There were some seriously unorthodox project designs rattling around the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) before and during WW2, but if you wanted really weird stuff, B&V could provide it. They even got one of their oddities (the BV-141) accepted for service…

…and though some people might not have liked it…

…the plane flew just fine…

…which makes me wonder about the others.

But how did that ever get off the ground?  It looks like it should be horribly unbalanced.  Did it crash a lot?

“German Aircraft of World War Two” (J.R. Smith & A.L. Kay, Putnam 1990) says it “handled well and possessed in full measure all the characteristics desirable for its role (but) official conservatism prevailed…” 

“Warplanes of the Luftwaffe” (ed. D. Donald, Aerospace Publishing 1994) says the same: “one of aviation’s true oddities…performed surprisingly well (but) the main stumbling-block was fear of the type’s unusual configuration.”

“The World’s Worst Airplanes” (Bill Yenne, Bison Books 1990) states: “The Bv-141 proved more airworthy than its detractors wanted to believe (but) never shook off the stigma of its disfigured appearance.”

Translation: it was an entirely adequate aircraft (but) it looked too weird.

Blohm & Voss liked asymmetry. Here’s the Bv P.179…

The Bv P.194 (for extra jollies, a prop in one nacelle and a jet pod under the other)…

The Bv P.204 (now almost conventional, with the prop in the middle, but hey, let’s install a single jet offset under one wing)…

Oh-kaaay…

This is happening. Meet the Bv P.111…

Even the B & V take on a symmetrical trimotor was weird.

The forward view on the Bv P.170 must have been pretty minimal. Since it was a tail-dragger, there might have been visibility under the plane’s “armpits” during taxiing, but otherwise there’s nothing to see but metres of nose, wing and engine nacelles with a runway (and ground-crew!) out there somewhere.

These and many other oddities get trotted out by a certain sort of documentary with the tag “Could these Wonder Weapons have Won the War?” Since they mostly qualified for the term “paper or plastic”, the answer to that portentous question is “NO”.

(What they did do was keep their designers, draughtsmen, engineers etc. looking useful enough to avoid being given rifles and sent to the Eastern Front, so in that respect they were a success…)