Best Bomber Killing Aircraft......

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Erich said:
no but your location says otherwise ........ C.C. humidity city in the summer months according to a good friend that lives there.

in-laws, bah Humbug !
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High humidity is an understatement, Its a steam bath here in the summer. And im going with the 190 in any of the 20mm 30mm varients. the 262 was just to fast to accuratly target a slow moving bomber without making multiple passes and leaving itself open to .50 cal fire. Just my opinion.
 
speed is vital in attacking bombers, unlike sims where we all slow down to get a good shot whilst sitting out of range because we've turned the accurately modeled gunney off in real life speed was everything because it's speed that makes you bloody hard to hit, and with 4x 30mm cannon you only need to get off one or two birsts and even a B-17 will struggle to stay in the air............
 
you really cant go past the me-262 for its firepower and speed. As long as the pilots could get a good shot in. I was reading about the me-163 Komet and they also had an amazing speed but there guns had a slow speed or rate? anyway this meant that it was more luck or miracle if they hit their target because of the time that they had available to shoot. However there might have been some development of putting on guns that fire upwards and when the me-163 passed under the bomber some sensor would be triggered off (from the light) and the bomber would get blasted.
 
The sensors did not work well at all, and most projests of the type we abandoned.... U seem enamoured by the 262 in the last couple threads and I think u need to spend some more time educating urself about the facts....

Read this entire thread and get an idea of the other platforms that were used to attack bomber pulks...
 
Me 163 rocket dud had the same arms as the 262. both the 3cm minimal range but deadly cannons. the Me 163's if confirmed shot down only 12 bombers. Talk about to close for comfort on the closing range to get some hits, well you can see why through videos and veteran accounts whomever is left to tell about them in books. Granted a unique craft but far too deadly to it's pilot than to the US AF in the skies
 
Erich, even if the Me 163 shot down 9 bombers for the loss of 14 of its own, then that's still better than what could be achieved by Kolbenjäger in the same period.


I have often read that the Komet pilots had a hard time shooting down bombers due to the high speed of their approach. Some thoughts:
After WW2 all jet fighters had a speed similar to that of the Komet and were armed with guns/cannons. I never read about MiG-15 pilots complaining about difficulties of shooting down B-29s in Korea. Talking about Korea, pilots who had just converted to jet aircraft complained that their faster aircraft were unsuited for ground attacks because it all went too fast. After a while they got the hang of it. Ever since air forces have used a fixed wing jet as their main attack aircraft.
The closing speed of the Komet to a B-17 would be something like 500 kmh. This would mean an attack time of 3 seconds. Two MK 108s renown for their high rate of fire would thus throw out 30 shells each (=half of the total ammo in one pass). If just 1/20 of these hit the target the bomber would have been destroyed. The Komet was also a stable gun platform and flew more smoothly than piston engined aircraft.
Finally, let's compare with the earlier head-on passes: these were very difficult though still succesful. Their approach speed was 1100 km/h which means less than half the attack time.


And on the range of the Me 163, consider that it would be possible for the Komet to engage a target at a distance of 50 km only to glide down and touch down at another pre-designated airfield. They didn't need to get back to base. Their excellent gliding abilities would have meant that they could have reached several suitable airfields in a distance of several kilometers.

Kris
 
Kris for the amount of time and energy spent on this little devil they should of put more research and development in perfecting the engines and fuel system in the Me 262A.

the little Komet was too much of a horror story to the pilots and ground crews associated with it and for it's all over war effort it was worthless compared to what was in the Luftwaffe arsenal. have to hand it to the techs though the little bugger was an ingenious piece of equip, but was totally wreckless
 
I dont pretend that the Me-262 was perfect but speed is a vital asset to have to take on bomber formations with their fighter escorts. Put it this way how many Me-262s were lost to the gunners from a B-17? They couldnt keep up with it. On the video game secret weapons of normandy there is an interview with a U.S. gunner and he said he tried to aim and keep up with it but couldnt. It wouldnt be a good bomber killing aircraft if it was easy to shoot down.
 
Erich said:
Kris for the amount of time and energy spent on this little devil they should of put more research and development in perfecting the engines and fuel system in the Me 262A.
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Wasn't the development done by the Lippisch team with little help from Messerschmitt who was against the project. He even designed competing designs to the turbojet variant of the Me 163, the Lippisch P 20.

What horror story are you referring to?

And off-topic Erich, what has happened to the Luftwaffe-Experten forum???

Kris
 
I am not clear on the origins of the Me 163, but had been in contact with Rudi Opitz some years back ........ on operations, he mentioned their constant move because of the quickness of the Soviet advances. He felt the speed of the little bugger was too much for attacking the bombers as the rocket would over-fly on many ops.

the horroI am talking about is the way the fuels did not mix even under the strictest guidelines, one goof up mis-placement and boom or burn or melt or ........ you get the picture. How uneasy the ground crews must have been after watching 1-2 Rocket fighters blow up in front of them while on the ground,e verything torched or melted into a nasty heap.

as to LEMB, Peter is working on it, major server probs. But he is not alone as rafcommands has gone through a major hack job and Ross is recovering original posts but lost the answers or other posts with those very thread starts. armyairforces got popped for a day as well but back online, all during superbowl weekend .......... odd eh ?
 
Now that's strange!!
You talked to Rudi Opitz personally and you still hold on to those urban legend stories of people incinerating and blowing up??

Komet Me163 - Chief test pilot Rudy Opitz tells it like it was - Flight Journal.com Page 5

Popular Wisdom vs. a Test Pilot's Experiences

1. Rocket engines would explode without warning.

RO: engines were reliable and relatively safe and were adjusted so as to shut down in the event of an imbalance in fuel flow. If there was a problem in engine performance, it related to shutdowns, not explosions. The only instances of engines blowing were in early testing of prototypes or when they had been damaged in battle or by accident.

2. Leaking fuel could turn pilots to jelly, particularly if the plane flipped over.

RO: pilots, me included, survived overturned Komets, and an overturned ship would not necessarily leak fuel into the cockpit. When fuel contacted organic material, including skin, it ignited after only a few seconds. Our protective nylon suits would not ignite but were porous, and fuel could sop through to the skin.

3. Forward-mounted flaps were necessary to counter a negative pitching moment from the trailing-edge flaps.

RO: the TE flaps were trim flaps only, and the deployment of the forward-mounted underwing flaps did not cause a pitch change.

4. The Komet's dive to speeds resulting in compressibility were often fatal.

RO: no fatalities resulted from this, to my knowledge. The Komets in such dives recovered after reaching a lower altitude that neutralized the compressibility problems.

5. As many as 15 percent of Komets broke up while pulling out of high-speed dives where compressibility had became a factor.

RO: no such fatalities to my knowledge.

6. Stall characteristics were abrupt and severe and taxed the skills of even experienced fighter pilots.

RO: the plane was equipped with leading-edge slots that eliminated stalls and caused it to mush forward in a mode that was immediately recoverable. The plane would not spin and was intentionally designed to be docile for low-time pilots.

7. Only experienced pilots could adequately handle the airplane at slow speeds.

RO: the plane was docile and friendly at slow speeds, and it had to be for low-time pilots to successfully land it dead-stick.

Good that Peter Evans has things under control. I was fearing something similar like that of a couple of years ago had happened. That would probably have meant the definite end of LEMB.
Kris
 
it doesn't matter Les, Rudi never flew combat operations and that is what I am after. Wolfgang Späte talked of the horrors in his test commando before the JG 400 debache and then off to safer grounds in JG 7. Sorry the Me 163 K was not a safe bird to handle in my opinion. Flight Journal is also down in my book as well
 
Opitz did fly operational missions. Not only did he fly the second operational mission ever (with the Me 163V-33 shortly after Späte flew the red V-41), he took command of the I. Gruppe and after that the II. Gruppe until badly wounded in a crash in April 1945.

So if anyone would know of Komets blowing up or incinerating its pilots, he would know about it.

(Information comes from Ethell, Messerschmitt 163 Komet - Entwicklung und Einsatz des ersten Raketenjägers.)

Kris
 
Wow, forgive me if I repeat some things already said, this is an enormous thread and I didn't cover everything. At first I felt the190 wasn't at home at high altitudes, my ref says no 37,000' is pretty high. So I would put my hat in the Fw190A8 R2 camp. One thing worth mentioning is a film strip of a B17 getting ripped up, from about 80m the Ger, hits the tail, the ball turret, the outer port eng and finally the inner port engine, breaking off at about 10-15m. The point is, to bring down a heavy, you got to do a lot of damage.
Food for thought, had the Do335 V2 heavy day fighter, been deployed we might be talking about its virtues.
 
Joe I have that movie clip, yes a SturmFw attack it was from an Fw 190A-8/R2. pretty ugly but a great defensive weapon it was compared to that little fart called a komet .......

H. Bake sitting on his Schwarze 3, A-8/R8, courtesy: the Bake archiv

 
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