The Heinkel Lerche (English: Lark) was the name of a set of project studies made by German aircraft designer Heinkel in 1944 and 1945 for a VTOL fighter and ground-attack aircraft.

It would take off and land sitting on its tail, flying horizontally like a conventional aircraft.

It would be powered by two contra-rotating propellers which were contained in a doughnut-shaped, nine-sided annular wing.

The aerodynamic principles of an annular wing were basically sound,[clarification needed][citation needed] but the proposal was faced with a host of unsolved manufacture and control problems which would have made the project highly impractical, even without the material shortages of late-war Nazi Germany.

Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era