Me 262 flies over Germany

The world’s first operational turbo jet is flying once again over German skies. You can read about it here or watch it fly in this huge video

I read about that a few years ago. Very :cool:

Now if only they’d start building new Spitfires…

Really. I read from the article that they’re also looking into resuscitating the 109s and 190s, with the trickiest part being reproducing the authentic powerplants. If what’s left of the Brit aviation industry would rise to the challenge…

Very cool. I’ve always loved the look of them.

I can’t say I’m crazy about the paint scheme they put it in. Sure it’s quasi-historical, but I’d have liked to have seen it something less camoflage-y, something that shows off the beautiful lines of the 262. The camo breaks it up too much for my liking. A nice black/red combination, something high contrast.

Either way though, it sure is pretty.

Apparently, there are quite a few Me 109s still flying.

I looked at the video first and was surprised to see that it said it was a restored orginal ME262. But the linked story has the correct info. It’s a reproduction, built by these guys. They’ve been under production for quite a few years. I’ve been following their progress for just about as long as they’ve been in developement.

Complete blueprints for the plane didn’t exist so they got an actual ME262 (a pretty beat up example that had been on display at the Willow Grove naval air base in PA) and completely dismantled it so they could painstakingly reconstruct each individual part. In exchange for borrowing the plane they agreed to restore it to original condition. They started test flights of their reproductions last year.

If memory serves me I believe most of the 109s that survived came from Spain. Franco’s airforce were using them long after 1945.

Most of those on the link are Hispano-Suiza HA-1112s. These were Spanish-built (or Spanish-assembled) versions using – perhaps ironically – Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.

The Spanish planes are nice enough, and they get used in a lot of movies, but I always find their appearance jarring, with their flat-topped cowlings and high-mounted exhausts in place of the inverted-V Daimler Benz engines on the German originals. (The Hispanos are still less jarring than the movies where they used Bf-108s.)

They were the ones featured in the movie The Battle Of Britain. I understand that the Czechs flew a few - presumably Soviet captured - ME 262’s after the war, but they have presumably long gone to the scrapheap. Now, if only someone would rebuild an ME 163, then we’d really be talking…

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has an original Me262 in working operation. http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/me262.htm

I just want to say, thanks for starting this thread. It’s cool to see they’re flying these bad boys again. While I don’t know nearly as much about WW2 planes as some of the other posters in this thread seem too, I have a real “Armchair Warrior” attitude about this stuff. I love to watch shows and learn about combat aircraft. I especially like the WW2 and Korean War eras because of the extensive amount of air-battles involving real dogfighting with the peak of prop fighters and the birth of jet fighters.

I actually remember seeing the ME262 at Willowgrove way back at some point.

I have a soft spot for certain designs though. Things like the ME262, the F-14 Tomcat, A-10 Warthog. Heh, I’m blanking on thinking of anything else at the moment, I’m so tired. :o Anyhow, my point is, it always seems to me like some planes just a certain appeal or aesthetic in their appearance and capabilities that makes them really stand out. I love stuff like that. Even kinda plain-looking things like the A-6 Intruder, or specialised non-coms like the E-2C Hawkeye and SR-71 Blackbird.

Night all.

Some time in the last few months I’ve read on the Web about a dude who turns out 3/4 scale (or something like it) Spits. Still big enough to sit in and fly, but with the performance shaded down a tad. If you have half a megabuck burning a hole in your pocket, I suggest you get Googling.

Blue Öyster Cult will be delighted.

I posted a thread several months ago about a homebuilt called the Supermarine Spitfire Mk.26. Nice, all-metal kit. It wouldn’t take a megabuck to build it, either. Maybe about 200 kilobucks. There’s also a French guy who has plans for 3/4-scale and full-sized wooden Spitfires, Mustangs, and FW-190s. The full-scale ones use an Allison V-12. But it would be really cool if there were a full-scale rivet-for-rivet reproduction of a Mk.V or Mk.IX available.

I know what you mean. I grew up in San Diego, and I love Navy jets. But there’s something about older airplanes. I was at the Chino Air Show last week, and they had some good ones. I liked the Spitfire, of course; but my favourite was the AD Skyraider. It’s a big, chunky airplane. Dad was a radar operator in the three-seat model (AD-4N) during Korea. He said the ‘Spad’ had the instantanious firepower of a light cruiser. When I see aircraft of this era fly, I plug into the Zeitgeist and imagine a time before I was born when these were the baddest machines in the air. I think about the cars people were driving and the music they listened to. There were some pre-war aircraft flying, and I thought about the young cadet who climbed into his P-22 thinking how awesome it was.

And as much as I like the sound of a Merlin, there’s nothing like the growl of a big radial. (Speaking of which, they had a Camel flying with its radial that spun round the crankshaft and only had ‘on’ and ‘off’.)

It’s still just talk, but …

Tim Wallis in NZ makes quite a lucrative living hauling WWII aircraft out of Russian Lakes and restoring them… so far, I believe, they’ve restored a Hawker Hurricane, an Me-110, and several Polikarpov Biplanes, amongst many others…

I want someone to restore and fly a Sunderland Flying Boat, dammit! The guys at the Museum of Transport & Technology in Auckland have been working on theirs in a half-assed way for decades… If I win Lotto, I’d buy the sodding thing and pay to have it finished properly, to serve as my executive aircraft.

Nitpick: it’s actually a Solent, and it’s taken decades because it’s being restored solely by volunteers on a budget of practically nothing. But yeah, a lovely, lovely thing - just to sit in it is to imagine a two week flight from England to Auckland, with leisurely stops to sip one’s chota peg at every point east of Suez. Motat have a Lancaster, too, sadly not flying. And then there’s the Catalina that flies around Auckland on sunny days: being buzzed by that is such a thrill.

More on Sir Tim Wallis, by the way: one of that special breed of Kiwi nutcases like John Britten. Johnny L.A., you’ll probably like this site: I remember that Vampire from when I was a kid in Hamilton, just sitting forlornly outside like a lawn sculpture and with only the occasional lick of paint as consolation.

And I still have fond memories of a gutted Vampire which was being used as a piece of play equipment {!} in a park in Blenheim {there was an RNZAF base nearby, and the old Bristol Freighters used to fly overhead} during the early 70’s: we used to swarm all over it hoping to find guns or radios that had somehow been overlooked, and I fell off the wing into a puddle on my fifth birthday, and had to be taken home. I wonder what ever happened to it…

Technically, that is called a rotary engine rather than a radial.

You are correct. I misspoke.