Heinkel HE 8
type of aircraft
The Heinkel H.E.8 was a reconnaissance monoplane floatplane built in Germany in the late 1920s. It was developed at the request of the Royal Danish Navy, which required a similar aircraft to the H.E.5 being operated in Sweden.
Service History
In addition to purchasing seven German-built H.E.8a aircraft, which were described as mailplanes to avoid restrictions on military aircraft, 16 H.E.8bs were built under license in Denmark by the Orlogsværftet Naval shipyards, with a final batch not being delivered until 1938. Apart from its engine, the H.E.8 differed from previous members of the H.E.1 family in having a conventional empennage.
22 aircraft were operated by the Royal Danish Navy as the HM.II until the German invasion in 1940, after which one example may have been impressed into Luftwaffe service while the remainder were stored, until most were destroyed in 1943.
A single H.E.8 was built with a Packard 3A-2500 engine and designated H.E.31.
A single H.E.8d was built under licence in Yugoslavia by Zmaj Aircraft. It was initially used for testing by 2. Seaplane Kommando at Split, Yugoslavia, and was later used for target towing duties until fleeing to Greece following the fall of Yugoslavia in WW2.
Variants
H.E.8a
company designation of version powered with an 287 kW (385 hp) Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar IV 14-cylinder two-row radial engine.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heinkel HE 8” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.