Heinkel HE 6

The Heinkel HE 6 was a single-seat floatplane developed by the German company Heinkel Flugzeugwerke in the late 1920s for transatlantic flight. Its construction in 1927 was presented as a private initiative of Ernst Heinkel, but behind it stood the Reichsmarine and the Hamburg-America Line, which financed it alongside a Junkers G 24 seaplane. The aircraft of wood and canvas over steel tubes was a further development of the Hansa-Brandenburg W.29 that Heinkel designed in 1918, and it was nicknamed Schwalbe, the swallow. The line took it over for around 120,000 marks, excluding the engine. The HE 6a had a BMW VIa V-12 engine, and the HE 6b was re-engined with a Packard 3A-2500 of 600 kilowatts, with a wingspan of 18.2 metres and a top speed of 205 kilometres per hour.