I thought I’d continue this thread from GQ here because the OP has been answered.
audiolover, thanks for the correction on the drag vs. power function. I foolishly equated thrust with power. I deserve a big dope slap from my physics instructors for that one.
I think it would be a fun exercise to design a biplane jet if for no other reason than it just looks more cool than a monoplane. Imagine if turbine metallurgy and turbine technology had been at a much more advanced state than aerodynamics and airframes in the thirties. I’m picturing a Curtiss style biplane on floats in the jet category of the Scheider trohy races. It’s very illogigical but fun.
Well someone did mention an early piston powered jet in the other thread but I’m thinking a ultra compact turbofan that would be suitable for a small and manueverable pylon racer. Just need to figure how a 1920s educated aircraft designer (the market was flooded with death ray designers) would configure a low frontal area fuselage with the pilot in front of the engine.
In the other thread, you were also asking after the experimental work the Luftwaffe was doing in regards to flight. I recently read that the Germans were pretty well ready to go into production with jet aircraft later in the war until Hitler insisted that the planes have both bombing and fighter capabilities. As a result, jets weren’t available in any numbers prior to Germany’s defeat. Had Hitler allowed production of the planes just as fighters, they would have been ready for production months earlier, and might have substantially changed the air war in the European theatre.
Purd, one book I have makes that same claim, saying that if the Me262 had been operational in late 1943 (even early 1944) than the USA’s 8th AirForce (USAAF) would’ve been destroyed in in it’s daylight bobming campaign. It was pretty touchy before the P-51 even without NAZI jets.
The Me262 was 100mph fastrer than the P-51D giving a considerable potential advantage. Didn’t stop Chuck Yeager from shooting down a few of them though
Sorry about the fawning but the guy is like a god to me.
I was thinking a much smaller engine, top speed is fine but can’t come at the expense of the super tight turns needed in pylon racing.
This story has been repeated many times, but it’s not particularly accurate. A few relevant points:
The only “modification” made to the Me262 to add bombing capabilities was the inclusion of hard points on the wings. Since nearly every fighter in the war had such hard points, it is difficult to imagine why adding them would have delayed production significantly.
What little impact Hitler’s “bomber, not fighter” policy had was that Goering deployed the first available 262’s as tactical bombers. However, there weren’t enough of them around for the few months that this was happening for it to have been terribly significant.
What really held up Me262 production was the availability of a reliable jet engine. Because the Germans were seriously hard up for many alloys, their jet engines had a disturbing tendency to blow up. This is not a desirable trait in a military aircraft, and it took till '44 before they managed get mass production of the Junkers Jumo underway. The production model still frequently flamed out, and had a miserably short service life (12 hours total). cite
By 1944 one of the Luftwaffe’s most critical shortages wasn’t aircraft or even fuel. It was trained pilots. The amount of training given to rookie pilots before they saw combat steadily dropped throughout the war. By 1944 it was down to just a few hours. New pilots were barely able to keep their planes in the air, let alone fly with appropriate combat tactics.
In the Me262, this lack of training would have been even more devastating than in piston-engined birds, since everything happens faster. You have less time to line up your shot. And the Me262 was far from invincible. It turned poorly, and any attempt to turn aggressively would result in it being eaten for lunch by virtually any Allied fighter. Successful use of the Me262 required disciplined use of energy tactics (what’s sometimes called boom and zoom). Attempting to mix it up in a turning dogfight would have generally proven fatal. It was also very vulnerable during takeoff and landing, and the Allies made a habit of flying CAPs over the jet bases.
The scores the Me262 did rack up at the end of the war were in no small part due to the fact that Goering cherry-picked most of his best aces and put them into one squadron (JV 44). That squadron would have had a deadly kill ratio even flying the Me109K-4 or the Fw190D-9.
None of this is to say that the 262 was anything other than the best fighter of the war. It clearly was that. However, it’s not accurate to suggest that it could have wrested back air superiority on the Western Front but for Hitler’s stupidity. The 262 could not turn the tide of the brutal war of attrition. Germany’s lack of steel, oil, and manpower were decisive in that regard.
Anyways, even if the Luftwaffe had made a huge comeback, it would have been for naught. The P-80 Shooting Star was already entering service at the close of the war, and in the hands of well-trained pilots would have balanced things. It might not have been quite as capable as the 262, but with numbers and proper pilot training, I would expect it to have posted kill ratios similar to those of the F-86 vs the Mig 15 a few years later. And Berlin might have been nuked.
I was given to understand that engines were unavailable because the allies were bombing the factories that made them and the trains that delivered them.
Hey, I’d like to see a cite about Chuck Yager shooting down ME 252s. I believe you, I want to read about it.
First, thanks Padeye you demi-god you, for this thread.
Second, a big ass cargo plane at 300 knots and three gs pulls the same radius as a fabulous fighter at 300 knots and three gs. Funny, isn’t it. Which one of those two aircraft can maintain speed and g loading through the turn is a different matter.
Most of the Me-262s in WWII were destroyed landing or taking off. It says a great deal regarding protection of your airspace. You can’t let people shoot at you when you’re just running the engines up.
My guess is, and I am Googling like mad on this one, is that the Me-262 was g-limited. That said, a 100 mph advantage is nothing to be sneezed at. Lots of fighter aces have said the best tactic is to sneak up on the enemy, shoot the piss out of him, and then fly away. More than a few aces used this tactic. I know I would if I could get away with it.
I guess that the Me-262 was g-limited because swept wing aerodynamics was in its infancy. Swept wings let you nudge your airspeed into the transonic range, that is, some of the flow over your aircraft will be sonic, but damn if people knew how to build them or control them. But they learned.
The bomb racks were actually bellow the nose, due to the landing gear and engine positions it wasn´t feasible to make strong points in the wing or center fuselage. Of course the nose racks meant that only relatively small bombs could be carried or else the center of gravity would have been too far ahead to fly the plane.
Gorsnak I agree with points well made with this exception.
Well, there are hard points and then there are hard points.
The P-51 started its life as an attack aircraft, the A-36. Ditto, at least in a dual mode, the P-47. Most of my info is re the American aircraft involved so forgive my nescience in other areas.
Building hard points isn’t something you’ll do over a long weekend. The wing on the Me-262 was originally designed to hold up nothing more than itself in taxiing and the aircraft when in flight. I could build really fabulous hard points on a Cessna 172 just outboard of the struts capapble of carrying 250 kg bombs each. If you could please provide a really long runway for the damn thing to get V[sub]NE[/sub] that’d be terrific. Yeah.
Right. Nit acknowledged. Nonetheless, it was engine production that was the real issue with regards to when the thing became available.
It just bugs me when people imply that the Germans might have won had it not been for Hitler’s stupidity regarding x, y, or z. I mean, yeah, the man was certifiably insane, especially towards the end, and with the benefit of hindsight we can see some really glaring errors. But in the end it came down to natural resources, manpower, and industrial capacity, and in all three categories the Germans were toast before they even started. Their only hope was to have won the blitzkrieg, and hence as soon as the UK didn’t fold during the Battle of Britain, and the Russians made it through that first winter, the final outcome was inevitable. The only question remaining was how long it would take.
They did have some wonderfully wacky flying machines, though.
