Messerschmitt HA 300

Since 1952, Professor Willy Messerschmitt had been working with a small team in Spain under a consultancy agreement. Following the success of his HA 100 and HA 200 trainer aircraft designs, he began work on a small, single-seater interceptor at the request of the Spanish government. The desired criteria were that it would be able to defend point targets under visual flight conditions and reach speeds of around Mach 1.5 and that it would also be suitable for production in relatively large numbers by less affluent countries.

The result was an aircraft that, true to Messerschmitt’s design principles, offered the perfect compromise between performance, weight and manufacturing costs. In 1956, the design for the world’s smallest, lightest and most compact Mach 2 fighter aircraft was complete. However, due to a lack of funds, the Spanish government’s interest in this project started to dwindle from 1957. Egypt bought the project and all the documentation in late 1959.

In 1963, work started on the construction of the first prototype. This was modified to reflect the operating conditions in Egypt, so there were significant differences compared to the original design. After these design modifications – including the addition of a horizontal stabiliser, which wasn’t part of the original design – the V1 prototype was ready for its maiden flight. This was completed successfully on 7 March 1964, with Indian test pilot Kapil Bhargava at the controls.

In the years that followed, a final configuration was tested using the V2 and V3 prototypes and the new E300 engines. However, in May 1969, a political decision was taken to terminate the project that had been running for almost 10 years. Due to a change in the political environment in Egypt, a decision was taken to purchase the Soviet MiG21 – an aircraft of a very similar design – instead of the HA300. In 1991, the company then known as Dasa (present-day Airbus) bought the first HA 300 prototype, which was still in good condition, dismantled it, and transported it by air from Egypt to Manching. There, the world’s lightest supersonic fighter aircraft – a valuable aircraft given its technical history – was carefully restored by apprentices in the training workshop. When the restoration work was complete in 1997, the aircraft was then exhibited alternately in the Messerschmitt Museum of Flight in Manching and the Flugwerft Schleissheim aviation museum, a branch of the Deutsches Museum. On 28 May 2015, the HA 300 V1 was returned to the Messerschmitt Museum of Flight, where it is now part of the permanent static display in the museum’s gallery.