. For sheer majesty and spectacle, the airships of this age have never been surpassed.

In the twenties and thirties, the world was enthralled by the airship. The airship combined the decadent luxury of the ocean liner with flying, a new and exciting form of travel that few had tried. Our readers voted for several different German airships as the best-looking, but the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin received the lion’s share.

Unlike modern public air travel, the Zeppelin boasted passenger cabins with comfortable beds (these converted to sofas during the day). Wallpaper, fabric curtains, fresh flowers and framed windows gave the rooms a homely, relaxed setting to view the often-epic scenery.

LZ 127 was the longest and largest airship when it was built, measuring almost a quarter of a kilometre! It was also of historical importance, making both the first nonstop crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air, and the first global circumnavigation by airship. Conceived by Hugo Eckener who despised the Nazis, the use of the LZ 127 for Nazi propaganda and military surveillance was a sad and ignoble fate for this very beautiful flying machine.

7: Focke-Wulf Fw 187

The American P-38 Lightning was a single-seat twin-engined fighter and it proved a great success, but the idea was novel for its time. By keeping the frontal cross section to the absolute minimum, this class of aircraft could be as fast as a single-engined fighter but with far greater range, and if required, firepower.

The German company Focke-Wulf also tried this idea, and the result was the superb Fw 187. The Fw 187 was an extremely clean design aerodynamically, everything being done to keep the frontal cross section to the absolute minimum; the cockpit was tiny (even by German standards), the dashboard of which was so small that some of the instruments had to be mounted externally on the engine nacelles.

The result of this strict adherence to aerodynamic slickness was an extremely fast and manoeuvrable fighter with an impressive range. With the original Jumo  210Da engines, a compromise unwanted by the designer, the prototype clocked 326mph, which was 50mph faster than the much hyped Messerschmitt 210. When the desired DB 600As were added in 1939, the Fw 187 hit a level flight speed of 394mph, an astonishing figure for the time.

Armed with two cannon and four machine-guns, the type would have proved a huge thorn in the side for the RAF’s Fighter Command if employed as an escort fighter in the Battle of Britain. Despite a small operational evaluation, the type never entered series production. The Me 210 lobby had greater political clout than the exponents of the Fw 187, and Focke-Wulf was devoting its resources to the development of the Fw 190 (which polled at number 11).

6: Taube

The Etrich Taube monoplane was the first mass-produced German aircraft. We won’t get too bogged down with whether it strictly counts as German or not, as it was essential to the story of German aircraft, and military aviation in general, and was fantastically gorgeous (though it received many nominations it must be mentioned it was conceived in Austria-Hungary by an Austrian).

Taube means "dove" (and pigeon) in German, and the beautiful Taube indeed resembled a bird. However, the Taube's remarkable wing form was not based on that of a dove, but the winged seeds of the Javan cucumber (presumably ‘The Flying Cucumber’ was not considered a suitable name).

The Taube first flew in 1910, and in 1911 it became the first aeroplane used as a bomber. In November 1911 in Libya, Italian Taubes attacked a target close to Tripoli, using hand-dropped 1.5kg bombs. This small-scale raid was the birth of a form of warfare that later in the 20^th Century would devastate cities in Europe and Asia, and kill millions.

The aircraft’s birdlike innocence of form totally belies its role in such a sinister story. With its fanlike tail and gorgeous curved wing shape, the aircraft demonstrates an aerodynamic solution that did not last. However, it’s interesting to compare some modern rotor and propeller designs to the overall shape of the wing.

5: EWR VJ 101

Heinkel and Messerschmitt teamed up with the rather less famous Bölkow, to produce what is seemingly a six-engined tribute to the aesthetics of Roger Ramjet. Unlike other aircraft featuring small jets, this did not feature a larger main engine, so who knows what would have happened in the event of an engine failure. The VJ 101 was a vertical take-off and landing technology demonstrator for a planned fighter.

The design was in many ways similar to the never-completed Bell XF-109. Its best feature was the remarkable six-engine control system, which was integrated to the throttle (providing collective thrust-modulation), stick and rudder, with roll control by differential modulation of tip-mounted engine thrust and yaw control by differential wing nacelle tilt.

Pitch control came by simultaneous differential thrust from two nose-mounted lift engines and the four wingtip-mounted engines. Perhaps its worst feature was that when it used afterburner for take-off it resulted in ground erosion and hot-gas ingestion problems.

Though it did not lead to an operational fighter, the 101 was a technological achievement. The innovative propulsion and control system worked, and it also achieved a speed of Mach 1.14, which was impressive for an aircraft capable of vertical take-off. It also succeeded in impressing many with its svelte futuristic appearance.

4: Messerschmitt Me 262

The sharklike Messerschmitt Me 262, with its almost living appearance, was a boldly different shape to anything else, even other members of the small number of jet aircraft types flying in the Second World War. With its podded wing-mounted engines and swept wing, it was a sneak preview at the form future airliners would take.

The obvious advantage of its new powerplant, the jet engine, was velocity. Once airborne, no other aircraft could catch the speedy Messerschmitt, not even the Allies’ Gloster Meteor, whose performance was decidedly pedestrian by comparison. But it wasn’t just the 262’s jet engines that made the fighter so formidable; its firepower, optimised for bomber destruction, was particularly heavy.

The 262 was also a practical aircraft for the situation into which it was introduced. It could be fuelled by a much lower quality of fuel than its piston-engined brethren, so there was more chance of being able to operate it in an oil-starved Germany.

The 262 was a technological last gasp by a short-lived empire on the verge of collapse. Its very existence heralded a new age in fighter design. It was as if it had popped up from the future to astound and astonish. The Messerschmitt 262 was in a class of its own. Not bad for an aircraft that was supposed to be a bomber.

3: Heinkel He 70

Fearing US dominance in civil aviation, in particular the fast Lockheed Model 9 Orion, Heinkel created the He 70, which embraced the latest thinking in aerodynamics, resulting in a seductively curvaceous aeroplane. When it first flew, in 1932, it was extremely fast, faster even than most fighters of the time. The He 70, named Blitz (Lightning), snatched a gaggle of world records.

One of the prototypes set eight records for speed over distances of 100-2000 km (62-1243 miles) loaded. With loads of 500-1000kg the aircraft achieved an average speed of 357 km/h (222 mph) over a 100km (62 mile) course. Its top speed was 377 km/h (234mph), faster than the RAF’s Hawker Fury biplane fighter.

With its gorgeously smooth form, monoplane wing and retractable undercarriage it was positively futuristic in 1932. It was a far cry from the clumsy blockiness of many other German designs and indeed a great beauty. It was not the first German aircraft to feature an elliptical wing, the Bäumer Sausewind (like the He 70 designed by the Günter twins) had one in 1925.

It has been claimed that the Spitfire’s elliptical wing shape was influenced by the superficially similar wing of the He 70, but the far thinner Spitfire is a different concept. The He 70 did, however, influence the Spitfire, with the Supermarine team using it as the criterion of aerodynamic smoothness for the Spitfire.

2: HFB 320 Hansa Jet

The West German HFB 320 Hansa Jet first flew in 1964. The most unusual feature of the Hansa Jet is the forward-swept wing. This feature had appeared on an earlier aircraft by Hansa’s designer Hans Wocke, the Junkers Ju 287. The Ju 287 was an extremely advanced jet bomber created at the end of World War II.

For Cold War chic and leftfield style, your first choice of small transport jet will have to be the HFB 320 Hansa Jet, though you do need to time travel to have one. The story of the lovely Hansa started when Hamburger Flugzeugbau (HFB) was inspired by the success of the light American Learjet 23 to begin work on a small jet of their own.

The Hansa Jet features ‘tip tanks’, fuel held in aerodynamic pods on the wing-tips. Though tip-tanks have largely fallen out favour in more modern designs (many preferring to use this position for the efficiency-enhancing winglet), the tip-tank adds to the aircraft’s attractive appearance.

The high ranking of the relatively obscure Hansa jet was the big surprise result in the nominations, and it certainly scores higher for beauty than it did for safety! It is interesting to note that though many West German designs made it to the top 10, East Germany did not (the East German Baade 152 did reach number 18 in votes.)

1: Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor

Germany produced three outstanding modern airliners in the interwar period: the Junkers Ju 52, Junkers Ju 86 and Focke-Wulf Fw 200. The Ju 52 was boxy and corrugated, and lacked elegance, the Ju 86 (at least in airliner, and not militarily variants) was rather lovely, but most sublime aesthetically was likely the Fw 200.

The Condor was designed to replace the Ju 52 and counter the commercial threat of US aircraft, especially the Douglas DC-3. The Fw 200 was an elegant aircraft of low-winged design, with four engines and built entirely of metal. It first flew in 1937.