How Europe’s Deadliest Fighter Jet Is Built | Eurofighter Typhoon

Video from the channel Geheimnisse der Flugzeuge about Eurofighter Typhoon, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 22:45. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

German-language documentary about how the Eurofighter Typhoon is built, maintained and tested. It focuses on the facilities in Manching (Bavaria) and also covers maintenance of the EJ200 engines at MTU Aero Engines (Munich), armament, the simulator and spare-parts logistics.

The aircraft is produced by four countries that split up the structure: the nose comes from the United Kingdom, the rear fuselage is built by Italy and the British, one wing comes from Italy and the other from Spain, and Germany builds the centre fuselage, as it already did with the Tornado. The first prototype flew on 27 March 1994, and series production began nine years and seven prototypes later. According to the video, the programme has accumulated more than 680 orders from nine countries and has incorporated more than 400 modifications since the first tranche.

Ten fuselages are on the assembly line at once. Each spends 45 working days at its station and requires 2,500 operations. The centre fuselage alone carries 15,000 wires and 30,000 connections fitted by hand, and the technician and crimping tool used for each one are logged. The aircraft is aerodynamically unstable and is controlled by four redundant flight computers that constantly move the canards, and it can fly supersonically without afterburner. The video also shows weapons trials with practice bombs dropped from 12 km, one hitting the target and another landing 2 m away. Every 600 flight hours, German Eurofighters undergo a full inspection in Manching: fluids are drained, the canard bearings are tested and the landing gear, hydraulics and computers are checked. The engines, weighing about 1,000 kg and made up of 1,800 parts, go through endoscopy, DNA analysis of bird-strike remains and crack detection with fluorescent dye, and are then tested on a stand mounted on the aircraft itself, checking the cross-start of one engine from the other. The warehouse holds up to 300,000 part references, and the video closes with the joining of the cockpit section to the centre fuselage.