Almost in time. He-162.

OOps, you're right, Gixxerman, the 004 was planned to be installed in the He162, but the BMW ended up being outfitted instead!

Regarding the endurance evaluation: I've haven't seen any hard data regarding the HeS8 testing, I do know that there were about 30 HeS8 engines produced and the later half of the series were reliably performing, though slightly lower than the anticipated 700kg...

Juha said:

In fact while liking He 162 as a flying machine, especially its rolling ability, Brown thought in his memoirs, Wings on my sleeve?, that it was rather useless as combat a/c because its inadequate range. Also French, who used it as introductional a/c to jet fighters for French pilots noted that it had badly inadequate range.

Juha

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Latter He 162 had increased tankage (about 40 gallons), the fuel issue was real but if the He 162 climbed to atltitude it had nearly 1.5 hours endurance at full power. Fuel consumption at sea level was however indeed very high: about 30-35 minutes at full throttle. Allowing for reserves and the journey back to base this is indeed minimal.

davebender said:

Just in time is a good thing. Almost in time is not. The He-162 was almost in time.

The original Heinkel P.1073 design looked something like this.
By mid 1944 German jet engines produced enough power that the bottom engine was no longer necessary. Deleting the bottom engine and cleaning up the resulting airframe would have produced an advanced yet low cost swept wing fighter aircraft. A nice looking aircraft too.

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The He-162 had to be production ready in 4 months so Heinkel opted for a simple straight wing with turned down wingtip extensions to improve directional stability. This rough and ready solution flew remarkably well provided the sub-standard plywood didn't fall apart. However even this war emergency design entered service too late to matter.

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The original P.1073 might have been a better bet.

The idea behined P.1073 was to produce a Mach 0.95 aircraft using available engines (BMW 003A/E) rather than rely on something still on the test bench. The ventral-chin and dorsal engine were in fact distributed (staggered) according to the supersonic area rule which was discovered in wind tunnel testing of scale models of this aircraft. The single engine derived version was the He 162; it suffered from a pitch and slight spin problem caused by the upper engine piching the nose down when thrust was increased when in the landing configuration ie pilot would see himself approaching short of the landing field, increase thrust and find the effect was to lower the nose. Not a problem for an experienced pilots but likely problematic for a 15 year old. The modest handling issues of the He 162 could be fixed by reducing the dihedral and lengthening the tail. Unfortunatly the subcomponents had already been commited to production before the test flight. The lengthened tail would also allow more room for fuel in future versions.

The BMW 003E (an BMW 003A with the accesories gearbox mounted for dorsal installation) had a 30 second (get me out of here) overspeed. This gave the He 162A a short term speed of 562mph making it by far the fastest aircraft of the war and the fastest combat aircraft of 1945 or 1946.

Heinkel P.1073 would have had the performance of a F-86 Sabre or MiG 15 potentially in servive by 1945, albeit with poor reward vision. Some kind of mirror arrangment might have moderated that however the Luftwaffe had long developed tactics to cope with the poor reward vision of the Me 109.

One extremely important motivation for the He 162 was its low fuel consumption per mission which was of major concern to the Luftwaffe. One very interesting version would have used the BMW 003R, this had a rocket engine whose pumps were driven of an clutched engine accesories gearbox. It used the normal fuel tanks plus xlidine and notric acid tripropplents. The clmb rate was under 2 minutes to 11000m which means it could outcomb a Mirage III, Phantom or F-104 of the chocks. Getting the aircraft to altitude so quickly gets the aircraft into its optimal cruise altitude and substantially increases range. There is also no issue of getting through fighter screens.

norab said:

two significant problems as a combat aircraft, no vision to the rear because of the engine placement, and trying to escape a fatally damaged aircraft without getting sucked into the jet intake, also because of engine placement, IIRC no ejection seat fitted

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The He 162 had an ejection seat as standard. Here is a picture of one

http://www.ejectionsite.com/he162seat.htm

The ejection seat was a German invention, with Heinkel retaining overall responsibillity throughout the war. Those rocket sled ejections you see in some post war videos are using a rocket sled 'stollen' from the Heinkel factory as war booty. Most were used on He 219 (compressed air type) while the He 162 received the world first lightweight pyrotechnical types.

Ejection seats were standard on test aircraft. Do 335 also had them as did apparently some He 177.

And thats this evenings news from the Bunker film at 11

Siegfried,

There were only two He-162 models ever built. The He-162A-1 and the He-162A-2. Neither could fly for an hour and a half. The range was 600 km on their best day and the endurance was one-half hour.

The He-162 began to see combat in mid-April 1945 and actually got into combat on 19 April 1945. Hitler put a bullet in his head in 30 April 1945, and the He-162's were all grounded on 4 May 1945. The He-162 unit had scored a few kills in the short action life, but lost 13 He-162's and 10 pilots. Interesting that we can confirm the losses but not the kills.

Altogether a very interesting but completely fruitless endeavor. As I said before, our museum has one. I like it ... buit I wouldn't FLY it.

10 of those 13 losses were due to operational situations (engine failure, landing errors, etc.), not enemy action

According to the He 162 Baubeschreibung it had 20min endurance at sealevel with a calculated range of 265km, 33min and 430km in 6km and 66 min and 660km in 11km. With 200kg of additional fuel in both fuselage and wing tanks performance is given/calc'ed as 30 min and 390km at sealevel and 85min an 1000km at 11km.
I don't know how far off these alcs were from the realworld He 162 performance though.

Low fuel consumption per se wasn't the issue. Jet aircraft burn low grade fuel which Germany had enough of rather then high octane aviation gasoline which was becoming scarce.

Shortage of aviation gasoline was impacting German pilot training by 1942. By 1943 even high priority military operations such as Kursk were experiencing shortages of aviation gasoline. IMO that's plenty of reason to push the Jumo 004A jet engine into mass production during 1943. Every combat aircraft powered by jet engines is a combat aircraft that doesn't require aviation gasoline.

Siegfried said:

One very interesting version would have used the BMW 003R, this had a rocket engine whose pumps were driven of an clutched engine accesories gearbox. It used the normal fuel tanks plus xlidine and notric acid tripropplents. The clmb rate was under 2 minutes to 11000m which means it could outcomb a Mirage III, Phantom or F-104 of the chocks. Getting the aircraft to altitude so quickly gets the aircraft into its optimal cruise altitude and substantially increases range. There is also no issue of getting through fighter screens.

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Would have, could have, should have. A good little aircraft the 162 was despite its limitations, I don't see one regardless of powerplant coming close to 3rd generation fighter aircraft in climb performance without turing into a caudron of splinters on the inital climb out. Very wishful thinking at the 11th hour.

pbfoot said:

And thats this evenings news from the Bunker film at 11

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Siegfried said:

The ejection seat was a German invention

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It was not - Germany only built the first practical explosive charge ejection seat installed on an aircraft. There were bungee egress seats developed during WW1 and later I think a Frenchman tested a seat on the ground that worked with compressed air. I believe he got a patent on it during the late 20s or early 30s.

Siegfried said:

The clmb rate was under 2 minutes to 11000m which means it could outcomb a Mirage III, Phantom or F-104 of the chocks. Getting the aircraft to altitude so quickly gets the aircraft into its optimal cruise altitude and substantially increases range. There is also no issue of getting through fighter screens.

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This indeed impressive, however, the T-38 set a record to 40k in 90 seconds and not long afterwards the F-4 beat it.

davparlr said:

This indeed impressive, however, the T-38 set a record to 40k in 90 seconds and not long afterwards the F-4 beat it.

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"Would have been impressive, could have been impressive, should have been impressive"

The climb rate was about 4,200 - 4,600 feet per minute. 2 minutes to 11,000 meters? No way. 2 minutes to 9,200 feet, or about 2,800 meters or less is more like it.

Siegfried, you have made many false statements about the performance of German aircraft, even in this thread. Are you making this up as you go?

Your claims are starting to sound like Gastonese ... whre did you get 2 minutes to 11,000 meters?

Greg, he is talking about a coulda/woulda/shoulda variant with a rocket engine in addition to the the jet engine.

OK, I apologize. I thought he meant the production aircraft.

Sorry Siegfried, it is not Gastonese after all. Please slap me. Really.

I'll buy the beer.

Concerning Bmw003R powered He-162, i only found calculatings and anticipatings saying reaching 295 feet from standing point in 24 seconds, then 16400 ft within 1mn57 seconds.
Karl Baur, him, in march 1945 did fly an 262C-2b igniting BMW 718 units at 0 foot/100 mph to reach 25000 feet in 1 minute30 from unstick.

There were no test flights of the He 162with BMW 003R rocket however there is some test flight data in Anthony Kay's "German jet engines and gas turbines" for about 3 flights in the Me 262. It clearly would have been capable of a very fast intercept and also of getting through most allied fighter screens. Interestingly the aircraft had greater range than a standard Me 262.

Why do you think we should use He 162 as compared with He-162? Do you think that everyone will mis-identify the aircraft? Everyone will know what we are talking about, either way.

It has been called the "Salamander" longer than the Third Reich existed added to the length of time of the entire production run added to the entire time it flew in combat added to the entire length of WWII, all together. It has earned the nickname, and will probabkly be known as the "Salamander" forever.

You might as well get used to it since it is a fact at this time and has been so for 50+ years, outside of the Heinkel factory as well as outside of Germany. I had a book from 1950 that identifies it as the "Salamander" and that is possible misidentification for 62 years. I think the identifier nickname IS "Salamader" as far as history is concerned.

Siegfried said:

The ejection seat was a German invention, .

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Like heck it was; James Martin was invited, in 1944, to investigate ways to extract pilots from aircraft, and experiments with 16' test rig started in January 1945, with a 200lb weight on the 20th., and a live shot, with Mr. Bernard Lynch, on the 24th. The first ejection, from a modified Defiant, using just sand bags, took place on May 10th., 1945, and I doubt that Martin had been able to steal anything from Germany in just two days. Bernard Lynch made the first live ejection, from a modified Meteor III, 24-7-45.