| Gö 9 | |
|---|---|
 Göppingen Gö-9 motor glider, flying c.1941 | |
| General information | |
| Type | Experimental aircraft |
| National origin | Nazi Germany |
| Manufacturer | Schempp-Hirth |
| Designer | Ulrich Hütter |
| Number built | 1 |
| History | |
| First flight | 1941, by Dornier Test Pilot Henry H. W. Quenzler |
| Developed from | Dornier Do 17 |
TheGöppingen Gö 9 was a German experimental aircraft built to investigate the practicalities of powering a plane using apusherpropeller located far from the engine and turned by a long driveshaft.
In 1937,Claudius Dornier observed that adding extra engines and propellers to an aircraft in an attempt to increase speed would also attract a penalty of greaterdrag, especially when placing two or more engines withinnacelles mounted on the wings. He reasoned that this penalty could be minimized by mounting a second propeller at the rear of an aircraft. To prevent tail-heaviness, however, the engine would need to be mounted far ahead of it. Dornierpatented this idea and commissioned a test plane to evaluate it.
The aircraft was designed by DrUlrich Hütter as a 40% sized, scaled-down version of theDornier Do 17's fuselage and wing panels without the twin-engine nacelles, and built bySchempp-Hirth. The airframe was entirely of wood and used a retractabletricycle landing gear – one of the earliest non-Heinkel-built German airframe designs to use such an arrangement. Power was supplied by aHirth HM 60 inverted, air-cooled inline four-cylinder engine mounted within the fuselage near the wings. Other than the engine installation, the only other unusual feature of the aircraft was its all-new, full four-surfacecruciform tail, which included a large ventral fin/rudder unit of equal area to the dorsal surface. This fin incorporated a small supplementary tailwheel protruding from the ventral fin's lower tip that assisted in keeping the rear-mounted, four-blade propeller away fromtailstrike damage against the ground during take-off and landing. The Gö 9 carried the civil registrationD-EBYW.
Initially towed aloft, flight tests began in June 1941, but later flights operated under its own power. The design validated Dornier's ideas, and he went ahead with his original plan to build a high-performance aircraft with propellers at the front and rear, producing theDornier Do 335. The test pilot was Henry H. W. Quenzler. The eventual fate of the Gö 9 is not known.
Data from Die Deutsche Luftruestung 1933-1945 Vol.1 - AEG-Dornier[1]
General characteristics
Performance
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