In the winter of 1939, after work on the He-178 was stopped, the Heinkel company received an order to develop a project for a twin-engined He-280. According to the project, this aircraft was equipped with the most powerful engines at that time, He S-8A and He S-30A, which were still under development.

Problems with these engines led to the fact that the first prototype had no engines at all and in the first test flight on September 22, 1940, it was raised to a height by the He-111 aircraft. By March 1941, the He-S-8 engines were finally ready for installation, and on April 2, 1942, the aircraft made its first independent flight. The pilot Fritz Schufer gave the aircraft a low rating, since the thrust of the engines was only 500 kgf. By the beginning of 1943, the engine thrust was increased to 600 kg. But even with BMW-109-003 engines, the plane did not make a good impression, therefore it did not go into mass production and soon gave way to the Messershtitt Me-262 aircraft.

Bibliography

• "Aviation of Luftwaffe" /Viktor Shunkov/
• "Encyclopedia of military engineering" /Aerospace Publising/