Dornier Do 217E

The Dornier Do 217E was a large, powerful medium bomber designed to replace the aging Do 17 "Flying Pencil" in Luftwaffe service. Substantially bigger and heavier than its predecessor, the Do 217E packed an impressive bomb load of up to 8,818 pounds, more than any other standard German medium bomber, and featured a distinctive deep fuselage that housed a capacious internal bomb bay.

While the Do 217E was a competent conventional bomber, its most significant contribution to military history came as the world's first aircraft to employ precision guided munitions in combat. Equipped to carry the Fritz X radio-guided bomb and the Henschel Hs 293 anti-ship missile, Do 217E units achieved spectacular results against Allied naval targets, most notably sinking the Italian battleship Roma with Fritz X guided bombs on September 9, 1943, the first capital ship ever sunk by a guided weapon.

The Do 217 family never achieved the production numbers or the universal recognition of the Ju 88 or He 111, partly because Dornier diverted development resources into too many variants and sub-types. Nevertheless, the Do 217E was a genuinely capable aircraft that deserves recognition for pioneering an entirely new form of warfare, precision guided munitions, that would come to dominate aerial combat in the decades that followed.

The Do 217 was developed in the late 1930s as a larger, more capable successor to the Do 17, incorporating lessons from the earlier aircraft's service in the Spanish Civil War and the opening campaigns of WW2. Claudius Dornier's team enlarged the fuselage substantially, added more powerful engines, and introduced a pressurized crew compartment in some variants, an advanced feature for a mid-war bomber.

The first prototype flew in October 1938 with DB 601 inline engines, but the production Do 217E adopted the BMW 801 radial for its greater power and reliability. The transition to the radial engine required significant nose redesign, and the resulting aircraft bore little resemblance to the slim Do 17 it was meant to replace. The deep, slab-sided fuselage earned the aircraft no beauty prizes, but it provided generous internal volume for bombs and fuel.

The Do 217E-2 introduced the ability to carry and deploy the Fritz X (SD 1400) radio-guided bomb, a weapon that represented a quantum leap in precision bombing technology. The Fritz X was a 1,400 kg armor-piercing bomb fitted with radio command guidance and cruciform tail control surfaces. The bombardier guided it to the target using a joystick controller and a flare on the bomb's tail as a visual reference, a crude but effective system that achieved remarkable accuracy against moving ships.

The Do 217E-5 variant was adapted to carry the Henschel Hs 293 anti-ship guided missile, essentially a rocket-boosted glide bomb with radio command guidance. The Hs 293 was lighter than the Fritz X and designed for use against unarmored or lightly armored ships, while the Fritz X was intended for heavily armored warships. Together, these weapons gave the Do 217E a capability that no other aircraft in the world possessed.