The Henschel Hs 298 was a 1940s German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 rocket-powered air-to-air missile designed by Professor Herbert Wagner

Herbert A. Wagner

Herbert Alois Wagner was an Austrian scientist who developed numerous innovations in the fields of aerodynamics, aircraft structures and guided weapons...

 of Henschel

Henschel & Son

Henschel & Son was a German company, situated in Kassel, best known during the 20th century as a maker of transportation equipment, including locomotives, trucks, buses and trolleybuses, and armoured fighting vehicles and weapons....

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Design and development

The Hs 298 was designed specifically to attack allied bomber aircraft and was the first missile designed specifically for air-to-air use. It was to be carried on special launch rails by Dornier Do 217

Dornier Do 217

The Dornier Do 217 was a bomber used by German Luftwaffe during World War II as a more powerful version of the Dornier Do 17, known as the Fliegender Bleistift . Designed in 1937 and 1938 as a heavy bomber, its design was refined during 1939 and production began in late 1940...

s (five missiles) or Focke-Wulf Fw 190

Focke-Wulf Fw 190

The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger was a German Second World War single-seat, single-engine fighter aircraft designed by Kurt Tank in the late 1930s. Powered by a radial engine, the 190 had ample power and was able to lift larger loads than its well-known counterpart, the Messerschmitt Bf 109...

s (two missiles) and carried 48 kg (106 lb) of explosive.

The Hs 298 was a mid-wing monoplane with tapered swept back wings and it had a single horizontal stabiliser with twin vertical fins. It was powered by a Henschel-designed rocket motor built by Schmidding as the 109–543; it had two stages, the first high velocity stage was designed to leave the launch aircraft at 938km/h (585 mph), in the second stage the speed was brought back to 682 km/h (425 mph) to give a maximum range of about one mile (1.6 km). It used a Strassburg-Kehl FuG 203 radio guidance system powered by a propeller-driven (mounted on the nose) electric generator. The missile needed two crew on the launch aircraft to control it, one operator used a reflector-type sight

Reflector sight

A reflector or reflex sight is a generally non-magnifying optical device that allows the user to look through a partially reflecting glass element and see an illuminated projection of an aiming point or some other image superimposed on the field of view...

 to aim at the target and the other flew the missile using a joystick and another sight paired to the first with a servo system.

The only known test firings were carried out on 22 December 1944 with three missiles carried by a Junkers Ju-88G

Junkers Ju 88

The Junkers Ju 88 was a World War II German Luftwaffe twin-engine, multi-role aircraft. Designed by Hugo Junkers' company through the services of two American aviation engineers in the mid-1930s, it suffered from a number of technical problems during the later stages of its development and early...

. Only two missiles left the launch rails with one failing to release, of the two released one exploded prematurely and nose-dived into the ground. It was planned to enter mass production in January 1945 but the project was abandoned in favour of the X-4

Ruhrstahl X-4

The Ruhrstahl X-4 was a wire guided air-to-air missile designed by Germany during World War II. The X-4 did not see operational service and thus was not proven in combat...

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Specifications

• Wing span – 1.24m (4 ft 1in)
• Length – 2.06m (6 ft 9in)
• Launch weight – 120 kg (265 lb)
• Launch speed – 938 km/h (585 mph)
• Cruise speed – 682 km/h (425 mph)