Henschel Hs 121
The Henschel Hs 121 wasn’t actually designed to be used. It was designed and built to satisfy the Luftwaffe’s requirement that any new aircraft manufacturer seeking to sell airplanes to the newly developed air force prove that it knew what it was doing. Each company had to design and build an airplane that demonstrated the manufacturer’s capabilities.
In the case of Henschel, it would seem that the Luftwaffe had good reason to doubt the company’s aviation prowess: At that time, Henschel’s primary business was building locomotives and buses. So they produced the Hs 121 to prove themselves aviation capable.
The design period was 1932–33, with the first flight in January 1934. So the company whose background was building trains had to latch onto the leading aerodynamic/structural theories and put them to work. In this case, Henschel still ascribed to the elliptical-wing, curved-surfaces theories. The resulting aircraft did, indeed, show the Reich Air Ministry that it knew how to form aluminum and design airplanes because almost every surface was compound curved.
Henschel Hs 121 is pleasing to the eye and was powered by the 240hp
Argus V-8, which was to become a Luftwaffe workhorse engine for many of its utility aircraft (Storch, Bf 108, etc.). The engine has a rumbling exhaust tone, which would lend an authoritarian sound to an airplane that otherwise looked almost dainty. We bet it flew wonderfully.