You want a jet with issues, the Meteor - its rather grim nickname was the 'meatbox' it killed so many pilots and It never got better.
A gross oversimplification of the situation, but that can be expected. Yes, pilots died, but it wasn't a difficult aircraft to fly but like every aeroplane it had its problems and death resulted if these were ignored. Don't take it from me, take it from a guy who flew them. RAF pilot David Ogilvy flew Mosquitoes then transited onto Meteors after the war and published his experiences. Here are some of the things that killed pilots:
"Checks of course are important on any aeroplane, but an essential safety factor on the Meteor was to ensure that the airbrakes, which protruded from the wing inboard of each engine, were in. If they remained extended on the final turn-in the nose tended to drop, sometimes quite violently, and no amount of back-pressure on the control column would rectify the situation. Unfortunately this led to several fatal accidents."
A bit about the Meteor's asymmetric performance, which caused a few accidents:
"With regard to asymmetric handling, the performance on one was excellent. In this condition a level speed of more than 300kt could be attained, but at low speeds the rudder load was almost intolerable. The rudder trim control was a small knurled wheel on the left of the pilot's seat, and it was neither sufficiently easy to turn quickly nor adequate in effect: it was one of the Meteor's few weak features. It revealed its shortcomings to the full on asymmetric overshoot, when only a locked leg could withstand the load, but this problem was partly offset by the Meteor's remarkable willingness to climb away happily and rapidly, with ample reserve of power. Never before had I met a machine that offered more than a marginal climb performance in this configuration."
The MiG 15 was apparently based on German last-minute designs.
Rubbish. The MiG-15 was entirely designed in-house. It benefitted from German swept wing research, but it wasn't "based on" any German fighter. A little known fact is that Russian scientists were carrying out research into swept wings as early as 1942 and test flights by unpowered gliders fitted with swept planes were carried out. This research, combined with data acquired from German sources contributed to defining the MiG-15's swept wing configuration, but its design was entirely done by Russian engineers. The rumour it was based on the Ta 183 paper plane is crap. The biggest foreign influence on the MiG-15 was its British engine, the prototype flew with a Rolls-Royce Nene, before the Klimov VK-1 went into production.
This aircraft
was based on the Ta 183, but that's because its designer was the very same guy. This is Kurt Tank's Argentine fighter the Pulqui II. Looks a bit like a MiG-15 but the differences are obvious.
Pulqui II
The MiG-15 by comparison. This is a Russian built MiG-15 supplied to China, the Chinese never built the single-seat MiG-15 under licence. They did build the two-seat MiG-15UTI however.
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