Work commenced on the Hs 132 in February 1943 in response to a specification issued by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM – the German Aviation Ministry) for a new attack aircraft.

The aircraft intentionally made as little use of strategic materials as possible, such as its use of wooden wings, and had a relatively simplistic structure despite it being designed to withstand 12 g, considerably more than typical dive bombers of the era.

[1] Separately, there had long been interest in the idea of combat aircraft being flown by pilots in the prone position, which would reduce the effect of g-forces during manoeuvring.

The pilot had an extremely restricted field of view upward or to the rear that made it suitable only for certain roles, including bombers or fighters or interceptors with a major speed advantage over their opposition.

This was a serious concern for interceptors attacking the USAAF's Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, as calculations showed that the chance of being hit by its defensive guns was largely a function of frontal area.

[citation needed] On 18 February 1943, the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM – the German Aviation Ministry) released a specification that called for a single-seat shipping attack aircraft to counter an expected Allied invasion of Europe.

While this placement of the engine was suboptimal in terms of intake performance, incurring increased drag at high speeds due to interference from the engine-fuselage fairing junctions, the design team were aware that the Heinkel He 162, the winners of the contemporary Volksjäger ("people's fighter") design competition, had a similar engine layout and thus were encouraged as to its viability.

[4] Directly behind was the actual "window," a large armored-glass plate located some distance behind the extreme nose; the glazing extended almost to the wing root.

[citation needed] During April or May 1944, Henschel submitted their proposal to the RLM, by which point wind tunnel testing of the basic layout had already commenced.

The Hs 132B was to have been powered by a single Junkers Jumo 004 engine in place of the BMW 003; it also would have added a pair of 20 mm (0.79 in) MG 151/20 cannons.

[13] The HeS 011, intended to power a wide variety of new and existing Luftwaffe aircraft (an example of the latter being the proposed D and P series of the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber), was still in the pre-production phase when the conflict ended.