Aircraft Improvements

[GrauGeist]

Regarding the Me262, it was an excellent design and had the BMW003 been ready (and bugs worked out), then it would have had a much better reputation than it got with the equally troublesome Jumo004 engines.
That being said, the RLM should have left it alone to be a heavy fighter - but Oh No!, let's make it into a bomber or stick a big ass cannon in the nose.
Better still, let's make it a bomber WITH a bombadier in the nose or maybe just tow a bomb behind it...what could possibly go wrong?

At least they didn't try and make it a dive-bomber...

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

That being said, the RLM should have left it alone to be a heavy fighter - but Oh No!, let's make it into a bomber or stick a big ass cannon in the nose.

That's the other aspect of overbuild for the plane, yep.

But the fact that jet tech was only nascent just piled problems on what seems to me to be a good airframe, and was its Achilles's heel. With decent engines and a focused development, it may well have made a bigger splash. I doubt it would be a war-winner even in that case, but it would have been better and more numerous as well, I think.

 

[GrauGeist]

The German Jet program was really never pushed from the onset by the RLM.
Von Ohain and Heinkel demonstrated their jet engine in '37 and got a yawn from the RLM.
Heinkel presented the He178 in '39 and got a collective yawn.
Heinkel presented a production ready combat fighter (He280) in Spring of '41 and again, got a collective yawn.
Enter the Me262, which because of the jet engine issue (industry wide), finally flew with jet power in '42 and all of a sudden, created mild interest.
Not excitement, mind you, but at least it was something - five years after the RLM was literally handed the Holy Grail of powered flight.
By then, it was too late and we know how it all turned out.
*if* the RLM took Von Ohain's presentation seriously and devoted realistic R&D backing for Jet engine development, things would ha e been a bit different.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, I understand that it was a slow-roller to start with. I still think the rush-job that happened once the writing was on the wall bespeaks overasking the engines. I think that was as important, in a bad way, as the digression into different combat roles.

Apply plenty of hindsalt to my opinion. I'm just some numpty online.

The LW should have devoted more resources earlier. That they didn't meant that when they dialed up production, the plane was quite simply too big an ask for the industry. In that sense, it fits Akuma 's conditions of overcomplex and overspecifications, both.

 

[Akuma]

Actually there is another very important reason that they didn't jump on the 'Jets' program, and that is economics. The German GDP at that time was roughly 40% of the American. If they wanted to give the Me-262 program the funding it needed for development on the scale of what the BF-109 or the JU-88 had received, it would have required drastic spending cuts in other aircraft programs. If an aircraft of the 262s potential came out of an American design department it's most likely that moneys would have been made available.

The German Jet program was really never pushed from the onset by the RLM.
Von Ohain and Heinkel demonstrated their jet engine in '37 and got a yawn from the RLM.
Heinkel presented the He178 in '39 and got a collective yawn.
Heinkel presented a production ready combat fighter (He280) in Spring of '41 and again, got a collective yawn.
Enter the Me262, which because of the jet engine issue (industry wide), finally flew with jet power in '42 and all of a sudden, created mild interest.
Not excitement, mind you, but at least it was something - five years after the RLM was literally handed the Holy Grail of powered flight.
By then, it was too late and we know how it all turned out.
*if* the RLM took Von Ohain's presentation seriously and devoted realistic R&D backing for Jet engine development, things would ha e been a bit different.

Yeah, I understand that it was a slow-roller to start with. I still think the rush-job that happened once the writing was on the wall bespeaks overasking the engines. I think that was as important, in a bad way, as the digression into different combat roles.

Apply plenty of hindsalt to my opinion. I'm just some numpty online.

The LW should have devoted more resources earlier. That they didn't meant that when they dialed up production, the plane was quite simply too big an ask for the industry. In that sense, it fits Akuma 's conditions of overcomplex and overspecifications, both.

 

[ThomasP]

Hey GrauGeist,

re your post#21: Good Rant!

 

[GrauGeist]

Actually there is another very important reason that they didn't jump on the 'Jets' program, and that is economics. The German GDP at that time was roughly 40% of the American. If they wanted to give the Me-262 program the funding it needed for development on the scale of what the BF-109 or the JU-88 had received, it would have required drastic spending cuts in other aircraft programs. If an aircraft of the 262s potential came out of an American design department it's most likely that moneys would have been made available.

Bear in mind that the RLM could have made the jet engine program a priority *if* they wanted to. In 1937, war was still a few years away an plenty of time to develop the Hirth, Jumo and BMW engines.
Meanwhile, the RLM was encouraging all sorts of experimental Daimler and Junkers engine designs that were too complex and eventual failures.

Add to that, the political posturing and in-fighting within the RLM that hampered the jet engine program.

So in reality, it wasn't a matter if having enough money but instead, taking the technology seriously.

Hey GrauGeist,

re your post#21: Good Rant!

Thank you, Sir!

 

[Akuma]

Bear in mind that the RLM could have made the jet engine program a priority *if* they wanted to. In 1937, war was still a few years away an plenty of time to develop the Hirth, Jumo and BMW engines.
Meanwhile, the RLM was encouraging all sorts of experimental Daimler and Junkers engine designs that were too complex and eventual failures.

Add to that, the political posturing and in-fighting within the RLM that hampered the jet engine program.

So in reality, it wasn't a matter if having enough money but instead, taking the technology seriously.




Thank you, Sir!

I have read contemporary (1920s-1930s) aviation books and magazines, both originals and republications, most of them of American origin whenever possible. A handful of them came from the UK and there was a smattering of German. These included both fictional and non fictional matter. Whenever ideas about the future of flight propulsion was discussed in them there appeared to be two lines of thought. One believed in improvements of piston engines and Propellors while the other, equally large group, posited the possibility of turbine technology. Exponents of this latter group used the advances in warship propulsion as a rough analogy. Specifically they pointed to the vast improvement in performance of steam turbines over the steam piston engines that had been the norm in the leading navies. The argument was that some form of turbine might be developed that would give a comparable advance in aviation over the then existing aircraft piston engines. With this in mind I find the idea of German aviation being somewhat lackadaisical towards Jet Turbines as curious.

 

[msxyz]

The real problem of jet motors built in Germany was the lack of high temperature alloys. Early prototypes of the Jumo 004 did use the kind of alloys needed for the task but there weren't simply enough for mass production (and I'd wager they had to be reserved for exhaust valves of traditional engines and the valve seats). One of such materials was nickel, which has desirable high temperature characteristics, both when used in steel and when used as main alloying element.

Nickel shortages were hurting Germany war efforts not only in the aircraft industry, to the point that most German tanks built after 1942 had very few Nickel in their armor, relying mostly on Chrome for giving steel the necessary toughness, even if it meant that the plates would be very brittle.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I remember reading somewhere, as well, that tungsten supplies from Turkey dried up as well -- due to British pressure on the latter country iirc.

 

[ClayO]

The P-61 is tops on my 'overbuilt' list. Too big to be a dogfighter, too slow to keep up with late-war German fighters, remote controlled turret requiring an extra crewman and caused turbulence unless it was pointed straight ahead.

 

[Akuma]

The P-61 is tops on my 'overbuilt' list. Too big to be a dogfighter, too slow to keep up with late-war German fighters, remote controlled turret requiring an extra crewman and caused turbulence unless it was pointed straight ahead.

Yes, I've never understood what the USAAF was thinking with the P-61. If they wanted a Nightfighter they could have put radar on a suitably modified A-20 or something along those lines. They might have purchased some Mosquito's and Radared them up. There were a number of aircraft already in the inventory that might have been suitable for night fighting missions. Oh well, they probably had money to burn and the P-61 was a convenient project to let them do so. Note: I did some checking and found that the A-20 had been modified as a night fighter and given the designation P-70. Apparently it was good at middle and low altitudes but lacked high altitude capability. I believe the A-26 was capable of high altitude performance.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Actually there is another very important reason that they didn't jump on the 'Jets' program, and that is economics.

Do you have any credible evidence of that?!?

 

[GrauGeist]

Do you have any credible evidence of that?!?

Yeah, I question that highly, as Germany in the late 30's was devoting a considerable anount of money to their military budget and even after the war started, they were spending ridiculous amounts of money on U-Boats, Tanks and Aircraft, etc.

 

[msxyz]

Jet engines are cheaper to manufacture, less moving parts, etc... The problem is the initial investment in design and testing, in addition to the afore mentioned reliance on high temperature alloys. If you're preparing to war, you can't blame the people in charge to prefer a tried and true technology that, up to a certain point, scales well. Eventually, during ww2, the limit of said technology was reached and getting a >2000HP piston engine up and running required efforts and investments that were underestimated or simply were not feasible in countries with limited resources and bombers constantly flying over the manufacturing plants.

With jets, everything had to be started from scratch. The theory, the testing rigs, the production tools. New technologies require lot of trial and error because there are many unforeseen problems that pop up during use. I read a few docs, created in the late 40s, about the failures of turbine blades and the possible solutions. Yep, even British and US engines that could lavishly use high temperature alloys like Nimonic sometimes failed in an embarrassingly short time. Compressor stalls were the bane of early axial turbojets, destructive vibration of the compressor blades, uneven combustion; I could go on citing a lot of problems encountered in the first 10-15 years of jet adoption. The jet engine took a lot of time to mature despite the amount of money poured by all nations once the edge in performance it gave was well understood.

Even if Germany started in 1937, I don't think the outcome would have been different. Maybe more 1st gen design would have been fielded, but the critical problems would have been all there. It's ironic that the ducted fan principle, pursued only by Italy in practice with their 'motorjet', nowadays moves all the air traffic in the world. We call them 'high dilution turbofans', but in practice it's the same propulsion technology pioneered by the Campini-Caproni CC.2 with a turbine motor in place of a IC engine moving the big ducted fan.

 

[Akuma]

Do you have any credible evidence of that?!?

'The Wages of Destruction' by Adam Tooze. 'The Vampire Economy' by Gunter Reimann. One of the most common mistake's made by everyone before and during WWII was what is known as 'Mirror Imaging', that is the idea that your enemy or potential enemy has the same technological and logistic capabilities as you do. Even when such differences were acknowledged, they were not considered so great that they were not outweighed by some other advantage. A small but important group of Japanese leaders knew that they could not match the wartime economic capabilities of the United States but were equally convinced that Japanese cultural and spiritual superiority would make up for any deficit. Likewise in Germany the Nazi party was always going on about how 'Morale' could overcome any shortcomings in military material. I once read the following analogous economic comparison between America, Great Britain and Germany; (I have to paraphrase).
'Towards the end of the 1930's in well developed industrial countries, people living in the middle classes could afford the following; a Refrigerator, a Radio and an Automobile. In America a middle class family could afford all three, in Great Britain, two out of the three and in Germany, one out of the three.'
When Winston Churchill spoke of America as a 'Steam Boiler able to generate unimaginable amounts of power', he was speaking of economic as well as military capability. WWII proved he was right.

 

[GrauGeist]

Interesting analogy about the refrigerator, automobile and radio.
However, a nation's ability to wage war really shouldn't be compared to personal amenities, otherwise the Soviet Union would have been out of the running from the start.

In regards to Germany's jet development:
How would it affect the war had the RLM embraced jet engine development from the start?
Simply put, they would have still lost the war.
However, the face of the air war would have changed considerably. The US and Britain would have needed to accelerate their jet programs to counter the Luftwaffe's inventory.
How the Soviet Union would have responded? I'm not sure. Perhaps reverse engineering a downed German fighter or perhaps Lend Lease would have provided aircraft/engines to help them catch up.
Italy (as noted earlier) was working on their own technology and may have received help from Germany.

However, in the Pacific, the vast distances would prove to be a challenge to first generation jet aircraft.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

'The Wages of Destruction' by Adam Tooze. 'The Vampire Economy' by Gunter Reimann. One of the most common mistake's made by everyone before and during WWII was what is known as 'Mirror Imaging', that is the idea that your enemy or potential enemy has the same technological and logistic capabilities as you do. Even when such differences were acknowledged, they were not considered so great that they were not outweighed by some other advantage. A small but important group of Japanese leaders knew that they could not match the wartime economic capabilities of the United States but were equally convinced that Japanese cultural and spiritual superiority would make up for any deficit. Likewise in Germany the Nazi party was always going on about how 'Morale' could overcome any shortcomings in military material. I once read the following analogous economic comparison between America, Great Britain and Germany; (I have to paraphrase).
'Towards the end of the 1930's in well developed industrial countries, people living in the middle classes could afford the following; a Refrigerator, a Radio and an Automobile. In America a middle class family could afford all three, in Great Britain, two out of the three and in Germany, one out of the three.'
When Winston Churchill spoke of America as a 'Steam Boiler able to generate unimaginable amounts of power', he was speaking of economic as well as military capability. WWII proved he was right.

Sorry but I don't buy this and all this rambling proves nothing. Yes, it was quite clear to all combatants the manufacturing capability of the US and it's economic capabilities. GrauGeist pointed out in his earlier post that the RLM had a huge defense budget and would have had no problem developing the turbine engine earlier had Nazi leaders seen it's full potential. Materials would have been a challenge and also remember that slave labor would have been a factor as well. The fact is no one fully embraced turbine powered aircraft until it was shown that this technology was able to out perform the contemporary piston engine combat aircraft of the day.

Bottom line, $ wasn't an issue, foresight was.

 

[Akuma]

Interesting analogy about the refrigerator, automobile and radio.
However, a nation's ability to wage war really shouldn't be compared to personal amenities, otherwise the Soviet Union would have been out of the running from the start.

In regards to Germany's jet development:
How would it affect the war had the RLM embraced jet engine development from the start?
Simply put, they would have still lost the war.
However, the face of the air war would have changed considerably. The US and Britain would have needed to accelerate their jet programs to counter the Luftwaffe's inventory.
How the Soviet Union would have responded? I'm not sure. Perhaps reverse engineering a downed German fighter or perhaps Lend Lease would have provided aircraft/engines to help them catch up.
Italy (as noted earlier) was working on their own technology and may have received help from Germany.

However, in the Pacific, the vast distances would prove to be a challenge to first generation jet aircraft.

Glad you brought up Russia. With the fall of the Soviet Union their archives were opened to historical researchers to a much greater degree than previously, including records on the Soviet Union itself and not just the Czarist regimes of the past. The reason that they were not out of the running is that starting with the takeover by the Communist Party the bulk of their GDP went into military spending. As a consequence there was effectively no middle class in Russia. There were either the workers or the 'party members'. In a way you might say that the latter might be a stand in for the middle class. The Soviets sacrificed the Russian peoples standard of living for a defensive and, hopefully in their view, offensive capability to be exercised when the Proletariat arose. I have read that on both military and internal security which was considered part of the military that 75% of the budget was spent on military and related expenditures.
As far as Germany is concerned, it is only in recent years that historians have begun to look at the Nazi economy with results that people do not want to believe.

 

[Akuma]

Sorry but I don't buy this and all this rambling proves nothing. Yes, it was quite clear to all combatants the manufacturing capability of the US and it's economic capabilities. GrauGeist pointed out in his earlier post that the RLM had a huge defense budget and would have had no problem developing the turbine engine earlier had Nazi leaders seen it's full potential. Materials would have been a challenge and also remember that slave labor would have been a factor as well. The fact is no one fully embraced turbine powered aircraft until it was shown that this technology was able to out perform the contemporary piston engine combat aircraft of the day.

Bottom line, $ wasn't an issue, foresight was.

Just a follow up. It is only within the last decade or so that historians are taking a close look at the German economy under Hitler. The degree to which the Nazi's subordinated military spending to public spending in order to insure a reasonably comfortable standard of living for the populace in the years leading up to and during WWII is shocking. Huge is obviously an elastic term and one might compare Germany's spending in the years leading up to WWII to Russia's spending during the same period. Clearly if Germany had spent money to that degree they certainly would have been able to advance their Jet Turbine programs more easily. They would have been stockpiling or coming up with viable substitutes for scarce materials. While slave labor during the war was a factor of mass production after the successful completion of developments, it had nothing to do with the initial developments before the war.
If whoever was in charge of aircraft procurement had a crystal ball that told them of the importance of Jet engine technology and they convinced the government leadership of such, they would have faced the dilemma of either reallocating public expenditures or would have had to cut other military programs to come up with the monies.