The BMW 109-558 is a
liquid fuelled sustainer rocket motor developed by
BMW at their
Bruckmühl facility, in
Germany during the
Second World War.
The 109-558 (with the "109-" prefix being the
''Reichsluftfahrtministerium'', or ''RLM'', designation for reaction-propulsion aircraft power projects, encompassing all jet & rocket engine designs) was designed as a sustainer rocket for the
Henschel Hs 117 surface-to-air missile
A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-aircraft syst ...
. It was tubular, measuring diameter and about long overall. The engine had a
compressed air
Compressed air is air kept under a pressure that is greater than atmospheric pressure. Compressed air is an important medium for transfer of energy in industrial processes, and is used for power tools such as air hammers, drills, wrenches, and o ...
tank to pressurise tanks for the ''
R-Stoff'' fuel (50%
triethylamine and 50%
xylidine) and ''
SV-Stoff'' oxidiser (94%
nitric acid with 6%
dinitrogen tetroxide
Dinitrogen tetroxide, commonly referred to as nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), and occasionally (usually among ex-USSR/Russia rocket engineers) as amyl, is the chemical compound N2O4. It is a useful reagent in chemical synthesis. It forms an equilibrium ...
). ''SV-Stoff'' was used to cool the combustion chamber.
[Christopher, p.127.]
The 109-558 was capable of propelling an Hs 117 at , with throttle control by sliding valves in the exhaust nozzle, operated by a
servomotor controlled by a
Mach
Mach may refer to Mach number, the speed of sound in local conditions. It may also refer to:
Computing
* Mach (kernel), an operating systems kernel technology
* ATI Mach, a 2D GPU chip by ATI
* GNU Mach, the microkernel upon which GNU Hurd is bas ...
sensor. Production of the 109-558 took forty to sixty hours using a very high proportion of slave labour.
Applications
*
Henschel Hs 117
*
Henschel Hs 117H
Specifications
Notes
Sources
*Christopher, John. ''The Race for Hitler's X-Planes''. The Mill, Gloucestershire: History Press, 2013.
{{Rocket engines
BMW aircraft engines
BMW rocket engines