# He 162 v P-80 V Vampire



## Waynos (Jan 21, 2009)

After seeing various 'versus' threads this is one comparison I thought I would like to see. I won't be able to contribute too much myself beyond starting it but I would really like to see the views of you guys.

What were the advantages and drawbacks of each design. Was the Vampires engine installation more practical than the other two? I think it was given that the top mounted engine gives balance issues and the P-80 had a thrust losing extended tail pipe.

Which was the better fighter in terms of range and armament (Vampire for armament, P-80 for range perhaps?) 

Can the most manouverable of them be quantified, I would have thought the Vampire would turn well but the He 162 would have a phenomenal rate of roll?

I do hope this isn't a duplicate thread as it is the first time I have actually tried to start one


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## Soren (Jan 21, 2009)

The top mounted engine doesn't give any balance problems, not the slightest. You can be sure that where'ever the engines are situated the airframe is built around them to keep the center of gravity at a certain optimum point.

As for performance, the He-162 sweeps them all away with a 905 km/h top speed. The He-162 turns, rolls climbs significantly better than the rest. The early DH Vampire wasn't anything to cheer about, it was underpowered and heavy, and the same goes for the early P-80A.

But better than all of them is the Me-262, it was simply the best jet of the war and for a good time afterwards, proving to be the baseline for the future generation of fighters.


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## red admiral (Jan 22, 2009)

If the Vampire is underpowered, what does that make the Me 262? The F.1 has a significantly higher power to weight ratio. Thrust to weight ratio is very similar to the He 162. The climb rate is very similar as well. Speed of the F.1 is slightly down at 540mph over 562mph which is the biggest problem. Handling is more difficult to quantify but there were no problems identified with the Vampire. The only real problem was the cockpit framing restricting vision, which was rectified with a single piece type.

The He 162's greatest problem is avoiding structural failure from poor build quality.



> But better than all of them is the Me-262, it was simply the best jet of the war and for a good time afterwards, proving to be the baseline for the future generation of fighters.



None of the following fighters were anything like the Me 262 and the Meteor F4 beats the Me 262 hands down in performance whilst being available only months later.


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## HellToupee (Jan 22, 2009)

Vampire IMO, best armed of the 3 with good performance it was not underpowered its power to weight was similar to the he162 the prototype engines had less thrust than the production ones.


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## Waynos (Jan 22, 2009)

I didn't specifically say so but I was thinking about the first round of single engined jet fighters to see service, which is why I didn't include the 262 and Meteor.

Just to add a bit to the debate I have dredged up the following data from the 1945 Janes All the Worlds Aircraft, which was produced with official manufacturers data and was published after the end of the war, so there is no guesswork going on.

I don't know how to do tables so forgive me if this is hard to follow (as I type I do not know how these figures will compare as I haven't even read them yet - an adventure for me!)

Heinkel He 162;

Speed 490mph at sea level, 522mph at 19,680ft and 485mph at 36,000ft
Ceiling 39,400ft
weight loaded 5,940lbs
powerplant data (BMW 003 A-1) - weight 1,252lbs, thrust 1,760lbs

(my rough calc T/W for the aircraft coming out at 0.296)


DH Vampire;

Speed 540mph ("over a wide altitude range")
Ceiling 45-50,000ft
weight (Loaded) 8,000lbs
Powerplant data - weight 1,500lbs, thrust 3,000lbs

(my rough calc T/W for the aircraft coming out at 0.375)

Lockheed P-80;

Speed 550mph
Ceiling 45,000ft
weight (Loaded) empty 8,000lbs, mtow 14,000lbs
Powerplant data - not supplied

Ironically, for a British book, the Vampire is the aircraft with the least available data! The Heinkel data is meticulous and exhaustive and there is a note under this entry that states ''the above figures are official but were not achieved with the early production aircraft"

Although the He 162 was a smaller and lighter aircraft it does seem to have had a worse T/W ratio than the Vampire F.1, The P-80 is surprisingly heavy to me, weighing the same when empty as a fully loaded Vampire, which itself is about 2,000lbs heavier than the He 162.


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## davebender (Jan 22, 2009)

Anything printed in Jane's should be read with a grain of salt.
Heinkel He 162 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maximum speed: 900 km/h (562 mph) 

The Heinkel He-162 Volksjaeger
maximum speed 900 KPH 562 MPH / 489 KT

WW2DB: He 162 Volksjäger
Speed, Maximum 900 km/h 

WW2 Warbirds: the Heinkel He 162 Salamander - Frans Bonn
Maximum speed. 562 mph at 19685 ft

Heinkel He-162
Max. Speed: 562 mph


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## Waynos (Jan 22, 2009)

> Anything printed in Jane's should be read with a grain of salt.



How so? Is Janes not the most respected publication ion the world?

The data in Jane's is, and has always been from the first edition in 1909 to the present day, supplied directly to the publishers by the aircraft manufacturers themselves, who surely would know?

I notice none of the websites linked give a source for their data so who is to say that they are not merely repeating the same error? Also, if I may say so, posting Wikipedia as proof that Janes is wrong must also be the weakest argument ever, surely? You do know how Wiki works don't you? Apart from Wiki, another one of the sites (WW2 Database) contains this quote from the site author;



> I do not recommend this site to be used for academic research; this site remains no more than the extension of my own personal history notebook, and it has not been reviewed by any subject matter expert.


 so once again this falls short of Janes by its own admission

If there is an official source that contradicts Jane's then that is different.


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## FLYBOYJ (Jan 22, 2009)

Waynos said:


> How so? Is Janes not the most respected publication ion the world?


It may be but I've seen glaring technical errors in some of the listings. In some cases performance data was wrong as well as other data. One error that comes to mind was Jane’s stating in one of its late 80s issues that the CP-140 (The Canadian version of the Lockheed P-3) was built in Canada. Not true! About 40% of the Canadian birds were built in Canada but final assembly was in California.

Of the errors I seen in Jane's leads me to believe that those providing information on the aircraft are not pilots or have not worked around aircraft in a technical capacity.


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## Burunduk (Jan 22, 2009)

Waynos said:


> The data in Jane's is, and has always been from the first edition in 1909 to the present day, supplied directly to the publishers by the aircraft manufacturers themselves, who surely would know?



I very doubt that in 1945, during the war, Heinkel supplied Jane's by "data from manufacturer", don't you agree?

Jane's staff just did some estimations.

The same story was about Soviet aircrafts. Jane's data very often was completely wrong, sometimes they even mixed design bureau.


PS. "Data from manufacturers" also not always are the best data. Consider marketing, propaganda, desinformation (remember He.112 story?) and other issues.

So I would not believe to Jane's 1945 (!) data about German aircrafts.


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## Waynos (Jan 22, 2009)

All the data from the German manufacturers was in the hands of the allies following the end of the war. This volume was published in February 1946.

This volume of Jane's, which was a 'catch up' edition after 5 years of secrecy and estimation, contains, as far as I am aware, the most comprehensive collection of official performance data on German wartime aircraft ever published.

By contrast the data of British aircraft in there is much more open to speculation as, due to the general secrecy of the Air Ministry of the time, the figure provided for the very latest British types were supplied in rounded figures (ie 540mph, 50,000ft etc) and very little of it.

The Vampire data I quoted above was actually the total amount of data published for it, whereas the He 162 data alone is split into 11 sections with the 'performance' section alone running to 20 lines, and the comprehensiveness of it is why I am inclined to believe it. remember ''the above figures are official but were not achieved with the early production aircraft"

BUT, of course they are not 100% infallible, but what other sources can be believed and why, that is the main question as my data post seems to have dragged the thread off topic.

IF those figures generally are correct then they do make sense as the He 162 does seem to have a lower T/W ration than the Vampire, so it ought to be a little slower maybe.

However, if Jane's is wrong, what are the correct figures? And can they be sourced from somewhere reliable, unlike the websites quoted above?

I admit I have always thought that the He 162 was at least as fast, if not faster, than its contemporaries and the 522mph figure came as a surprise, but kind of fits in with its lower t/w ratio, if indeed that is also correct. 

My intention in quoting those figures was to stimulate more debate on the planes themselves rather than a debate on the book


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## Burunduk (Jan 22, 2009)

Here is data of He.162 obtained in the Soviet NII VVS in 1946 during tests of captured airplanes.

Probably, the speed achieved is less than maximal: there was no full documentation and, may be, engine and aircraft were used not in optimal manner.

Short-time speed (1 min):
Speed, km/h Height,m
900 6000
790 11000

Max continous speed (5 min)
785 0
834 6000
760 11000


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## Waynos (Jan 22, 2009)

Interestingly the '5 minute' speeds you posted correspond very closely to the Janes figures - Speed 490mph at sea level, 522mph at 19,680ft and 485mph at 36,000ft
except the last one works out at 475mph on the Russian figures, not 485.

Coincidence?

Owing to the 'vagueness' of the Vampire data as I mentioned above I have looked up some more reliable info, this is from Putnam's 'De Havilland Aircraft since 1909' published in the 1980's and not subject to Air Ministry classification.

engine - one 3,100lb D H Goblin2 or one 4,400lb Ghosts 2/2 (I think the former is the fairer choice for this comparison due to timescale)

All up weight 10,480lb (F.1)
Speed 540mph 
climb 4,300ft/min
range 730 miles.

Given these figures I can now revise the T/W ratio of the Vampire F.1 with the Goblin 2 to 0.296. This is exactly the same figure I got for the He 162!

Now that I have a bit more data for the Vampire I have looked up the equivalents for the He 162 in Jane's and it gives a climb rate of 4,200ft/min at sea level, very close to the Vampire figure. The range of the He 162 (highest figure) is quoted as 620 miles at 36,000ft (reducing at lower altitudes but I wont repeat all the figures as there is nothing to compare them with)
I certainly don't see the He 162 being vastly superior though as Soren suggested, they seem to be almost perfectly matched.

Makes me wonder how a He 162 powered by a Goblin might perform though?


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## delcyros (Jan 22, 2009)

The production model He-162A had BMW-003E engines, which could be forced for a short time to 920-940 Kp thrust instead of the normal 800 Kp rating. With forced power it has a higher thrust / weight ratio, and therefore improved acceleration, climb and top speed. It can´t be used for prolonged periods!
I think we had already some lengthy discussions of this A/C on this board.
The greatest asset of the He-162 would be the slightly higher critical mach figure, allowing some more "maneuvering window" at high speed. 
The Vampire is an excellent A/C, too with good all around balance and superior armement. The P-80 has some advantages wrt structure and equipment over both. 
Burunduk, You posted interesting figures. Can You cite the report based on them? I understand that the soviets tested at least two He-162A.

Conversely, the P-80A (and YP-80A) used the earlier GE/Allision engine with only 3850 lbs ST, the 4000 lbs jet engine came in 1946 and by the late 40´s they had water injection which increased thrust to 5.200 lbs.


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## SoD Stitch (Jan 23, 2009)

Waynos said:


> Makes me wonder how a He 162 powered by a Goblin might perform though?



Or a 162 with the 004E? Or, even better, a Jumo 012?


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## Waynos (Jan 23, 2009)

Yes, but I was thinking of the Goblin as a reliable 3,000lb thrust engine available at that time.


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## red admiral (Jan 23, 2009)

de Havilland Twin Boom Fighters by B Jones has performance details on most of the marks of Vampires, Venoms and Sea Vixen.

I can't see any way how a Goblin engine would fit into a He 162. Now, fitting a Ghost engine and thinning the wing on the Vampire...both of which had been proposed in 1944 but took some years until the Venom made it into production.


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## Waynos (Jan 23, 2009)

Owing to its design, plonked on top, I don't see why not? Not that it would be easy, or even desirable, but not impossible, I'll put it a different way. Maybe I should have said I wonder what the He 162 would have done with 3,000lb thrust, rather than a specific engine, 5,000lb even by 1947?

I love the design of the 162, but I have seen it called 'advanced'. Now I know there is nothing advanced about the airframes of the Vampire and P-80 beyond what the piston fighters were already achieving and that any of the allied jets would have flown just as happily with props (thinks - Merlin pusher Vampire - latter day DH2?  )

However just what was it that was so advanced about the 162? it had straight wings and a top mounted engine, nothing special. I certainly think its whole was muich greater than the sum of its parts as they say, like all other jets of the day. Maybe the Messerschmitt P.1101 was the only truly advanced jet fighter under construction at the time, or is that just an invitation for a big row?

Back on topic. was the landing/take off handling of the aircraft compromised unduly? The weight in relation to thrust of the P-80? The short span of the He 162? The t5win boom layout of the Vampire? I don't begin to know this, I'm just wondering out loud in the hope that I will be answered.


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## HellToupee (Jan 23, 2009)

A centrifugal jet engine like the goblin wouldn't be a good fit for a he162 they are much fatter, Fitting a Jumo would also push up the weight quite alot.


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## red admiral (Jan 23, 2009)

The Goblin is about 46" in diameter rather than 27" so its more difficult to make it fit.

I'm not sure why the He 162 is "advanced" apart from using non strategic materials and being easy to manufacture - though that also compromised structural integrity.

Compared to the barely later d.H. 108 with 40° swept wings and tailless layout, which was pretty much a Vampire with new wings and rear fuselage.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 23, 2009)

Barely later? Work on the D.H.108 started in autumn 1945, the first prototype flew over a year after the war in Europe had ended. the "real" prototype only flew in september '46 and broke apart. Airframe wise, the plane did nothing the Me 163 didn't already do years before.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 23, 2009)

Waynos said:


> Back on topic. was the landing/take off handling of the aircraft compromised unduly? The weight in relation to thrust of the P-80? The short span of the He 162? The t5win boom layout of the Vampire? I don't begin to know this, I'm just wondering out loud in the hope that I will be answered.


IMO all of these three planes were typical intermediate designs which always pop up when a new technology matures. None of the were "dominant designs" and they were never pitted against each other thus its hard to say which would've been better than the other.


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## delcyros (Jan 23, 2009)

The He-162 cannot be described as advanced. It never tried to push the envelope, the way the Messerschmidt jets did.
Altough it was to be modified one way or another. By wars end, a prototype with interchangable swept forward / swept back wing was found beeing half finished. This and the more powerful BMW-003D would likely make the basic airframe competetive through the late 40´s.
Can´t see a Goblin beeing fitted to it, altough the HeS011 no doubt was considered twice for the He-162.

High wingload is not necessarely a disadvantage at high speed maneuvering. It actually is disadvantageous in low speed actions.


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## Soren (Jan 23, 2009)

red admiral said:


> If the Vampire is underpowered, what does that make the Me 262? The F.1 has a significantly higher power to weight ratio. Thrust to weight ratio is very similar to the He 162. The climb rate is very similar as well. Speed of the F.1 is slightly down at 540mph over 562mph which is the biggest problem. Handling is more difficult to quantify but there were no problems identified with the Vampire. The only real problem was the cockpit framing restricting vision, which was rectified with a single piece type.



Sorry wrong again. Check your sources, the only Vampire available in *very late 45* weighed 5620 kg and featured the Goblin I engine providing 10.2 kN of thrust. Thats a T/W value of 550 kg/kN, while the Me-262A-1a of 1943 weighed 6400 kg a featured two Jumo 004B engine providing 17.6 kN of thrust, giving a T/W value of 363 kg/kN!

The Me-262 is again superior.



> None of the following fighters were anything like the Me 262 and the Meteor F4 beats the Me 262 hands down in performance whilst being available only months later.



You couldn't be anymore wrong. The Meteor F4 was first in operation a whole *3 years * after the Me-262A-1a first saw service! And the first prototype first flew a whole *3 years* after the Me262A-1a prototype! 

Fact of the matter is that the Meteor performed miserably compared to the Me-262 in every department. And had the war went on then by the time the Meteor F4 would be introduced the Germans would be flying HeS-011 engined Me-262s which greatly outperformed the Meteor F4. Heck even with the Jumo 004E which was ready in early 45 the Me-262 outperforms the Meteor F4.


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## HellToupee (Jan 24, 2009)

Soren said:


> Sorry wrong again. Check your sources, the only Vampire available in *very late 45* weighed 5620 kg and featured the Goblin I engine providing 10.2 kN of thrust. Thats a T/W value of 550 kg/kN, while the Me-262A-1a of 1943 weighed 6400 kg a featured two Jumo 004B engine providing 17.6 kN of thrust, giving a T/W value of 363 kg/kN!




Only goblin I prototypes had 10.2kn of thrust the production models had 12, after the first 40 vampires they got the goblin 2 at 16.7kn. 

Those weights are also way off, 6400kg is way below max take off for a me262, and 5620kg is way above max take off of a Mk.1 vampire, hell its more than a mk.3 vampire, mk.1 max take off was around 4,800kg.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

delcyros said:


> The He-162 cannot be described as advanced. It never tried to push the envelope, the way the Messerschmidt jets did.


Define "push the envelope". It certainly had advanced features like an ejection seat. The projected version pushed the envelope just as much as the projected developments of the Me 262.


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## Waynos (Jan 24, 2009)

the ejector seat and the projected versions do not make the He 162 advanced though, any more than the DH 108 being a supersonic research aircraft would make the Vampire advanced.


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## red admiral (Jan 24, 2009)

Nonsense as usual from Soren

The F.1's maximum take off weight was 4753kg, 2891kg empty. The FB.9's maximum take off weight was 5620kg. 6400kg for the Me 262 just seems to be some random figure you've pulled from nowhere. Apart from the handful of preproduction types with Goblin 1 engines, the rest had 3100lbf Goblin 2s. Even with the Goblin 1, the Vampire has a higher t/w ratio than the Me 262.

The Meteor F4 was not rushed into service postwar, which accounts for the delays. It first flew in late 45 and offered considerably higher speed than the Me 262 along with twice the rate of climb. 

Its available far earlier than your fantasy world where the HeS011 actually works - it didn't.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

Waynos said:


> the ejector seat and the projected versions do not make the He 162 advanced though, any more than the DH 108 being a supersonic research aircraft would make the Vampire advanced.


The ejector seat was a reality in the production version and an certainly an advanced feature at the time.

The D.H.108 and the projected versions of the He 162 weren't.


> Nonsense as usual from Soren.


You wrote your share of nonsense on this very page, so get off your high horse.


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## red admiral (Jan 24, 2009)

> You wrote your share of nonsense on this very page, so get off your high horse.



I am factually accurate.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

Yeah, right. And barely later = 12 months. And having a tailless fighter design years after others had it makes you advanced.


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## Waynos (Jan 24, 2009)

The seat was an advanced feature, but that does not make the He 162 an advanced design, just an aeroplane with an advanced escape mechanism.

I was asking what is it about the He 162 itself that was advanced. I think it was Soren on another thread that described it as an advanced jet fighter design, I'm just asking how?

I think it was an ingeneous design, squeezing so much out of such a small plane like than, an attractive design even, but I don't see the 'advanced' in it is all.

Also, (if you were referring to red admiral mentioning the DH 108 - apologies if you were not)

The DH 108 was not a fighter, nor was it ever intended to be. If having the first tailless fighter flying is a measure of being advanced though that would likely be Britain ahead of Germany with the Westland Pterodactyl prototype fighter of the early 30's.


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## delcyros (Jan 24, 2009)

> Define "push the envelope". It certainly had advanced features like an ejection seat. The projected version pushed the envelope just as much as the projected developments of the Me 262.


The ejection seat was already in service in other planes like the He-219 and Ar-234 by the time the He-162 still was on the drawing board, so it hardly qualifies for advanced in context of other LW A/C. It was state of the art but nothing fundamentally new by then.
The Me-262 pushed the envelope by several aspects the He-162 didn´t. The He-162 was considered a suboptimum jet by the germans, designed to trade performance for rapid deployment in numbers. It could have been advanced had they used swept wings fromt he beginning, which WAS FULLY UNDERSTOOD to increase performance at high mach fractions. But it was not intended in order to accelerate production and to avoid developmental risks (in turn accelerating production, again). They could have done better at this time, look at the Messerschmidt P 1101, which was a contemporary to the He-162 in both plnes late design stage.
The prototype of the MK IV Meteor flew in july 1945, two months after VE-day. Red Admirals numbers do correlate well with what I have seen wrt weights.
I would also consider it not impossible to install a RR Nene into the Vampire´s fuselage if need is. You can´t install a Nene into a Meteor´s wing easily but You could try to use the Vampire´s wider fuselage for this application. That would give plenty of excess power.


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## red admiral (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> Yeah, right. And barely later = 12 months. And having a tailless fighter design years after others had it makes you advanced.



It wasn't 12 months though. The d.H. 108 was built in winter 45 and delivered for testing in April 46. It had significantly greater wing sweep than the Me 163 and was able to go supersonic. The aircraft gave lots of good trials data on the transsonic region and on the effects of swept wings. If its not advanced then I'm not sure what is, the Miles Gillette Falcon?


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## red admiral (Jan 24, 2009)

> I would also consider it not impossible to install a RR Nene into the Vampire´s fuselage if need is. You can´t install a Nene into a Meteor´s wing easily but You could try to use the Vampire´s wider fuselage for this application.



TG276 and TG280 Vampires were fitted with RR Nenes, with TG276 having distinctive dorsal intakes to provide more air for the double sided impeller. I haven't seen any performance figures, but they should be fairly good with 50% more power. It was easier to fit the Ghost instead for greater power as it was only slightly larger and the single intake required less modification.

Nenes were installed in at least one Meteor which was used for thrust vectoring trials. The nacelles were rather larger, even bigger than the Sapphire and Avon Meteor's nacelles.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

Waynos said:


> The seat was an advanced feature, but that does not make the He 162 an advanced design, just an aeroplane with an advanced escape mechanism.
> 
> I was asking what is it about the He 162 itself that was advanced. I think it was Soren on another thread that described it as an advanced jet fighter design, I'm just asking how?
> 
> I think it was an ingeneous design, squeezing so much out of such a small plane like than, an attractive design even, but I don't see the 'advanced' in it is all.


I don't disagree, I was just referring to delcyros position that Messerschmitt was pushing the envelope where Heinkel wasn't. The He 162 had other features that were novel for fighter aircraft such as the back mounted engines. They were not particularly long lived however and were appropriate only for a rather short period of time. That's why I said i don't see the basic design layout becoming dominant over the next years. However the same can be said about the Me 262 to some degree: While it set the trend considering several features such as wing design, the overall design layout was short lived. This goes for the Meteor and the Vampire aswell.



> Also, (if you were referring to red admiral mentioning the DH 108 - apologies if you were not)
> 
> The DH 108 was not a fighter, nor was it ever intended to be. If having the first tailless fighter flying is a measure of being advanced though that would likely be Britain ahead of Germany with the Westland Pterodactyl prototype fighter of the early 30's.


I was referring to redadmiral. I don't care who built the first tailless design, I was just stating that a) the D.H.108 was more than a year away and not "barely later" and b) its airframe wasn't particularly innovative.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

red admiral said:


> It wasn't 12 months though. The d.H. 108 was built in winter 45 and delivered for testing in April 46. It had significantly greater wing sweep than the Me 163 and was able to go supersonic.


Bullshit. The first prototype was designed to evaluate low speed flying characteristics and wasn't capable of speeds in excess of 450 km/h. The second flew in June and also wasn't able to go supersonic. Only the third prototype went supersonic and it didn't do so before 1948. Not to even mention that all aircraft crashed killing their pilots. And having more wing sweep than a 1941 design sure is a great feat in 1946. But I'm glad you woke up from your dream that the D.H.108 was anywhere near available in WW2.


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## Waynos (Jan 24, 2009)

I think this is an opportune time to pose another question that has niggled me while reading threads of this kind.

I think it is easy to leap to the conclusion that the Germans were further ahead than they actually were in 1945 by investigationg the various aircraft programmes superficially. The P1101, Ta 183 and other genuinely impressive projects that had moved beyond the paper stage making this an easy assumption to make.

The DH 106 design of 1944 was for a tailless swept wing mail and passenger transport, at least as advanced as anything else being seriously engineered at the time. This being a long term plan for a peace time project after the war was concluded meant there was none of the urgency that was being felt in Germany at the same time though. The fact that the Germans were so hard pressed that they put a highly dangerous and underdeveloped rocket powered fighter that shared the same layout actually into service does not, in itself, prove a more advanced thinking.

The Germans were undoubtedly in front in terms of utilising swept wings for higher speed flight by delaying the onset of drag, despite the fact that none of the designs that were created to make use of this knowledge reached service.

There is more than one way to skin a cat though and the British developments of an ultra thin straight wing and all flying tail for flight and controllability at very high speeds up to and beyond the speed of sound were at least as advanced too, though I fear it is not fashionable to say so. Both the 'German' and 'British' methods were used successfully over many different aircraft types ever since.

This post is not meant to denigrate the ingenuity of the German designers, it was certainly there, but how many of their projects had proceeded further purely because of desperation, which is a powerful motivator, while the allies were less inclined to press on at any costs with this research while victory was in sight with existing forces?

I know that once the captured German material on aerdynamics was made available to the British industry there was a crisis of confidence in our own findings with lots of projects then being launched based directly on German examples (the Gloster P.275 from the Lippisch P.13a for instance) but very few of these materialised either, suggesting that once properly researched they proved not to be all they had been cracked up to be.

Is there truth in this, or do you all think it is cobblers?


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## red admiral (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> But I'm glad you woke up from your dream that the D.H.108 was anywhere near available in WW2.



Its available far sooner than the various Nazi napinwaffe that so many here are enamoured with.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

Waynos said:


> I think this is an opportune time to pose another question that has niggled me while reading threads of this kind.
> 
> I think it is easy to leap to the conclusion that the Germans were further ahead than they actually were in 1945 by investigationg the various aircraft programmes superficially. The P1101, Ta 183 and other genuinely impressive projects that had moved beyond the paper stage making this an easy assumption to make.
> 
> The DH 106 design of 1944 was for a tailless swept wing mail and passenger transport, at least as advanced as anything else being seriously engineered at the time. This being a long term plan for a peace time project after the war was concluded meant there was none of the urgency that was being felt in Germany at the same time though. The fact that the Germans were so hard pressed that they put a highly dangerous and underdeveloped rocket powered fighter that shared the same layout actually into service does not, in itself, prove a more advanced thinking.


The Me 163 was not at all underdeveloped. The airframe was perfected over a course of several years, there was nothing rushed about its introduction. The propulsion system proved to be a failure, that's the plain truth. But that was only really found out when the type was used in combat.



> The Germans were undoubtedly in front in terms of utilising swept wings for higher speed flight by delaying the onset of drag, despite the fact that none of the designs that were created to make use of this knowledge reached service.
> 
> There is more than one way to skin a cat though and the British developments of an ultra thin straight wing and all flying tail for flight and controllability at very high speeds up to and beyond the speed of sound were at least as advanced too,


What ultrathin straight wing are you referring too? How many of the fighter jets after World War 2 used straight wings as compared to those that used swept wings?


> I know that once the captured German material on aerdynamics was made available to the British industry there was a crisis of confidence in our own findings with lots of projects then being launched based directly on German examples (the Gloster P.275 from the Lippisch P.13a for instance) but very few of these materialised either, suggesting that once properly researched they proved not to be all they had been cracked up to be.
> 
> Is there truth in this, or do you all think it is cobblers?


That sounds a lot like typical nationalist excuses. British airframe design somewhat lacked behind their much better engine design progress, simple as that.


red admiral said:


> Its available far sooner than the various Nazi napinwaffe that so many here are enamoured with.


You've just run completely out of arguments to support your obviously wrong statements made here. In this thread, the only one claiming designs to be available that weren't is you.


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## davparlr (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> IMO all of these three planes were typical intermediate designs which always pop up when a new technology matures. None of the were "dominant designs" and they were never pitted against each other thus its hard to say which would've been better than the other.


Exactly right. There is no reason to believe that these aircraft would not have been competitive with one another any more than piston fighters were competitive. There was just not that much differences in performance. Like the Battle of Britain, and the battles in the south Pacific, circumstance and pilot training and tactics would rule. The Germans had a six to nine month difference in engine technology and operation, but that would close quickly due to more available allied developmental resources.



> I don't disagree, I was just referring to delcyros position that Messerschmitt was pushing the envelope where Heinkel wasn't. The He 162 had other features that were novel for fighter aircraft such as the back mounted engines. They were not particularly long lived however and were appropriate only for a rather short period of time. That's why I said i don't see the basic design layout becoming dominant over the next years. However the same can be said about the Me 262 to some degree: While it set the trend considering several features such as wing design, the overall design layout was short lived. This goes for the Meteor and the Vampire aswell.



This is why I believe that the P-80 was the most conceptually advanced design of the four aircraft mentioned here. After the P-80, and as time went by, almost all fighter aircraft adapted its basic concepts of engine buried in the fuselage, exhaust exiting at (below) or behind the tail surfaces, and air inlets mounted on each side of the fuselage, ahead of the wings. The Vampire, He-162, and the Me-262, were all dead end designs. I don’t know of any other aircraft that used the Vampire design except follow-on versions. The only possible follow-on to the He-162 design was the F-107, but only the intake was above the aircraft, the engine was still in the fuselage. As for the Me-262 design (and Meteor) it soldiered on a few more years, mainly in the Soviet Air Force, but petered out due to poor concept.



Waynos said:


> I know that once the captured German material on aerdynamics was made available to the British industry there was a crisis of confidence in our own findings with lots of projects then being launched based directly on German examples (the Gloster P.275 from the Lippisch P.13a for instance) but very few of these materialised either, suggesting that once properly researched they proved not to be all they had been cracked up to be.



The Germans were definitely ahead of the allies in swept wing design although the concept was understood by the allies (US), and, I believe they were very advanced in supersonic aerodynamics. As for aircraft projects, the P1101 could have been the first swept wing fighter, with wings fixed, to be combat ready. Base on Tanks efforts in Argentina, the Ta-183 was several years off (Mig was able to fly in ‘47). The Go-229 was quite a ways off. Lippisch was certainly brilliant and advanced aerodynamics considerably, but most the fighter design based on his concepts had mediocre success like the F-102 and F-106. Dassault seems to have had the most success. Otherwise they are rare.

However, I don’t think we should downplay the role German research added to post-war fighter development. I changed a lot opinions.


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## drgondog (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> The Me 163 was not at all underdeveloped. The airframe was perfected over a course of several years, there was nothing rushed about its introduction. The propulsion system proved to be a failure, that's the plain truth. But that was only really found out when the type was used in combat.
> 
> *KK - the Me 163 designers knew the Hydrazine was both lethal to handle and sensitive to shock. They experienced the same explosion disasters in development as production and did not solve the 'flying this a/c can be hazardous to your health" issues. The Me 163 is a flight system. If you want to point to the airframe and pose that it is an exceptional (and successful) armed glider - your argument is flawless. When you fold the engine and fuel into the equation and claim it was not rushed into production it leaves room for questions? The YP-80 by comparison could be viewed as 'relatively' safe,*
> 
> ...



A little overstated?


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## FLYBOYJ (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> How many of the fighter jets after World War 2 used straight wings as compared to those that used swept wings?


Besides the F-104...

F-94, AVRO Canuck, Dassault Ouragan, F9F, Supermarine Attacker, and YaK-23 comes to mind.

The F-94 and the Canuck were able to go supersonic without their tip tanks/ pods.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

drgndog, your style of quoting makes it impossible to answer to your points individually. My argumentation regarding the Komet was that the airframe was well matured, i stated in the very same post that the rocket engine was a failure. It was not rushed into production, as the defects were inherent with the propulsion design and could've never been solved completely. It was a deliberately taken risk. Was it a good choice? Certainly not. The point is the aircraft was not rushed into service as for example the Ta 152 or the He 162 were. Mature designs aren't necessarily safe and I have never seen anyone argument that the Me 163's defects were due to it being rushed into service.


> Besides the F-104...
> 
> F-94, AVRO Canuck, Dassault Ouragan, F9F, Supermarine Attacker, and YaK-23 comes to mind.
> 
> The F-94 and the Canuck were able to go supersonic without their tip tanks/ pods.


I am well aware that there are fighter aircraft, even supersonic, that utilize other techniques to overcome the issues transonic speeds. Compared to the number that use a swept-wing they are however few in numbers, especially the further you go down the road after the first jet-to-jet combat experiences. And I am pretty sure the Ouragan had at least a slightly swept leading edge. The Starfighter is the one big exception that comes to mind, but it barely had wings at all.


> What I saw from Waynos postulate was that there were two ways to skin the transonic drag rise 'cat' in WWII. The swept wing was the more elegant approach to delaying transonic wave drag but the thin wing was very successful (as in Spitfire) and deployed well in advance of German designs? Why is his argument 'nationalistic'?


How thick was the Me 262 wing? I am just tired of people who don't give credit where credit is due, or try to relativize that credit with "our engineers' designs were at least as great". Airframe-wise there was little competition for the Messerschmitt designs in 1945.



Davparl said:


> This is why I believe that the P-80 was the most conceptually advanced design of the four aircraft mentioned here. After the P-80, and as time went by, almost all fighter aircraft adapted its basic concepts of engine buried in the fuselage, exhaust exiting at (below) or behind the tail surfaces, and air inlets mounted on each side of the fuselage, ahead of the wings. The Vampire, He-162, and the Me-262, were all dead end designs. I don’t know of any other aircraft that used the Vampire design except follow-on versions.


As far as propulsion layout goes, I agree, the P-80 was prety advanced. However the airframe itself was fairly conventional. It has to be said though that major fighters for the coming years had the intake right in the middle, which I assume was the best way to provide the short engines with sufficient air. There were plans for the 262 that would've moved the engines to the fuselage, very similar to the Canuck. In this configuration I think it could've been very competitive until the early 50s.


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## red admiral (Jan 24, 2009)

Swept wings are only one way to reduce drag. Lower aspect ratio and simply having thinner wings is another option, as is detailed consideration of drag. Gloster took their experience with the Meteor and designed a single engine (first Goblin then Nene) aircraft with far less drag and nice thin wings to give a high mach number as the Gloster E.1/44 Ace stemming from 1942. It flew, and at 633mph was pretty fast - but thing had moved on from then to even faster types. No all moving tailplane but most of the high transonic research was being done by Miles.



> You've just run completely out of arguments to support your obviously wrong statements made here.



I haven't made any wrong statements. You just keep putting words in my mouth.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

So you didn't say that the D.H. 108 delivered in April '46 went supersonic? Don't even try to deny that this wasn't what you were implying with your post.


> The d.H. 108 was built in winter 45 and delivered for testing in April 46. It had significantly greater wing sweep than the Me 163 and was able to go supersonic.


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## drgondog (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> drgndog, your style of quoting makes it impossible to answer to your points individually. My argumentation regarding the Komet was that the airframe was well matured, i stated in the very same post that the rocket engine was a failure. It was not rushed into production, as the defects were inherent with the propulsion design and could've never been solved completely. It was a deliberately taken risk. Was it a good choice? Certainly not. The point is the aircraft was not rushed into service as for example the Ta 152 or the He 162 were. Mature designs aren't necessarily safe and I have never seen anyone argument that the Me 163's defects were due to it being rushed into service.
> 
> *>The Me 163 was not at all underdeveloped. The airframe was perfected over a course of several years, there was nothing rushed about its introduction. The propulsion system proved to be a failure, that's the plain truth. But that was only really found out when the type was used in combat.<
> *
> ...



I can understand your sensitivity but don't understand the objectivity.

The Me 262 was a great design, the Jumo was a poor performer that did not maximize the 262 potential. Having said that the deficiencies in the Jumo seem to be more the quality of the materials than comparative design.

The Me 163 was a good airframe design and would have been a very good airplane with a Bede 5 engine (probably) or some derivative. It was not a good Airplane (airframe/engine combination) because the engine/fuel approach killed good pilots - but that doesn't detract from the very good German engineering of the airframe.


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## HellToupee (Jan 24, 2009)

davparlr said:


> This is why I believe that the P-80 was the most conceptually advanced design of the four aircraft mentioned here. After the P-80, and as time went by, almost all fighter aircraft adapted its basic concepts of engine buried in the fuselage, exhaust exiting at (below) or behind the tail surfaces, and air inlets mounted on each side of the fuselage, ahead of the wings. The Vampire, He-162, and the Me-262, were all dead end designs. I don’t know of any other aircraft that used the Vampire design except follow-on versions. The only possible follow-on to the He-162 design was the F-107, but only the intake was above the aircraft, the engine was still in the fuselage. As for the Me-262 design (and Meteor) it soldiered on a few more years, mainly in the Soviet Air Force, but petered out due to poor concept.



I don't beleive layout makes a design advanced else one would consider the Gloster E.28 advanced. It does not matter what future designs used but how the design performed with its configuration, vampires layout was pretty much the same as the p80 as well except for the tail to keep the engine pipe short, and it continued on to two follow on types the venom and vixon.


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## drgondog (Jan 24, 2009)

red admiral said:


> Swept wings are only one way to reduce drag. Lower aspect ratio and simply having thinner wings is another option, as is detailed consideration of drag. .



RA- While technically true, to the extent that reducing AR reduces parasite drag (for exact same airfoil), that approach makes the designer's life miserable relative to range, turn performance, low speed and landing characteristics. That is the reason not many people followed the example of the F-104. For most of the subsonic range, the increase in induced drag will tend to outweigh the transonic capability of a reduced AR. 

For the same CL 1/2 the aspect ratio translates to 2x the CDi - so you have to buy back a LOT of parasite drag through the reduction in AR.


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## delcyros (Jan 24, 2009)

There is nothing advanced in having a jet engine mounted on the back of the fuselage. It was done to avoid developmental risks, to ease production and keep maintenance low. It also helped by deleting the intake / exhoust losses which somehow plagued the P-80 and to a lesser degree the Vampire.
The Su-9 (soviet Me-262 inspired plane) was the best soviet first generaltion jet in my mind. It was not abandoned because of poor performance but because of the german inpired design, which wasn´t politically opportune.
The only airforce to field Me-262 in some numbers post war was the czech airforce. They captured assembly lines at Prague and continued to build fourteen Me-262A and three Me-262B under the designation Avia S-92/CS-92. 
It is possile that the israeli air force had some Avia S92, too. They bought several Avia S199 but they also appearently got three Avia S92 and spare jet engines. These were assembled and housed in a hanger at the far end of Ekron AFB and kept in secret. To fly these planes, Israel recruited former RAF test pilot Flight Capt. Henry Biggles. 
Unfortunately, on the first test flight, one of the other pilots landed too fast and ran off the end of the runway. The plane was cannibalized to keep the other two flying. Due to shortages in fuel and ammo, the planes were seldom used and only achieved one kill against an Egyptian C-47.
It is possible that IAF wanted the -262 to counter egyptian Meteors appearing over the skies at about the same time.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

drgondog said:


> The Me 163 was a good airframe design and would have been a very good airplane with a Bede 5 engine (probably) or some derivative. It was not a good Airplane (airframe/engine combination) because the engine/fuel approach killed good pilots - but that doesn't detract from the very good German engineering of the airframe.


We will not agree on the Me 163 so I'll just leave it at that. The point was that the D.H.108 was no longer very advanced as an airframe in 1946 as the Me 163 (and arguably the Go 229) had all of its distinctive features years before. One might even argue if it had existed in its form at all if it wasn't for the Me 163.


> Virtually all the of the jets were employing straight wings until after the F-86 and MiG 15 were operational.. so even for several years after WWII was over the approach was 'thin wing'.


And how many of them saw substantial combat before the Korean war? And what design proved to be dominating in that war? The answer: Swept wing, inline engine, air intake in the middle.


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## drgondog (Jan 24, 2009)

HellToupee said:


> I don't beleive layout makes a design advanced else one would consider the Gloster E.28 advanced. It does not matter what future designs used but how the design performed with its configuration, vampires layout was pretty much the same as the p80 as well except for the tail to keep the engine pipe short, and it continued on to two follow on types the venom and vixon.



If by layout you are contrasting a wing nacelle/imbedded design versus a fuselage embedded design - the fuselage imbedded design for the SAME airframe will always have less parastite drag and Should always have a better performing wing.

If however we are talking about WWII aircraft, the performance of the engine available versus the thrust required for the mission obviously posed 'trade off' issues between elegant/clean and brute force but dirtier.

So, if 'advanced' means cleaner with less drag, then the fuselage imbedded engine(s) offer more options for configuration management and is more 'advanced' from a performance and handling standpoint (maybe NOT maintenance or redundancy position).


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## drgondog (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> We will not agree on the Me 163 so I'll just leave it at that.
> 
> *OK*
> 
> And how many of them saw substantial combat before the Korean war? And what design proved to be dominating in that war? The answer: Swept wing, inline engine, air intake in the middle.



How many wars/combats were fought? and for air combats before the MiG crossed the Yalu, how many aircraft engaging had swept wings?

So could we safely say that air battles, with the exception of the Me 163 as a limited value point defense rocket with limited value, were fought with medium to thin wing fighters - non swept -, from 1914- late 1950?


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 24, 2009)

> So could we safely say that air battles, with the exception of the Me 163 as a limited value point defense rocket with limited value, were fought with medium to thin wing fighters - non swept -, from 1914- late 1950?


Which just shows that swept wings were very advanced for any mid-40s fighter. And the Me 262 had leading edge sweep if only very little and rather coincidentally.


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## Graeme (Jan 24, 2009)

davparlr said:


> The Vampire, He-162, and the Me-262, were all dead end designs. I don’t know of any other aircraft that used the Vampire design except follow-on versions.



Nevertheless the Vampire was a very successful post-war aircraft.



red admiral said:


> TG276 and TG280 Vampires were fitted with RR Nenes, with TG276 having distinctive dorsal intakes to provide more air for the double sided impeller.



G'day Red.The Nene engine wanted more air than the 'normal' Vampire intakes could supply?

Australia and France took up the Nene option but only Australia persisted with the "elephant-ear" intakes (dorsal and eventually ventral) but we did try an alternative intake design (similar to the French Mistral)..









However Vampire production was already well advanced and it was considered to costly to retrofit the design. Performance would have been slightly improved...






From Stewart Wilsons' book - "Vampire, Macchi and Iroquois" - 1994


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## drgondog (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> Which just shows that swept wings were very advanced for any mid-40s fighter. And the Me 262 had leading edge sweep if only very little and rather coincidentally.



So did the P-80, T-33, F-94 - each with basically same trapezoidal planform wing with ~ 10 degrees. The F-84 and 89 had a 'trap' wing but less forward and greater trailing edge sweep.

I would not classify the operational wing of the Me 262 as 'advanced' and maybe not as good as any of the above wings. The sweep represented on the drawing boards Were advanced.

The Me 262 wing was fat by comparison and had huge drag islands represented by the nacelles, heavier structure and, therefore, additional weight to support them.

The Me 163 WAS advanced for two reasons - one to give the pitch stability and two to delay the transonic drag due to its relatively fat wings (compared to Spit and Me 262)


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## Waynos (Jan 24, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> The Me 163 was not at all underdeveloped. The airframe was perfected over a course of several years, there was nothing rushed about its introduction. The propulsion system proved to be a failure, that's the plain truth. But that was only really found out when the type was used in combat.



It was landing and refuelling that was the real hazard, nothing to do with combat. Under normal circumstances the Me 163 would have got nowhere near a service pilot.



> What ultrathin straight wing are you referring too? How many of the fighter jets after World War 2 used straight wings as compared to those that used swept wings?



The wing I am speaking of is the one developed by Miles for the M.52 which was flown and validated on the Gillette Falcon and small scale models, examples of fighters with straight ultra thin wings would include the F-104, F-5, and even today the F-18 and several others. Mikoyan also designed an alternative layout for the MiG 21 with a wing and tail that seemed copied straight off the F-104, but they never flew it. The early straight wing jets like the P-80 to 84, Attacker, Sea Hawk etc used 'slightly thinner than normal' conventional wings are not really the same thing, the F-89 however did use a decidedly thinner section than the rest and I think this was fairly close to the Miles wing in terms of thickness.

The basic point being there was nothing wrong with Miles reasoning and approach.



> That sounds a lot like typical nationalist excuses. British airframe design somewhat lacked behind their much better engine design progress, simple as that.



And that is a sweeping generalisation, it was true of quite a few, but by no means all British airframers. As for nationalist excuse, for what?

Davparlr;



> However, I don’t think we should downplay the role German research added to post-war fighter development. I changed a lot opinions.



Oh yes. As I said, in the sphere of swept wing aerodynamics (and Delta's)they had clearly taken it much further than anyone else and all the post war builders benefitted massively from their work. This is indisputable. The only downside was that the German research was so compelling that everything that didn't employ swept wings for high speeds (at least in the UK, not sure about the USA as the X-3 was developed) was canned immediately and this was one of the main reasons given for the M.52 being abandoned while the RAE took to designing swept wing research aircraft with German engineers instead. 

Krazy Kraut



> How thick was the Me 262 wing? I am just tired of people who don't give credit where credit is due, or try to relativize that credit with "our engineers' designs were at least as great". Airframe-wise there was little competition for the Messerschmitt designs in 1945



pretty thin, and I have been giving credit, in my prev post and this one. I have even mentioned specific Messerschmitt designs as examples of advanced design, are you just ignoring those parts of my posts?

Nevertheless, Miles, during 1944/45 designed and developed an ultra thin supersonic wing profile that worked well at both high and low speeds, with its docile low speed characteristices being demonstrated on the aforementioned Gillette Falcon. If this is not an example of advanced aerodynamics what is?

What is wrong with giving a little credit to non German designers, is it a concept you cannot accept?



> There were plans for the 262 that would've moved the engines to the fuselage, very similar to the Canuck. In this configuration I think it could've been very competitive until the early 50s.



Agreed, this model (was it the HG.III?) was very close indeed to the layout for future twinjets like the Buccaneer and A-6 intruder amongst others. All it really needed was to move the cockpit to the nose from midships and I think it would have looked at home in any 1950-1955 air force inventory.



> We will not agree on the Me 163 so I'll just leave it at that. The point was that the D.H.108 was no longer very advanced as an airframe in 1946 as the Me 163 (and arguably the Go 229) had all of its distinctive features years before. One might even argue if it had existed in its form at all if it wasn't for the Me 163.



I think it would, due to the fact that it was built as a small scale test vehicle for an airliner that was intended to be produced after the war. I don't think DH would have set out in 1944 to build the DH 106 as a tailless swept wing jetliner based on reports of a secret German fighter.


Delycross;


> The Su-9 (soviet Me-262 inspired plane)



It is stunning how much the Su-9 looks like the Me 262 in the famous side view photo of it, however have you looked at the design as a whole? If you take off the engines it looks nothing like the German fighter, this point is emphasised when you see the Su-11, this aircraft has been re-engined (and generally beefed up but not had its outline altered much) and with its 'Meteor' style nacelles looks nothing at all like the Me 262. The Su-9 likeness stems entirely from the engines, a poor reason for the Sov AF to end up flying the execrable MiG 9, I think you'll agree. Good old Uncle Joe


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 25, 2009)

drgondog said:


> So did the P-80, T-33, F-94 - each with basically same trapezoidal planform wing with ~ 10 degrees. The F-84 and 89 had a 'trap' wing but less forward and greater trailing edge sweep.
> 
> I would not classify the operational wing of the Me 262 as 'advanced' and maybe not as good as any of the above wings. The sweep represented on the drawing boards Were advanced.


The Me 262's production wing was pretty advanced for a 1943 design imo. I hope I am not going out on a limb but I seem to remember it was thinner than the P-80 wing. Wasn't the thickness ratio of the P-80's wing something like 9-13% as compared to the Me's 8-11%? And the leading edge sweep was 18 degrees not much but still somewhat more than that of the P-80.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 25, 2009)

Waynos said:


> It was landing and refuelling that was the real hazard, nothing to do with combat.


During development, Me 163s could circle forever over airfields, in combat they often had to make a rushed landing due to the danger posed by Allied fighters that followed them. They also ran out of fuel and had to land on fields. Though this was planned from the start, it proved to be a lot more difficult and dangerous in reality. Hence there was a steep increase in accidents once the plane became operational.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 25, 2009)

Waynos said:


> I think it would, due to the fact that it was built as a small scale test vehicle for an airliner that was intended to be produced after the war. I don't think DH would have set out in 1944 to build the DH 106 as a tailless swept wing jetliner based on reports of a secret German fighter.


The specification was there but the plane wasn't designed or built until way after the Komet was evaluated. So I think it's a possibility that the designers had a look or two at that plane.


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## Waynos (Jan 25, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> During development, Me 163s could circle forever over airfields, in combat they often had to make a rushed landing due to the danger posed by Allied fighters that followed them. They also ran out of fuel and had to land on fields. Though this was planned from the start, it proved to be a lot more difficult and dangerous in reality. Hence there was a steep increase in accidents once the plane became operational.



Exactly, the system was not fully developed and this is why, without the dire pressing need for a high performance point defence interceptor immediately, the 163 would never have seen service. It was rushed into service when it was known to be lethal to its own crews, the rise in accidents was not a surprise, it was a calculated gamble, and fully developed aircraft are not deployed as a gamble. The 163 was not a rush project like the Bachem Natter for example, Lippisch had been designing it for several years but its deployment was rushed. As he had been waiting for a rocket motor to be delivered from Walther since May 1942 there was even a piston engined version, the Me 334 schemed by Lippisch which was only shelved after the rocket powereed version had finally flown.

Yes the problems of the 163 were entirely the fault of its motor and fuel system, but it was a complete package, you could not have one without the other as all the schemes for a jet powered version of the 163 were still on the drawing board so yes, I do consider that it was rushed into service.



KrazyKraut said:


> The specification was there but the plane wasn't designed or built until way after the Komet was evaluated. So I think it's a possibility that the designers had a look or two at that plane.



The DH 106 was designed in 1944 and the swept tailless layout (which they obviously chose not to go with ultimately) was one of three being considered, long before the RAE had the chance to fly the 163. Indeed the De Havilland project's existence heightened the RAE's interest in evaluating the Me 163 when one was captured as a chance to fly the layout early (for us). I am sure that once one was available they looked at the 163 very closely indeed, as you say.

There were several previous projects that shared the 163's layout. One was a large Vickers bomber from 1942, another was a Shorts airliner powered by 5 Griffons, also to the Brabazon comittees requirements, but remember also that Prof GTR Hill built and flew his Pterodactyl aircraft with Westland many years earlier and there is the extensive work in the USA of Jack Northrop, none of which takes anything away from the genius of Alexander Lippisch, but it does not necessarily follow that anything resembling a Lippisch design was copied from it, except the X-4 Bantam of course, which SO obviously was. 

As a footnote, you may already know this, Professor Hill and Lippisch were well known to each other and at a Lecture on the design and construction of gliders at the Three Choughs Hotel in Yeovil, where Westland are based, on 2nd Feb 1931, Lippisch praised Hills work in England on tailless aircraft, Lippisch was already well known for his own work on tailless aircraft even at this early date.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 25, 2009)

Waynos said:


> The DH 106 was designed in 1944 and the swept tailless layout (which they obviously chose not to go with ultimately) was one of three being considered, long before the RAE had the chance to fly the 163. Indeed the De Havilland project's existence heightened the RAE's interest in evaluating the Me 163 when one was captured as a chance to fly the layout early (for us). I am sure that once one was available they looked at the 163 very closely indeed, as you say.


I was referring to th DH108. I probably should've made that more clear.


> The 163 was not a rush project like the Bachem Natter for example, Lippisch had been designing it for several years but its deployment was rushed. As he had been waiting for a rocket motor to be delivered from Walther since May 1942 there was even a piston engined version, the Me 334 schemed by Lippisch which was only shelved after the rocket powereed version had finally flown.
> 
> Yes the problems of the 163 were entirely the fault of its motor and fuel system, but it was a complete package, you could not have one without the other as all the schemes for a jet powered version of the 163 were still on the drawing board so yes, I do consider that it was rushed into service.


It seems we were in a misunderstanding then. As the basis for this argument was airframe design I falsely concluded from your first post that you meant the Me 163 airframe to be underdeveloped. As far as propulsion goes, I agree. However, I doubt that the Walter engine could've ever made into something really safe. For the Me 163 that meant either deploy or scrap the project altogether. Incorporating a jet engine basically meant designing a new plane.


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## Graeme (Jan 25, 2009)

KrazyKraut said:


> I was referring to th DH108. I probably should've made that more clear.



The design finalisation for the DH-108 was "locked " in September 1945 and the first aircraft (TG283) rolled out in April 1946. When was the first Me-163 available for the De Havilland design team to have a "look or two?" When they went back to the Hatfield assembly plant what did they do? The wing and fin sweeps were different, slats incorporated, jet engine, Vampire frame, wheeled undercarriage...what did they change?


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 25, 2009)

There were three Me 163's shipped to GB afaik. When, I don't know. An aircraft can be inspired by another without copying directly. I only speculated that the D.H.108's design might've been influenced by the Komet, I never said it must necessarily be so and I have no evidence to support this. It may very well be that both teams found the same answers to the same problems.


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## Waynos (Jan 25, 2009)

No problem KKr, I can see what you mean.

Also (and again this is pure speculation as I haven't looked into it yet) if DH HAD copied the 163, might they not have suffered the catastrophic flutter problem of the 108, or was this heading Messerschmitt's way too with the more highly swept designs like the P.1111, which if anything, is much more like the DH 108 than the Me 163 is?


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## Soren (Jan 25, 2009)

red admiral said:


> Nonsense as usual from Soren
> 
> The F.1's maximum take off weight was 4753kg, 2891kg empty. The FB.9's maximum take off weight was 5620kg. 6400kg for the Me 262 just seems to be some random figure you've pulled from nowhere. Apart from the handful of preproduction types with Goblin 1 engines, the rest had 3100lbf Goblin 2s. Even with the Goblin 1, the Vampire has a higher t/w ratio than the Me 262.
> 
> ...



The only one posting nonsense so far is you red admiral, and that has infact become the defining feature of your character on this forum.

The FB.1 (Which wasnt ready before 1946, 3 years after the first service ready Me262!) featured the Goblin I engine which produced 10.2 kN of thrust, and for its high combat weight of 5,620 kg that just wasn't enough and it featured a horrible T/W ratio compared to the Me-262. 

And I haven't pulled any random figures, they're factual and you've just gotta learn to deal with them cause they don't run away. This is the real world red admiral, not your little fairytale land where you can make stuff up.

Furthermore the Me262 wasn't rushed into production, it was severely delayed, and had you put more attention into history you would've known that, but unsurprisingly you didn't. The Meteor F4 project was however not delayed as you claim, it merely took that long to get the prototype into a properly functioning a/c worthy of service.

Oh and as to performance, the Meteor needed engines twice as powerful to even match the Me-262, once more proving the Me-262's far superior design. Same goes for the Vampire which needed a 22.8 kN engine to reach 900 km/h, the Me-262 went past that in 44 with 17.6 kN's of thrust.

And finally the HeS-011 did work, very well infact, and your claim that it didn't is just a load of rubbish as all the rest you've posted. However the HeS-011 engine was so advanced that it would take time to get it into full scale production, which along with the delays imposed earlier on by Hitler made sure it didn't make it into full scale production during WW2.


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## HellToupee (Jan 25, 2009)

Soren said:


> The FB.1 (Which wasnt ready before 1946, 3 years after the first service ready Me262!) featured the Goblin I engine which produced 10.2 kN of thrust, and for its high combat weight of 5,620 kg that just wasn't enough and it featured a horrible T/W ratio compared to the Me-262.




FB.1? there was no FB.1, there was a F.1 and it fully loaded was only 4800kg, 5620kg is loaded weight for a FB.6. As was the me262 weight is excessively low by all sources i've ever seen it was pushing 7000kg loaded.


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## Soren (Jan 25, 2009)

From the Allied Me262 POH:
_"The normal take off gross weight is 14,272 lbs"_

14,272 lbs = 6,473 kg.

The Me-262 weighed ~7,000 kg if the extra internal 600 L tank was filled for extra endurance, but it hardly ever was as it was required it was emptied before any maneuvering was attempted because of the CG being too far to the rear when it was filled. The normal combat weight was 6,400 kg.


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## Glider (Jan 26, 2009)

If it helps I have the following for the ME 262 
Empty 3,800 KG
Empty Equipped 4,420KG
Normal Loaded 
(Main Tanks Fuel) 6,396kg
(Max internal Fuel) 7,130kg

For the Vampire I have the following dates
First Flight - 20 September 1943
First Production -20 April 1945

Had the RAF been in similar situation to the Luftwaffe I have little doubt that the production would have been brought forward.


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## Glider (Jan 26, 2009)

Re the DH108, as far as I am aware there was no connection with the ME163. Indeed E Brown considered the Dh108 to be a real handfull but the Me163 handled very well and as he flew both would go with that.


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## delcyros (Jan 26, 2009)

Soren, all of the HeS011 AV-prototype jet engines tested by either the UK or US post war delivered the thrust rating they have been designed for. They fell significantly short of the 1300 Kp legend rating.


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## KrazyKraut (Jan 26, 2009)

Not untypical for prototypes.


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## johnbr (Jan 26, 2009)

Dr Hans Von Ohain said they had to sacrifice 1300Ib's of trust to make the HeSo11 run cooler.Because of the inferior metals the RLM was making them use.He also said 70% of the R+d was not developing the engine it was figuring out how to elem ate all nickel and high heat metal from the engine.They had it down to 4-1/2lb's of high grade metal but the RLM said not good enough.They whated 2 -1/2lb's.


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## Waynos (Jan 26, 2009)

Soren, some notes to accompany your last post.

Only the first 41 Vampire F.1's (there was no FB.1) were fitted with the Goblin 1 @2,700lb thrust, these aircrat were all used for trials and the RAE figures were achieved on one of them, TG274/G.The Goblin 2 was the standard engine from TG318 onwards @ 3,100lb thrust and this was subsequently changed to the Goblin 2/2 @4,400lbs thrust. No squadron was issued with a Goblin 1 powered aircraft for operations.



> The Meteor F4 project was however not delayed as you claim, it merely took that long to get the prototype into a properly functioning a/c worthy of service.



with the end of the war EVERY british military programme was reviewed and either slowed down or cancelled outright with priority being given to the Brabazon projects. This lack of urgency can be seen not just in the operational debut of the Meteor F.4, but also every other major type including the Vampire and even the piston engined Sea Fury.

For you to claim that 'it just took that long' as some sort of yardstick for how far ahead Germany was is disingenuous at best.

I agree that the 262 was a cleaner design than the Meteor and that the wings, while not quite as advanced as people suppose, were nevertheless far better than the Meteors relatively thick and broad planform. I think that with the same sort of engine development that Britain enjoyed the 262 was a genuine 600+mph airframe while brute force was required to get the Meteor up to that speed.


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## HellToupee (Jan 27, 2009)

Glider said:


> Re the DH108, as far as I am aware there was no connection with the ME163. Indeed E Brown considered the Dh108 to be a real handfull but the Me163 handled very well and as he flew both would go with that.



Yea looks like it needed a tail or a longer body with how far they swept those wings back.


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## Soren (Jan 28, 2009)

delcyros said:


> Soren, all of the HeS011 AV-prototype jet engines tested by either the UK or US post war delivered the thrust rating they have been designed for. They fell significantly short of the 1300 Kp legend rating.



The hope was 3,500 lbs of thrust in the end, by 1945 they had managed 2,700 lbs continous on the bench though. But this is still a lot better than other engines of the time.


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## drgondog (Jan 28, 2009)

HellToupee said:


> Yea looks like it needed a tail or a longer body with how far they swept those wings back.



Actually that wouldn't have much effect on the static margin (longer body) except to possibly alter the cg.

All the flying wings require clever wing design to provide pitch control and very few have sufficient static margin to fully control pitch and/or provide sufficient pitch damping..


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## delcyros (Jan 29, 2009)

With the informations contributed by Mike Williams N. Stirling we should reonsider the He-162 vs Vampire vs P-80 thread.
I don´t see much of a performane difference between all three planes at 15.000 to 30.000 ft. altitude (actually I was a bit surprised by the disappointing P-80 performance)
The He-162 has a larger speed window and a significantly better crit Mach figure.
One thing I like on the Vampire is the compact design, e.g. how fuel, engine and pilot compartements are grouped together.


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## FLYBOYJ (Jan 29, 2009)

delcyros said:


> One thing I like on the Vampire is the compact design, e.g. how fuel, engine and pilot compartements are grouped together.


Try sitting in one!


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## Colin1 (Jan 29, 2009)

delcyros said:


> One thing I like on the Vampire is the compact design, e.g. how fuel... ....and pilot compartments are grouped together.


YIKES!!!


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## delcyros (Jan 29, 2009)

A compact layout gives less target area and -that´s quite important- the components may be shielded with less armour. I don´t like to much distribution, this in turn tends to increase vulnarability.


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## Colin1 (Jan 29, 2009)

delcyros said:


> A compact layout gives less target area and -that´s quite important- the components may be shielded with less armour. I don´t like to much distribution, this in turn tends to increase vulnarability.


All true dude, just pulling your leg...


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## davparlr (Feb 3, 2009)

delcyros said:


> With the informations contributed by Mike Williams N. Stirling we should reonsider the He-162 vs Vampire vs P-80 thread.
> I don´t see much of a performane difference between all three planes at 15.000 to 30.000 ft. altitude (actually I was a bit surprised by the disappointing P-80 performance)
> The He-162 has a larger speed window and a significantly better crit Mach figure.
> One thing I like on the Vampire is the compact design, e.g. how fuel, engine and pilot compartements are grouped together.



Hooray, kudos to Mike Williams et.al. for again providing test and evaluation data. I am always amazed at the effort.

I agree that the performance of the P-80A and Vampire are similar, unfortunately the data on the He 162 was tainted by a bad engine. It should perform well, but was having trouble in development and light weight and small fuel load would limit usefulness.

Actually, I was impressed with the P-80 climb performance. According to the available tests, and even with the limited thrust engine, it had better climb at SL (4300 ft/min) than either the vampire (the FB6, an advance model, had 4050 ft/min), or the Me-262A-1a with 3300 ft/min. The P-80 tested better in climb than the Me-262 from SL up (don’t have the data for the Vampire). In airspeed the P-80 is better at lower altitude but starts to suffer above 25k ft. Again, I think the P-80, Vampire, and Me-262 were equal enough to transfer advantage to the better pilot.


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## HellToupee (Feb 3, 2009)

davparlr said:


> (the FB6, an advance model, had 4050 ft/min)



FB6s was poorer climbing than the F.1 and F.3, best climber of the 3 would be the F.1 with goblin 2.


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## davparlr (Feb 4, 2009)

HellToupee said:


> FB6s was poorer climbing than the F.1 and F.3, best climber of the 3 would be the F.1 with goblin 2.



Thanks for the input, that is the only data point I could find. Do you have any data on Vampire rate of climb for the F.1


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## HellToupee (Feb 4, 2009)

I don't ive only seen a figure for the F.3 which was around 4300ft/min, F.3 differed from the F.1 with its fuel capacity which was 50% greater.


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