__NOTOC__ The Henschel Hs 298 was a 1940s German rocket-powered air-to-air missile designed by Professor Herbert Wagner of

Henschel Henschel & Son (german: Henschel und Sohn) was a German company, located in Kassel, best known during the 20th century as a maker of transportation equipment, including locomotives, trucks, buses and trolleybuses, and armoured fighting v ...

Design and development

The Hs 298 was designed specifically to attack Allied bomber aircraft and was the first missile designed specifically for air-to-air use. It was to be carried on special launch rails by

Dornier Do 217 The Dornier Do 217 was a bomber used by the German ''Luftwaffe'' during World War II as a more powerful development of the Dornier Do 17, known as the ''Fliegender Bleistift'' (German: "flying pencil"). Designed in 1937 and 1938 as a heavy bombe ...

s (five missiles) or Focke-Wulf Fw 190s (two missiles) and carried 48 kg (106 lb) of explosive, slightly more than the 40.8 kg warheads carried by unguided BR 21 heavy-calibre air-launched rockets in use from the spring of 1943 onwards. The Hs 298 was a mid-wing monoplane with tapered swept back wings and it had a single horizontal stabiliser with twin vertical fins. It was powered by a Henschel-designed rocket motor built by Schmidding as the 109–543; it had two stages, the first high velocity stage was designed to leave the launch aircraft at 938 km/h (585 mph), in the second stage the speed was brought back to 682 km/h (425 mph) to give a maximum range of about . It used a ''Kehl-Straßburg''

MCLOS Manual command to line of sight (MCLOS) is a method for guiding guided missiles. With an MCLOS missile, the operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target. Typically the missile is steered with a ...

radio guidance Radio control (often abbreviated to RC) is the use of control signals transmitted by radio to remotely control a device. Examples of simple radio control systems are garage door openers and keyless entry systems for vehicles, in which a small ...

system (the ''Funkgerät'' FuG 203-series ''Kehl'' transmitter in the launching aircraft, the FuG 230 ''Straßburg'' receiver in the ordnance) powered by a propeller-driven (mounted on the nose) electric generator. The missile needed two crew on the launch aircraft to control it, one operator used a reflector-type sight to aim at the target and the other flew the missile using a joystick on the ''Kehl'' transmitter, and another sight paired to the first with a servo system. The only known test firings were carried out on 22 December 1944 with three missiles carried by a Junkers Ju 88G. Only two missiles left the launch rails with one failing to release, of the two released one exploded prematurely and nose-dived into the ground. It was planned to enter mass production in January 1945 but the project was abandoned in favour of the X-4.

Survivors

One Hs 298 is on display at the

Royal Air Force Museum Cosford The Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, located in Cosford in Shropshire, is a free (currently, 2022) museum dedicated to the history of aviation and the Royal Air Force in particular. The museum is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, a non-departme ...

. One Hs 298 is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, also called the Udvar-Hazy Center, is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM)'s annex at Washington Dulles International Airport in the Chantilly area of Fairfax County, Virginia. It holds numerous ...

Specifications

*Wing span – 1.24m (4 ft 1in) *Length – 2.06m (6 ft 9in) *Launch weight – 120 kg (265 lb) *Launch speed – 938 km/h (585 mph) *Cruise speed – 682 km/h (425 mph)

References

{{WWIIGermanAerialWeapons World War II guided missiles of Germany Air-to-air missiles of Germany