The German Heinkel He 70 of the early 1930s was a fast mail plane and reconnaissance bomber, and the predecessor to the Heinkel He 111 bomber, early models of which used an elliptical wing.
It was a low-wing monoplane, with the main characteristics of its revolutionary design its elliptical wing, which the Günther brothers had already used in the Bäumer Sausewind sports plane before they joined Heinkel, and its small, rounded control surfaces.
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Swissair received a few Heinkel He-70s for express trans-alpine flights between Zurich and Milan in 1934.
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Many of the technical advances in the Spitfire had been made by others: the thin elliptical wings were designed by the Canadian aerodynamicist, Beverley Shenstone, and shared some similarities with the Heinkel He 70 Blitz; the under-wing radiators had been designed by the RAE, while monocoque construction had been first developed in the United States.