WOW494 Messerschmitt P.1101

Description

The Messerschmitt P.1101 was a single-seat jet fighter project of WW2 and developed as part of the 15 July 1944 Emergency Fighter Programme, which sought a second generation of jet fighters for the Third Reich. A prominent feature of the P.1101 prototype was that the swept angle of the wings which could be changed before flight, a feature further developed after the war on the Bell X-F and Grumman Jaguar.

Within nine days of the 15 July 1944 issuance of design specifications for the Emergency Fighter, the Messerschmitt design bureau, under Dr. Woldemar Voigt, had formed a preliminary paper design for the P.1101. The aircraft which was developed initially had a short and wide fuselage, tricycle landing gear and mid-mounted wings with an inner sweep of 40° near the fuselage, and a shallower 26° outboard.. The single HeS 011 jet engine was to be mounted internally within the fuselage, being aspirated by two rounded intakes located on either side of the cockpit. The high tail was of a V configuration and mounted on a tapered boom which extended over and past the jet exhaust, while the cockpit was forward-mounted, with the canopy integrated into the fuselage and forming part of the rounded nose of the aircraft.

By late August 1944, the design, still in paper form, had evolved into a sleeker incarnation, with the previously stout fuselage lengthened and narrowed with a conical nose section, added in front of the cockpit. The compound sweep wing was also abandoned, with the outer wing of the Me.262 instead being adapted. The design was further developed, including a longer nose, and after wind tunnel testing of a number of wing and fuselage profiles, the decision was made to undertake the construction of a full-scale test aircraft. This finalized design and associated test data were submitted to the Construction Bureau on 10 November 1944 and the selection of production materials was begun on 4 December 1944. The proposed armament was 2 or 4 x 30mm cannons and X-4 air to air missiles.

On 28 February 1945, the RLM settled on a competing design, the Focke Wulf Ta 183, as the winner of the Emergency Fighter program. This decision was based in part on the considerable design difficulties being encountered by the Messerschmitt P.1101 design team. For example, the cannon installation was proving too crowded, the mainwheel retraction and door mechanisms were too complex, the fuselage needed a great many “strong points” to deal with loads, and the anticipated performance had fallen below RLM specifications, due to increased weight.

The P.1101 was still used for test purposes afterwards in order to see if the prototype could reach the Mach 1 speed barrier. A test flight was scheduled for June 1945 but with the end of the war the P.1101 may have even been entirely forgotten about had it not been discovered by US forces and used for publicity photos, one of which we have included below. The US tried to make the P.1101 airframe airworthy but as French forces who had arrived earlier had hidden and then refused to hand over crucial documents, the project finally passed into history.

We have five Mahogany 1/30 scale me P.1101’s available priced at $750 plus shipping.  This model approximately measures 27cm wide by 30cm long.

The K&C/TG figures and accessories are shown for scale comparison purposes only and are not included.