Back Heinkel Lerche Bulgarian Heinkel Lerche Breton Heinkel Lerche II Catalan Heinkel Lerche German Heinkel Lerche Spanish Heinkel Lerche Finnish Heinkel Lerche French Heinkel Lerche Italian ハインケル レルヒェ Japanese Heinkel Lerche Dutch
| Heinkel Lerche | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Type | Tail-sitter Fighter |
| National origin | Germany |
| Manufacturer | Heinkel |
| Designer | |
| Status | Paper project only, never built |
 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (July 2011) |
The Heinkel Lerche (English: Lark) was the name of a set of project studies made by German aircraft designer Heinkel in 1944 and 1945 for a VTOL fighter and ground-attack aircraft.
The Lerche was an early coleopter design. It would take off and land sitting on its tail, flying horizontally like a conventional aircraft. The pilot would lie prone in the nose. It would be powered by two contra-rotating propellers which were contained in a doughnut-shaped, nine-sided annular wing.
The design was developed starting 1944 and concluding in March 1945. The aerodynamic principles of an annular wing were basically sound,[clarification needed][citation needed] but the proposal was faced with a host of unsolved manufacture and control problems which would have made the project highly impractical, even without the material shortages of late-war Nazi Germany.