The Ural bomber was the initial aircraft design program/competition to develop a long-range bomber for the Luftwaffe, created and led by General Walther Wever in the early 1930s. Wever died in an air crash on June 3, 1936, and his successor Albert Kesselring continued the project until he left office.
Wever, the chief of staff of the newly formed Luftwaffe in 1933, realized the importance that strategic bombing would play in a war. In a war with the Soviet Union, he expected that German forces would not attempt to move very far east of Moscow, which would leave much of Joseph Stalin's recently relocated industry out of reach of existing bombers. Wever proposed using a strategic bomber to target those factories, hampering the Soviet ability to fight, without the need for ground forces to advance.
Development
Under the Ural bomber program, he began secret talks with two of Germany's leading aircraft manufacturers, Dornier and Junkers, requesting designs for a long-range bomber. The two companies responded with the Dornier Do 19 and the Junkers Ju 89 respectively and the Reich Ministry of Aviation (RLM; Reichsluftfahrtministerium) ordered prototypes for both aircraft in 1935. The program was not successful and was eventually canceled.
The Dornier Do 19 V1 first flew on October 28, 1936, beating the Ju 89's first flight by some six months. The Do 19 was a nine-seat, four-engine monoplane, using a quartet of underpowered, 1930-era BMW/Bramo 322H nine-cylinder radials of only some 650 hp output each, themselves based on the even earlier Bristol Jupiter IV British radial of only some 430 hp each from 1926 — in comparison, the prototype American Boeing Model 299 four-engined bomber of 1935 used a quartet of the more advanced, 750 hp apiece Pratt & Whitney R-1690 Hornet radial engines, themselves first run the same year as the Jupiter IV. The Do 19 V1 possessed defensive armament emplacements in dorsal and ventral locations, with dedicated nose and tail emplacements using turrets for the first time on a German bomber in such locations — these sorts of innovations could not save the design, for which only the V1 prototype was ever completed.
The Ju 89 also inspired the Junkers Ju 90 after Deutsche Luft Hansa requested a passenger version with lower-powered engines. When the Ural bomber program was canceled, the partially completed 3rd prototype was converted to passenger layout and served as a Ju 90 prototype instead. The Ju 90 was later pressed into military service as a patrol aircraft, as it was one of the few really long-range designs available in Germany. The Ju 90, in turn, led to the small-production series of Junkers Ju 290 four engined maritime patrol and long-range reconnaissance aircraft.
According to some sources, the Ju 89 was considered to be the better performing of the two Ural bomber prototypes and after the cancellation of the project on 29 April 1937 the V1 and V2 prototypes continued to carry out flying trials and briefly served with the transport unit KGrzbV 105 during the Norway invasion.
Cancellation
James Corum contends that contrary to popular belief, it was not Kesselring who killed off the Ural bomber concept; rather it was Hermann Göring who ceased strategic bomber development in Nazi Germany before the start of World War II, upon the advice of Kesselring, Ernst Udet and Erhard Milch. Kesselring was a vocal supporter of twin engine bombers and backed up Udet who preferred dive bombers. This was the questionable decision that was made to convert the Ju 88 medium bomber and the even more disastrous decision to convert the Heinkel He 177 heavy bomber, into a form of "Big Stuka" dive bomber, on the very day it was given its RLM airframe number of 8-177 on November 5, 1937. This move countered the request of Ernst Heinkel one year later, for the third and fourth He 177 V-series prototypes to be specifically built as true, four-separately-engined heavy bomber prototypes, rather than with the specified pair of DB 606 "twinned DB 601" power systems, weighing some 1.5 tonnes apiece, required for the He 177A to have the streamlining to accomplish dive-bombing missions.
Milch wanted the project canceled simply because at that stage the German airplane industry was incapable of building a large fleet of heavy bombers and would remain so. Thus, Göring shelved the project and is later supposed to have said, "The Führer will never ask me how big our bombers are, but how many we have."