# Gloster Meteor v Messerschmitt ME-262



## Gnomey (Mar 26, 2005)

*Gloster Meteor G.41*







Specifications

Year deployed - 1944
Wing span, m - 13.11
Length, m - 12.57
Height, m - 3.96
Wings area, m2 - 34.74
Weight, kg 
- empty aircraft - 2692
- maximum take-off - 6257
Engine - 2 x TJE Rolls-Royce W.2B/23C Welland
Thrust, kgs - 2 x 771
Maximum speed, km/h - 668 
Range, km - 2000
Rate of climb, m/min - 2220
Service ceiling, m - 15240
Crew - 1
Armament - 4 x 20mm cannon (Hispano MkV)

Specifications for production versions can be found here: http://www.britishaircraft.co.uk/aircraftpage.php?ID=42

History: http://www.vectorsite.net/avmeteor.html

*Messerschmitt ME-262 A-1 "Schwable"*






Specifications

Year deployed - 1944 
Wing span, m - 12.50
Length, m - 10.60
Height, m - 3.80
Wings area, m2 - 21.80
Weight, kg 
- empty aircraft - 3800
- normal take-off - 6400
- maximum take-off - 7140 
Engine - 2 x TJE Junkers Jumo 004B-1(B-2, 3) 
Thrust, kgs - 2 x 900
Maximum speed, km/h 
- on sea level - 823
- in altitude - 855
Range, km - 1040
Rate of climb, m/min - 1200
Service ceiling, m - 11000
Crew - 1
Armament - 4 x 30-mm cannons MK 108 with 100 rounds 12 UR R-4M

A-2 Specs - http://www.airwar.ru/enc_e/fww2/me262a2.html Fighter-bomber
B Specs - http://www.airwar.ru/enc_e/fww2/me262b.html - Night fighter
Specs in Detail: http://www.stormbirds.com/squadron/common/technical.htm

History: http://www.fighter-planes.com/info/me262.htm

All information from http://www.airwar.ru/aww2e.html unless otherwise stated.

What would be the result of a dogfight between the two? I believe that it would be tight as the Meteor could out climb the 262 but it has a huge disadvantage in speed (at least the G.41 by the F-1 the speeds where similar). However I believe that the 262's heavier armament would mean that it would win.


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## the lancaster kicks ass (Mar 27, 2005)

well climb, reliability and manouverability are the only areas the F.3 has the -262 beat on, but they're still important factors............


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## Gnomey (Mar 27, 2005)

It all boils down to the pilot again, if it was a good pilot in either plane then they would win. If there was equally skilled pilots in both planes then the Meteor with it's greater manoeuvrability would win, although if the ME-262 did get in an accurate burst it would possibly win.


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## mosquitoman (Mar 27, 2005)

It all depends who bounces who, the plane that has the altitude and the sun will come out on top


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## Gnomey (Mar 28, 2005)

mosquitoman said:


> It all depends who bounces who, the plane that has the altitude and the sun will come out on top


As is the case for every dogfight that ever happened (until air-air missiles)


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## mosquitoman (Mar 28, 2005)

exactly, a Gladiator might be able to shoot down a 262 if the pilot wasn't looking (emphasis on the word might!)


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## Gnomey (Mar 28, 2005)

Exactly very unlikely though and the 262 pilot would have to be pretty blind and a complete novice and the Glatiator pilot a hardened veteran and even then it would be hard but the point is very valid. 
Any plane can shoot down any other plane.


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## delcyros (Mar 28, 2005)

I see additional advantages for the Me-262:
critical Mach speed: 0.86 (against 0.83 for the Gloster Meteor MK IV)
excellent high speed handling 
smaller target
the ability to keep its energy is better, esspecially on turns
acceleration at dives
even the ability of the Meteor to outurn the Me-262 depends on the speed
However, the Meteor has also some advantages:
weaponry: The four Hispano 20 mm are much better suited for high speed combats, since they have a very flat trajectory (compared to the Mk 108).
reliability of its jet engines 
I believe that the better initiative (speed, crit Mach) of the Me-262 would be very important at dogfights with equaly qualified pilots.


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## the lancaster kicks ass (Mar 29, 2005)

the meteor had far better handiling charactoristics than the -262............


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## delcyros (Mar 30, 2005)

...at low to medium speed. Galland did fly a Meteor in Argentinia and he was not impressed by it´s handling charackteristics at high speeds. The lower wingload of the Meteor indicate a better handling at low speeds. But the MK I and MK III were both greatly underpowered (as was the Me-262).


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## GT (Aug 19, 2005)

Update.


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## evangilder (Aug 19, 2005)

Great pic, GT! Gonna snag that one to my hard drive!


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## Nonskimmer (Aug 19, 2005)

Me too.


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

heres the real thing colorized. II./JG 7, machines surrendered at Fassberg May 45. bitchin shot actually of a famous b/w pic which is still hot stuff 8)


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## lesofprimus (Aug 19, 2005)

Nice..... Stole that one.......


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

Les would you mind cropping the name of the guy out and enlarging this for the thread please ? This guy actually colorized a copy of a copy so who really knows the copyright except it is from the RCAF archivs with the Canadians captured the machines. Do think that white 5 was flown by jet ace and Staffelkapitän Fritz Stehle who shot down one of the last Soviet a/c of the war before landing


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

I apoligize as it should read III./JG 7 not II. gruppe which never had their own a/c............geez...........


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## Nonskimmer (Aug 19, 2005)

Stole that one too. 
Thanks Erich.


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## evangilder (Aug 19, 2005)

I can take a stab at cropping and enlarging later tonight, Erich. Great shot that I definitely will be grabbing as well!


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

please Eric go for it ! if indeed true to the REAL colours and I think they are it is a rare find. EVen in the late war you can see the light blue background of the birds with the green/greys above. The jets were a hot commodity painted in an array of colours. will try and post the black and white for comparision if I haven't already


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## Gnomey (Aug 19, 2005)

Nice pics GT and Erich! *Steals*


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## GT (Aug 19, 2005)

Update.


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## Graf (Aug 19, 2005)

If ya like 262s, hopefully you'll like this.


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

GT great job ! sorry graf there is nothing like the real thing, superimposed graphics just doens't cut it. besides the Nowonty jet squadron : the # 8 is too big


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

man long day today or something in the air.......great job Gnomey


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## Nonskimmer (Aug 19, 2005)

That's a good wallpaper just the same, Graf. I'll take it.


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

ace Hermann Buchners ride just released or will be this September in the decal form by Eagle Editions to go with the new 1/35th scale Me 262


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## Erich (Aug 19, 2005)

warnung ! been seen before Gelbe 7 from JG 7 before the ugly repaint job in bogus colurs


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## Soren (Aug 20, 2005)

As to the Meteor outturning the Me262A-1a, even at slow speed, hardly so... 

Note the Me262 has full-span auto-slats, and swepped back wings.

Further notice the Me262A-1a's "normal" loaded weight was around 5,000 kg, and "max" loaded weight was 6,400 kg. (The Me262A-2a's "max" loaded weight was 7,130 kg)

The British Vampire was a far greater threat to the Me262 than the Meteor.


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## GT (Aug 21, 2005)

Update.


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## me262 (Aug 21, 2005)

GT said:


> The first jet victory in history was actually on 9 Nov 1950 and was claimed by the a American pilot and the claim was supported by the Korean side.
> 
> On a mission from the USS Philippine Sea, 2 MiGs attacked the Strike Group and VF-111 commander Lt/Col William Amen flying a Grumman F9F-2 Panther got on Capt. Mikhail Fedorovich Grachev tail, unloaded several bursts of 20mm fire and the MiG went over into a dive and crashed into hill.


i highly doubt this, since the soviets denied their participation in the korean war. the soviet pilots were instructed to not to speak in russian, chinese or korean only.


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## GT (Aug 21, 2005)

Update.


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## Gemhorse (Aug 27, 2005)

I agree with Soren, the DH Vampire was the better aircraft, created by Frank Halford and first flew in 1943.....

Sir Henry Tizard helped bring the USA into the jet age...As Chairman of the British Aeronautical Council, he was involved with Whittle's work and proved the greatest of his supporters....Early in 1941, he gave the American National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics a brief description of the Whittle engine and soon afterwards General 'Jimmy' Doolittle officially asked the British Govt. for drawings. In Oct. the two govt.'s agreed to disclosure on both sides, 'to assist the joint defence plans' with the British sending the drawings and a test-bed engine and the Americans putting it into manufacture. Three of Whittle's engineers went to the USA where the drawings were passed to General Electric Co; copies of the Whittle jet, produced by GE, were later installed in a Bell aeroplane. Later that year, work done by Metro-Vickers and DH were also sent to the USA. The American work was concentrated on axial compressors and, much later, they took a licence for the Farnborough/Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire....

The Smithsonian Museum in Washington makes little reference to the help the British gave the USA in jet development. It's description of the invention of the jet gives equal credit to Whittle and to the German, von Ohain, whose jet flew in 1939 and who happened to be educated in the US, where he returned after the War.

The Germans gained an initial lead over the British jets because, while Whittle was trying to get his engine right, the Germans, under pressure to improve aircraft performance, went ahead with an under-developed unit. 

US development, and worldwide progress with jets, eventually owed far more to the British inventor, Whittle, than to the Germans.....

Although the story of the gas turbine started with A.A. Griffith in the 1920's at Farnborough, Whittle filed his first patent in 1936 for what became known as the 'by-pass type of jet engine' - it was to be taken up by the world's aero-engine builders 30 years later, and adopted by the American industry under the name ''fan''. Another British chap involved was Hayne Constant, and his scheme for a ''straight-through jet engine with an axial compressor'' was undoubtably the forbear of the great majority of jet propulsion engines powering the world's aircraft today. Griffiths joined Rolls Royce in 1944, and was instrumental in the development of the 'Avon'.....

Willy Voigt, Messerschmitt's chief designer indicated their research left them in no doubt about the necessity of 'swept-wings' and control surfaces in aircraft flying at very high Mach numbers. In 1945 at Oberammergau, the Americans discovered and transferred to the USA, a German Mach 4.4 wind-tunnel, which shows the extent of German aerodynamic development by that stage....Hence the Bf-262's marvellous design compared to the Gloster Meteor....To a greater degree, the Allies were still very much into their piston-engines, which were topping-out at 3,500 hp before the switch to jet engines became inevitable, the Glosters were early aircraft developments, which IMHO, the de Havilland Vampire was the first really well-rounded British jet fighter.........

Gemhorse


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## me262 (Aug 28, 2005)

"Hence the Bf-262's "

why do you replace the me with the older bf?
the bf was droped after the bf 161/162 program


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## FLYBOYJ (Aug 28, 2005)

me262 said:


> GT said:
> 
> 
> > The first jet victory in history was actually on 9 Nov 1950 and was claimed by the a American pilot and the claim was supported by the Korean side.
> ...



Much of the admission of the Soviet Union's participation in the Korean War came in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union when many of the pilots who flew in Korea admitted they were there.


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## Gemhorse (Aug 30, 2005)

From what I've read, 'Bf' was the correct designation used during the War....

Gemhorse


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## KraziKanuK (Aug 30, 2005)

If 'Bf' was the correct designation then why do MTT documents show Me262 or 8-262?

See document B.NR.22140/45 dated Jan 15 1945 as an example. Another document dated 23.3.1944 also says Me262.

Now the RLM continued to use 'Bf" but sometimes would use 'Me'.


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## Gemhorse (Aug 30, 2005)

You're probably right, the 262 always seems to have the 'Me' designation...
I've always thought the Bf...'Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG' was behind this...although Willy went through a bankruptcy in the early '30's...he still kept it - The biz was also known as 'Messerschmitt AG'...but the 109 seems to have the 'Bf' stuck to it right through the War and after by many historians etc.....Maybe Erich can clarify this ?........

Gemhorse


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## KraziKanuK (Aug 30, 2005)

Gem, my post was not directly aimed at you.

When Willey bought out the 'Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG the prefix 'Bf' was dropped and replaced by 'Me' as it was now Messeschmitt AG. 

Remember that much of WW2 history was written by British authors who used 'Bf'. People just continued to use 'Bf'.

Can't remember all that was said in all the Bf/Me designation discussions I have read.

Just asking, but did not British pilots say 'Me'?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Aug 30, 2005)

KraziKanuK said:


> Gem, my post was not directly aimed at you.
> 
> When Willey bought out the 'Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG the prefix 'Bf' was dropped and replaced by 'Me' as it was now Messeschmitt AG.
> 
> ...



Bf is not correct for anything other than the Bf-109 (technically Me-109 with the start of the G series) and the Bf-110 up to the number sequence 162. 'Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG was the name of Messerschmitts company. Origianally Germany aircraft were designated by the company that produced them. Hense Bf-109 even though it was Messerschmitts design, or the Fw-190 even though it was Kurt Tanks design. The German Reich Air Ministry changed the designation system in the spring of 1942 so that the aircraft were designated after there designer. For Messershmit this occured between the Unsuccessful Bf-162 Jaguar (the number allocation was transfered to the He-162 Volksjaeger) and the Me-163 Komet. The Komet being the first aircraft to be named with the Me instead of the Bf. Ofcourse there is a grey area with the Bf-109, since the 109s actually kept there Bf designation and the Me is actually just applied to the G, K and H varients of the 109. The later varients of the 109 retained there Bf and this was standardized to include all aircraft up to the 162. The Me-163 and all later aircraft designs by Messerschmitt were Me. Another example of this is the Ta-152. The company that built it was Focke-Wulf but the designer was Kurt Tank so the aircraft became known as the Focke-Wulf Ta-152 under the new designation rgulations rather than the Focke-Wulf Fw-152.


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## me262 (Aug 30, 2005)

'Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG was the name of Messerschmitts company"
the bayerische flugzeugwerke (BFW) was created by the reichsverkehrsministerium,the bavarian state goverment and the banking house of merck.finck und compagnie later on the messerschmitt flugzeugbaun G.m.b. H was part of it no the opposite


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Aug 30, 2005)

Yes youa re correct and Willy Messerschmitt joined the BFW in 1927 and set up a design team. With this Bf-109 Design they incorporated a seperat company Messerschmitt AG on July 11 1938 with Willy Messerschmitt as chairman and managing director. BFW was renamed to Messerschmitt AG also on that date.


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## solnar (Jun 15, 2006)

something that I posted on WW2talk.com

“That, then, was the Me 262, variously known as the Schwalbe and the Strumvogel. But whatever the appellation, it was in my view unquestionably the foremost warplane of its day: a hard hitter which outperformed anything that we immediately available….”
Brown RN, Capt Eric., Wings of the Luftwaffe, Airflife, 1979, P68

the Good Captain had flown both the ME262 and Meteor


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## Twitch (Jun 15, 2006)

I'll go with THE guy who flew both crates assessment. Adolf Galland said the 262 would win over early (WW 2) Meteors. He said the post-war Meteor engines were better that the Jumos.

The Bf in Bf 109 comes from the 1925 merger with WW I, 62-kill ace Ernst Udet’s Bayerische Flugzeugwerke. He was the original owner, not Willi Messerschmitt who was later a partner. As of 1932 Messerschmitt was the sole owner thanks to an unprecidented huge loan from the Air Ministry. The early Messerschmitt aircraft retained the Bf in their designations like the Bf 109 and 110.


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## Glider (Jun 15, 2006)

Part of the problem with the Meteor was to do with the aerodynamics in particular the engine nacelles, it wasn't the engines. When these were extended it added 75mph to the performance of the Meteor III. This made up up to a large degree, the difference between the two planes.


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## delcyros (Jun 15, 2006)

....plus the initiative difference in crit Mach figure....


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## davparlr (Jun 15, 2006)

This comment is incorrect.

Originally Posted by GT
"The first jet victory in history was actually on 9 Nov 1950 and was claimed by the a American pilot and the claim was supported by the Korean side. 

On a mission from the USS Philippine Sea, 2 MiGs attacked the Strike Group and VF-111 commander Lt/Col William Amen flying a Grumman F9F-2 Panther got on Capt. Mikhail Fedorovich Grachev tail, unloaded several bursts of 20mm fire and the MiG went over into a dive and crashed into hill."

The following was copied from the official Navy Historical site.

The Air Force first encountered MiG-15s on 1 November, and a F-80 "Shooting Star" jet downed one on the 8th. The next day, as Navy planes came to northwestern Korea to attack the Yalu River bridges, a "Panther" from USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) scored the first MiG kill by a carrier plane. On 18 November, as the bridge campaign continued, F9Fs from USS Leyte (CV-32) and USS Valley Forge (CV-45) each got another MiG-15, bringing the Navy's total to three.


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