BMW Schnellbomber II

The BMW Schnellbomber II was a proposal drawn up by BMW during the Second World War to show how its BMW 028 turboprop, then under development, could be used in aircraft. BMW never gave it the name Schnellbomber, which has been used only since the war. It was one of the appendices of a report finished by June 1944, appendix 5 of the drawings. The aircraft had large forward-swept wings and two BMW 028 engines mounted on pylons rising from the top of the fuselage at 45 degrees, which could also have worked as canard wings if mounted nearer the nose, so that the engines did not disturb the airflow over the wings or controls and the undercarriage could stay much smaller because no propeller clearance from the ground was needed. The crew of two or three sat in a pressurised cockpit in the front fuselage. The article judges that, had the design ever been developed, the unusual engine layout would very probably have caused centre of gravity problems, and that it was evidently meant as a bomber although the report never names the type.