Dornier Do 335 - Fastest Piston Fighter of WW2

Video from the channel Dark Skies about Dornier, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:23. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary about the Dornier Do 335 Pfeil ("arrow"), a German Second World War fighter with one engine in the nose and one in the tail in a push-pull configuration, presented as the fastest piston-engined fighter of the war. It covers its origins, performance, and the history of the only surviving example.

Claudius Dornier patented the push-pull layout in 1937, drawing on the experience of his Do J Wal and Do X flying boats. His first fast-bomber project using this layout was cancelled in 1942, but his P 231 proposal later won the Luftwaffe's fast-bomber competition, which ended up calling for a multi-role fighter-bomber. The first prototype flew in autumn 1943 and proved fast, agile and easy to control. The aircraft arrived in January 1945, too late to affect the war, and there is no record of any pilot officially using them in combat. Pierre Clostermann claimed to have encountered one in April 1945 without being able to catch it.

Its two in-line Daimler-Benz DB 603 engines gave it up to 763 km/h and prevented yaw if one engine failed. It carried a 30 mm MK 103 cannon and two MG 151/15s, retractable tricycle landing gear, an ejection seat, and a jettisonable tail fin and rear propeller fitted with explosives to allow the pilot to bail out. Its drawbacks included weight, poor visibility and a risky escape procedure. The example captured at Oberpfaffenhofen travelled to the United States aboard HMS Reaper, was donated in 1961 to the National Air and Space Museum, returned to Dornier in 1974 for restoration, and is now on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.