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The Heinkel HD 39 was a special-purpose
cargo aircraft
A cargo aircraft (also known as freight aircraft, freighter, airlifter or cargo jet) is a fixed-wing aircraft that is designed or converted for the carriage of cargo rather than passengers. Such aircraft usually do not incorporate passenger a ...
developed in Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
in the 1920s to distribute the Berlin newspaper '' B.Z.''. It was a conventional single-bay biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a ...
with staggered wings of equal span
Span may refer to:
Science, technology and engineering
* Span (unit), the width of a human hand
* Span (engineering), a section between two intermediate supports
* Wingspan, the distance between the wingtips of a bird or aircraft
* Sorbitan ester ...
, and a fuselage
The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...
that nearly filled the interplane gap. The pilot sat in an open cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft.
The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls that e ...
, and the undercarriage was of fixed, tailskid type with divided main units. The sole example of the type was built after Ernst Heinkel
Dr. Ernst Heinkel (24 January 1888 – 30 January 1958) was a German aircraft designer, manufacturer, '' Wehrwirtschaftsführer'' in Nazi Germany, and member of the Nazi party. His company Heinkel Flugzeugwerke produced the Heinkel He 178, th ...
found out, by chance, that ''B.Z.'' required such an aircraft and had ordered two machines from Albatros. Heinkel convinced publisher Ullstein-Verlag
The ''Ullstein Verlag'' was founded by Leopold Ullstein in 1877 at Berlin and is one of the largest publishing companies of Germany. It published newspapers like '' B.Z.'' and '' Berliner Morgenpost'' and books through its subsidiaries ''Ullstein ...
to purchase a third aircraft from his firm.
The design was based on the HD 27 mail plane
A mail plane is an aircraft used for carrying mail.
Aircraft that were purely mail planes existed almost exclusively prior to World War II. Because early aircraft were too underpowered to carry cargoes, and too costly to run any "economy class" ...
, and had a specially-designed payload bay to carry newspapers in 50 kg (110 lb) bundles. 10 separate compartments in the bay could be individually opened in flight in order to air-drop newspapers in places where the HD 39 could not land.
The HD 39 entered service alongside two Albatros L 72
The Albatros L 72 was a German transport aircraft of the 1920s, designed to carry newspapers between German cities for Ullstein Verlag. A single revised example was built for the ''Hamburger Fremdenblatt''.
Design and development
The L 72 was a ...
s in April 1926 and remained in Service until 1931, when distribution of ''B.Z.'' by air was taken over by Deutsche Luft Hansa
''Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G.'' (from 1933 styled as ''Deutsche Lufthansa'' and also known as ''Luft Hansa'', ''Lufthansa'', or DLH) was a German airline, serving as flag carrier of the country during the later years of the Weimar Republic and t ...
.
Specifications
References
Further reading
*External links
* {{Heinkel aircraft 1920s German cargo aircraft HD 39 Biplanes Aircraft first flown in 1926