As yet there is no satisfactory overall treatment of the early Luftwaffe auxiliary fighter aircraft types or the program for which they were developed. Several designs were progressed, but only two of them made it beyond prototypes. These early Luftwaffe auxiliary fighters were classified as Kampf-Einsitzer or Einsitzer Für Heimatschutz:
- Heinkel 74 (3 produced)
- Hamburger Flugzeugbau 136 (2 produced)
- Henschel 121 (2 produced)
- Henschel 125 (2 produced)
- Arado 76 (193 produced)
- Focke-Wulf 56 (475 produced)
A brief recent attempt is set out in the beginning of Klaus Wartmann’s book ‘Henschel-Flugzeuge 1933-1945’ (Verlag Rockstuhl, 2011). Wartmann clearly and accurately identifies the origin of this class of aircraft as an Übungseinsitzer. This was a categorisation in use long before the RLM rationalised classification of training aircraft into A, B1 & B2 categories.
The two files available below shed some further light on the topic of early Luftwaffe fighters. More on this theme will be posted here as it becomes available.
