Summary

  • The Heinkel He 219, or “Eagle-Owl,” was a night fighter in WWII, boasting advanced features.
  • Called the best Luftwaffe night fighter in WWII, the He 219 had superior firepower.
  • Major Modrow, top Uhu pilot, earned 33 of his 34 kills in the fearsome mechanical bird.

In the realm of Mother Nature, owls are nocturnal birds of prey (comprising over 200 species belonging to the order Strigiformes). The largest two animals of the order are both eagle owls; the Eurasian eagle owl (Bubo bubo) and Blakiston’s fish owl (Bubo blakistoni).They are deadly efficient night predators as well as the stuff of folklore and mythology.

So it only makes sense that in the realm of mechanical warbirds, a night fighter would be named for a species of owl. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe did just that. Simple Flying now takes a look at the Heinkel He 219 Uhu (“Eagle-Owl”).

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Heinkel He 219 Uhu early history and specifications

The “Eagle-Owl” made its maiden flight on November 15, 1942, and officially entered operational service with the so-called “Vaterland (Fatherland)” the following year. As was true of a lot of German warplane designs of WWII. the He 219 was highly innovative (the Nazis were a truly vile and despotic regime, but as the saying goes, “Give the devil his due”), with then state-of-the-art features such as advanced features included cannons mounted to fire at an oblique angle, the first steerable nosewheel on an operational German aircraft, and the world’s first ejection seats on an operational aircraft (that’s correct, dear readers, ejection seats didn’t originate with jet fighters).

The plane was designed by Ernst Heinkel (the naufacturer’s founder and namesake) in 1940 under the name Projekt P.1060, a design for a high-speed multirole aircraft Interestingly enough, however, Herr Heinkel’s project almost didn’t take off, at least in the figurative sense of the phrase. As Andrew Knighton explains in a June 2018 article for War History Online:

“Germany was home to several excellent warplane design teams. As a result, the He129 [sic] didn’t stand out against the competition. It drew little interest for over a year until the tide of war changed what the Luftwaffe was looking for… Renewed interest in the He219 was driven by the achievements of Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF).”

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“By late 1941, RAF Bomber Command was launching regular raids against German military and industrial targets. The aim of these attacks was a strategic one – to cripple German’s economy and war machine so that it could not keep up the fight. As the raids started affecting Germany’s military capacity, something had to be done to counter them. The British bomber raids were launched at night. Therefore, effective night fighters were needed to stop them… As the need to counter the British increased, the authorities asked Ernst Heinkel to revive his neglected design and adapt it as a night fighter.”

Once the He 219 finally got into production, it came with the following specifications:

Fueslage Length:

50 ft 4 in (15.33 m)

Wingspan:

60 ft 8 in (18.5 m)

Height:

13 ft 5 in (4.1 m)

Empty Weight:

24,692 lb (11,200 kg)

Gross Weight:

33,731 lb (15,300 kg)

Powerplant:

2 × Daimler-Benz DB 603E V-12 inverted liquid-cooled piston engines, 1,324 kW (1,776 hp) each

Max Airspeed:

420 mph (670 km/h, 360 kn) at 23,000 ft (7,000 m)

Cruise Speed:

340 mph (540 km/h, 290 kn)

Combat Range:

960 mi (1,545 km, 834 NM)

Service Ceiling

41,700 ft (12,700 m) (absolute)

Armament:

  • Guns: 2 × 20 mm (0.787 in) MG 151/20 cannon in a detachable fairing under the fuselage, 300 rpg

    • 2 × 20 mm (0.787 in) MG 151/20 cannon in wing roots, 300 rpg
    • 2 × 30 mm (1.181 in) MK 108 cannon, Schräge Musik (oriented 65° above horizontal), 100 rpg
3-view drawing of Heinkel He 219A-7R1 Uhu (Eagle-Owl)

Operational performance

According to a summary by the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (NASM):

“The He 219 has been described as the best night fighter operated in World War II by the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe. It may have been the best night fighter of the war. Only the American Northrop P-61 ‘Black Widow’ shares the He 219’s unique status of being designed for night operation. The He 219 was fast, maneuverable, and carried devastating firepower. It was the only piston-engined Luftwaffe night fighter which could meet the fast British De Havilland ‘Mosquito’on equal terms.”

425th_Night_Fighter_Squadron_P-61_Black_Widow_42-5569_with_D-Day_invasion_stripes

There is an interesting parallel between what the experts say about the He 219 and what they say about the Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe (“Swallow;” the world’s first operational fighter jet): if it weren’t for the petty bureaucratic squabbling and infighting that delayed the plane’s production and entry into the war, it might’ve turned the tide against the Allied bomber offensive. As one of my USC buddies, who’s a fellow military aviation history geek, put it:

“[O] ne of the underrated planes of WW2 (in my opinion)… If they were introduced a year earlier in greater numbers, pretty sure they would have easily stopped the RAF Night Bomber offensive… Werner Streib flew the first He 219 in June 1943 and shot down 5 RAF bombers in less than 2 hours becoming one of the few pilots to earn the rare ‘ace in a day’ title.”

The highest-scoring Uhu driver of the war coincidentally shared his first name with the warbird’s designer: Major (later an Oberstleutnant [Lieutenant Colonel] in the postwar Bundeswehr) Ernst-Wilhelm Modrow (5 May 1908 – 10 September 1990) was credited with 33 of his 34 nighttime air-to-air kills whilst at the controls of this fearsome mechanical bird of prey.

Where are they now?

Out of just under 300 He 219s built, there is exactly one fully intact, fully restored, surviving specimen today. Werknummer (“Work Number”) 290202 is at the NASM’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia (near Washington Dulles International Airport; I’ve toured the museum twice and recommend it highly).

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The plane was transferred to the museum in 1949, but the restoration project wasn’t completed until 2021.

Meanwhile, in April 2012, the wreck of another “Eagler-Owl” was salvaged rooughly 328 ft (100 m) from a beach north of Hirtshals, Denmark. Restoration got underway at the Forsvars- og Garnisonsmuseum (Aalborg Defence- and Garrison Museum) in Aalborg, Denmark, and the restored parts were put on display therein until August 2015, wherepon the wreckage was reportedly sold to an Austrian aviation enthusiast for further restoration.

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