The Little World

Some aeroplane wings are ugly things. Go look at the Junkers Ju52 in broad daylight. Some are incredible – get out a picture of a B-36. And some, like this Heinkel HE 111 wing, are pieces of real sculpture.

Don’t look too long at the engine nacelles – they were covered in an earlier post. Busy, lumpy, and upside-down.

But the wing itself is a work of art. Whatever persuaded the Günters to incorporate that dip and swoop at the trailing edge? Was it mathematics, science, or just aesthetics. Were they still looking at birds and trying to make a bomb-carrying ornithopter?

The bottom is somewhat spoilt by those silly bomb racks but fortunately in my iteration of this classic, they’ll be covered with doors. I have a feeling the engine nacelles and the wheel bays will look like two refrigerators door open in a pub but that is the fate of may aerodynamic designs when it comes time to land. At least they slow the thing down.