Ziller’s crash in the H IX V2 is mysterious for the reasons you cited, Will. The engine controls may have jammed, or something may have incapacitated Ziller to prevent him from simply shutting down the furnctional engine and gliding to a crash landing, no one knows for sure.

This was a prototype. There’s a very good chance that more went wrong than a flamed-out engine. An engine on fire right next to the cockpit on a wooden aircraft might affect the mounts on controls within the wing, and there’s the issue of air quality in the cockpit. For all we know, the pilot could have asphyxiated or ignited before the aircraft hit the ground.

I’m assuming that this aircraft was another prototype, and not the crashed, repaired one. The article is a little confusing on this point, since it said there were two prototypes built, only one surviving prototype… but it also said that the first prototype was built as a glider. So, I’m not sure how many were actually built.

Note: You cannot mass produce a wooden aircraft that can fly 600mph. That requires a lot of hand craftsmanship to fit the pieces together, slowly and carefully. Someone noted all the sanding and filling needed to fit these wings, which were not built for this specific aircraft. Hello. With wooden construction you’ll have to do that for EVERY wing, even it if IS specifically constructed for this aircraft.

Also, note that by the time this was under development, Germany didn’t have enough fuel to fly them en masse, even if they could have mass produced them. So much for flying it across the ocean to the US.

All this aside, this was a very fascinating aircraft. That even one of them ever flew is worth both historical attention and scientific study for what it can offer modern aircraft engineering.

It obviously had problems. It crashed, killing a very skilled pilot. Also, placing jet exhaust that close to a plywood skin might not be the wisest engineering choice. The reference above is to the failed “burning” engine. Look how close the cockpit is to the engines. If one of them was on fire, that pilot was likely experiencing more stress than I can imagine, with more issues on his mind than yaw.

Take good care of her. She’s the last one of it’s kind.

Cheers

When one of Erwin Ziller’s two Jumo jet engines quit, it’s amazing that his H IX V3 didn’t turn into an instantaneous Frisbee. It must have tried. But Wikipedia indicates that he was in control for a while, doing dives to try to restart the burning engine. In an engine out with no vertical stab, any normal pilot would need a pdq fly-by-wire thrust diverter or dragerons to keep it steered half straight.

Why two engines? Maybe because they were so unreliable?