Horton HO 229 Vs Vampire...

[GregP]

How much faster is significantly faster?

I think an F-15 would have a tough time shooting down a Boeing Stearman with a gun if the Stearman saw him coming. It wouldn't be all that hard to get out of his line of flight.

Perhaps I'm wrong.

If one antgonist is 15% better than the other one it might be tough. But if you are 30%+ better and come in at the full 30%+ difference, you will be shooting at air if the lesser-performing aircraft sees you.

If he doesn't, you have an ambush easy-kill. Turning radius is NOT irrelevant to a dogfight.

It is to an ambush.

Not to start a fight, just my take on it based on listening to WWII fighter pilots. Many fomer P-40 pilots have said that if the P-36 had 50-cals instead of 30-cals, they would have taken the P-36 for it's better maneuverability if given the choice. Most were NOT given a choice ... when a unit re-equips, it is all or nothing.

I'd have fought VERY hard not to fly an Me 163. It had WONDERFUL performance when the engine was running (several minutes) but only had maybe 120 rounds of ammunition and you had to glide through a hostile sky and belly-land before you could climb out and get away from it. Sounds like suicide even without the volatile fuel issues.

 

[stona]

The Horten wings were not everything their designers claimed for them.
Reimar Horten claimed that he and his brother had come up with the 'bell shaped lift distribution theory' (BSLD). This Reimar finally published in 1981 in 'Soaring' magazine. It also features in his book 'Nurflugel'.

Unfortunately it is yet another retrospective claim. Existing Horten drawings show that the H IIIb, H XII and H IX had a linear wing twist not matching the BSLD. Karl Nickel, who did much of the aerodynamic calculations for the Horten designs is on the record stating that none of them had genuine BSLD. Further he said that he never heard of this theory from Reimar before they parted company in 1955. Walter could neither confirm nor deny that he knew of the BSLD theory.

Never trust an old Nazi, especially one that had visited the Sachsenhausen and Nordhausen camps, only to later say that the situation in those camps, as claimed by the allies was "...a thing of propaganda."

Cheers

Steve

 

[GregP]

I have heard of the "lift at center span" theory but am not able to verify it was as claimed. I think it was a normal wing but have no corroboration to prove it. look at the pics. I do NOT think it was revolutionary except for being a flying wing to start with at a time when they were relatively unknown.

The real-world performance is in grave doubt, but it was probably quite fast given the design, assuming it survived the test flights.

Some real data would be nice; not propaganda.

The one they have at the NASM is NOT complete and cannot be so since it is missing critical components.

 

[stona]

BSLD theory goes back to Prandtl in the early '30s. The Horten's didn't discover it, but they did claim to have developed it on some of their wings, which they did not.
The BSLD has considerably less drag than an elliptical lift distribution (the next most theoretically efficient). I've seen the maths but couldn't understand it
Cheers
Steve

 

[stona]

The Me 262 was not a dogfighter, nor was it targeting the US escorts. Any Me 262 pilot who slowed down and engaged in a turning fight with a piston engine fighter deserved to get shot down

To give some context American fighters claimed 155 Me 262s destroyed and British fighters a further 31. There were many, many more claimed as damaged by both allied air forces, and a few 'probables' in the British system.

A quick excerpt from one of the many combat reports involving Me 262s illustrates the advantage of turning inside the jet's attack. This is from Flt.Lt. HVC Hawker who was flying a 683 Squadron P.R. Spitfire when he had a running 'battle' with a pair of Me 262s.

"In his last attack he broke to port again and flew about 2,000 yards away parallel to me on my port side. He remained there for about two minutes. I hoped for a moment he had lost me, but I soon realised he was watching me, and probably pacing me, as he was just keeping abreast and must have throttled back. He then pulled over behind and slightly below me and proceeded to overtake me fast. I kept a straight course until he was 600yards astern, then I did the steepest climbing turn that I could make. He followed me for the first quarter of it, and except from the very beginning of the turn he was outside me...as I straightened up on a southerly course, having completed 360 degrees, I saw him at a great distance away, turning to port."

The Me 262 was a new aircraft and Hawker, an experienced combat pilot, made some notes of "points that impressed me about the jet aircraft" in his combat report. They would be echoed by many of his colleagues, British and American.

"1. In his first pass at me his speed was 100-150 mph greater than mine.

2. That the jet aircraft was fast enough to attack from below and accelerated rapidly even in a slight climb.

3. His aileron control was remarkably good; he snapped easily into any turn that he made.

4. The actual radius of turn was great, though he might have been able to turn tighter than he did if he had slowed up a bit.

5. The pilot of the second aircraft [the one involved in the excerpt above] was very experienced and certainly gave me a feeling of 'mouse and cat'"

Cheers

Steve

 

[kool kitty89]

Captain Eric Brown, Chief Naval Test Pilot and C.O. Captured Enemy Aircraft Flight Royal Aircraft Establishment, who tested the Me 262 noted: "This was a Blitzkrieg aircraft. You whack in at your bomber. It was never meant to be a dogfighter, it was meant to be a destroyer of bombers... The great problem with it was it did not have dive brakes. For example, if you want to fight and destroy a B-17, you come in on a dive. The 30mm cannon were not so accurate beyond 600 meters. So you normally came in at 600 yards and would open fire on your B-17. And your closing speed was still high and since you had to break away at 200 meters to avoid a collision, you only had two seconds firing time. Now, in two seconds, you can't sight. You can fire randomly and hope for the best. If you want to sight and fire, you need to double that time to four seconds. And with dive brakes, you could have done that."[44]

Lack of air brakes seems like a major shortcoming, yes, probably one of the most legitimate complaints regarding the Me 262 that could/should have been addressed. (should have aided landing as well)

They'd also be useful for staying below critical mach in dives and avoiding use of throttles.

Eventually, German pilots developed new combat tactics to counter Allied bombers' defenses. Me 262s, equipped with R4M rockets, approached from the side of a bomber formation, where their silhouettes were widest, and while still out of range of the bombers' machine guns, fired a salvo of rockets with strongly brisant Hexogen-filled warheads, exactly the same explosive in the shells fired by the Me 262A's quartet of MK 108 cannon. One or two of these rockets could down even the famously rugged B-17 Flying Fortress,[45] from the "metal-shattering" brisant effect of the R4M rockets' explosive warheads, weighing only some 520 grams (17.6 ounces) per projectile out of a total launch weight of 4 kg (8.8 pounds) apiece.

Also one of the technically simpler designs that feasibly could have been developed much earlier had there been greater support/interest.

That said, Delcyros pointed out in a lengthy previous discussion on this topic, that the consumption of explosive filler and (especially) propellant used for those rockets far exceeded that of conventional cannons and would have further hampered the strained logistics. (though the anti-tank version of the R4M would have been more useful than existing ground attack rockets)

Employing a pair of MK-103s on the Me 262 would have been more useful for extending their useful attack range. The rate of fire would be less than half the 108s, but ammo capacity could be higher and firing long bursts starting further out and approaching from the side might have proven very effective.

Aside from that, developing a 37 mm MK-108 or MGFF derived cannon would have been much more useful than the effort they put into 50 mm cannon developments or R4M. (and likely compact and light enough to fit a pair on the Me 262) Using the MG-151 as the basis for larger scale cannons might have been a good idea too, not sure why that wasn't pursued. (the Japanese showed the M2 browning mechanism scaled up well to 20, 30, and 37 mm as well as developing the oerlikon/becker mechanism successfully ... odd the US, UK, or Germany didn't make similar attempts)

The Me 262 is 11% thick at the root and 9% at the tip.

I've seen it written that the Horten had an airfoil that developed most of the lift along the centerline of the airfoil and less at the leading and trailing edges, but have never seen an airfoil number for it, so I have no way to estimate it's stalling characteristics. The writing I saw has also not been verified with any primary sources.

So, why would the critical angle of attack have been much higher for the Ho. 229? Do you have any data supporting that? No agenda and not a real disagreement ... just asking as I don't know much about the airfoil on the Horten.

I may have phrased it poorly, but I meant to say the Me 262's critical AoA would be unusually high due to the characteristics of LE slats (or slots for that matter). Even with the 262's thin, symmetrical airfoil, the use of slats should make the critical AoA higher than pretty much any conventional airfoil in use, especially one without the advantage of prop wash. (P-38 might be an exception due both to airfoil and twin props and especially with maneuvering flaps deployed -not the dive flaps, the trailing edge flaps in maneuvering position -- the P-38 was known for being stable in extreme high-AoA high-speed stalls with a combination of factors -including neutral torque- preventing spinning or tumbling)

Pulling extreme high, stall or near stall maneuvers are going to lose energy FAST though, so limited in practical use. (cases like pulling lead on a deflection shot for a very limited period or intentionally losing speed to make an opponent overshoot -a bad move if there's an enemy wingman or backup around further behind you, so a rarely useful tactic ... more useful on the P-38 given the much better low-speed acceleration)

The Bf 109 technically should have had that advantage as well, except the heavy rudder at high speeds limited the useful range of pulling extreme maneuvers and the torque involved with the single prop should have meant more risk of spinning as well. (I'm not sure of the 109's spin characteristics though)


For landing, the high critical AoA is problematic due to the very nose-high position for managing minimum landing speed, the dangerous stall characteristics of flying wings tend to mostly be present at high speeds as well, so low speed stalls on landing wouldn't be serious (similar to aircraft with snap-roll/spin problems, except without the wing-dropping torque issues at low speed).

The wing area and air breaks should have made the 229 easier to land than the 262, though possibly harder to taxi with the more limited cockpit view.

Of course, if a better powerplant were available, the U.S. may have re-evaluated the P-59.

The production P-59As and Bs weren't underpowered for their time, no more so than the Meteor I or III, or P-80A. 2x 1650 or 2000 lbf engines should have been fine. The main problems with performance were the very large, somewhat thick wing (slightly larger than the Meteor's and about as thick as the Vampire's) and more so the engine nacelle/fuselage interaction. (possibly the tail surface thickness as well) It appeared to have very similar problems to the early Meteors but a bit more pronounced, and like the Meteor it may have been the nacelle design alone that limited things most, with longer chord, streamlined intake and exhaust ducts improving mach limit and top speed substantially. (likely increasing the already high ceiling as well) Fuel capacity was also somewhat limited, but given the massive space inside the wing, a redesign to expand capacity should have been very possible. (reduced drag from corrected nacelles combined with the already modest fuel expansion in the P-59B should have made it reasonably useful for medium range intrusion and recon -especially at high altitude)

It likely would have remained slower than the Meteor III, but at least should have broken 500 MPH at altitude. The exceptional glide performance and safety record during flight testing and training are the practical stand-out features of the existing P-59s.

 

[kool kitty89]

The Horton Ho 229 was designed as a fighter or strike bomber. It had a bomb bay. Gotha was involved only so much as providing a manufacturing facility.

Apparently there were plans for bomb bays in the later, unbuilt prototypes, but not in any of the completed aircraft. I'm not quite sure where you'd fit any either, given the thick centerline is pretty well dominated by landing gear ... maybe some space in the wing section. but given the 2000 kg bombload capacity, I'd think most of that would be carried externally. (or maybe with some sort of expendable doped wooden aerodynamic fairings to reduce drag and mask the radar signal of the bombs)

It was armed with a pair of 30mm canon because it was thought it would be a capable fighter as well. Given its performance it would ideally never meet a Vampire as a bomber: it was far faster due to the Vampire's relatively (to Me 262 and Meteor III/IV) low Mach limit.

Mach limit would be less of a limiting factor below 20,000 ft, more so the limited thrust of the early Vampire and also limited thrust to weight ratio, climb, and acceleration. (though it was faster than the Meteor III, even moderately faster than the Meteor III with long chord nacelles, though possibly slower than with the 2,400 lbf Derwent IV)

Roll rate was probably better than the Me 262 or Ho 229 given the size and weight distribution.

Fuel capacity and range/endurance were also very limited on the earliest production Vampire Mk.Is. (though less of a concern for an interceptor)

If nothing else, the Ho 229 probably would have made a better bomber/fighter-bomber than the Ar 234 or Me 262.

Dr Kurt Tank conducted an analysis of flying wing versus conventional configuration aircraft. His broad conclusion was that in General that flying wings offer no advantage in speed or other areas of performance but do offer an notable advantage in altitude due to their lower wing loading. He however concluded that due to the extra flight testing required of a flying wing that it would take longer to reach service. I would tend to think range was a little better as well.

I'd think internal capacity for fuel and other stores (bombs at larger scales) would be major advantages, plus a wing large/thick enough to completely bury engines in and still have low drag and high mach number. (granted, all characteristics shared with the delta wing, including thick deltas with buried/blended/nonexistent fuselages)

Things went slightly wrong in that the aircraft was designed around the BMW 003, then upgraded to the Junkers Jumo 004 which was progressing faster and more powerful. At one point Junkers had moved an accessories gearbox. Unfortunately nobody informed Horton (this is today still and all too common mistake in fast moving tech projects) and this gearbox now went though the spar area and would have forced the spar to be too thin in that area. The short term solution was to thicken the wing/fuselage in the centre area slightly. It was thought this might effect mach limit and the solution was to be a slight scaling up of the aircraft to restore fineness. The first two prototype were to be test beds and the subsequent ones slight scaling ups (about 5%).

I wonder if the project would have been at all accelerated/improved if they'd built at least one airframe still targeting the BMW 003 lest even more problems materialize on the 004 and/or if 003 production materialized soon enough to be useful in parallel with the 004. Given the characteristics of the 003 when it actually reached production quality (and late prototypes actually flight worthy) it seems like it would have still had useful advantages over the 004, and possibly prove less dangerous in testing as well. (on the Me 262 as well -probably better than diverting resources to the He 162)

For that matter, from a practical/material/logistics/training/performance standpoint, making the Me 262 the only production jet aircraft in 1944/45 would probably make the most sense. (including diverting all BMW 003s to Me 262 production and possibly even displacing the Ar 234 with photo recon Me 262 variants)

The Ho 229's is interesting in terms of both performance (projected at least -range included) and wooden construction ... especially assuming they successfully worked around the glue supply issues late war. The more limited armament capacity compared to the Me 262 hurts things somewhat (unless it could have been made to carry 4x Mk 108s as well, though the suggested 2x MK-103s were interesting for their high velocity and more useful deflection shooting performance) though the potential as a night fighter may have been more significant with the lower radar signature and longer endurance.

In terms of pure resources, I do wonder if the Horton Brothers' talent for wooden aircraft engineering might have been better spent (or at least partially spent) on more conventional designs, or perhaps consulting for on other wooden aircraft projects. Gotha seems to have been a bit underutilized given they were one of the most notable wooden aircraft producers pre-war. Be it transports, fighters, bombers, or attack aircraft, developing modern wooden aircraft for the war effort would seem pretty useful. (pressing Kurt Tank into developing a wooden Mosquito killer yet not putting effort into encouraging Gotha's developments earlier in the war seems rather odd)

The Horton brothers seemed to be rather exclusive and uncooperative with outside firms (or at very least modifications to their designs) so earlier cooperation with Gotha might not have been so useful ... or Gotha might have just taken some of their concepts and developed them independently with more conservative or practical alternatives. (if likely 'inferior' stolen ideas in the Hortons' eyes)

Though honestly, having Gotha build a decent wooden replacement for the Ju 52 seems like one of the most practical and useful tasks they could have undertaken early war. (quite off topic, granted, and if it's at all worth continuing, I'd encourage taking it to a dedicated thread ... or at least one of the transport related ones like this: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/transport-aircraft-layout-43039.html )

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Lack of air brakes seems like a major shortcoming, yes, probably one of the most legitimate complaints regarding the Me 262 that could/should have been addressed. (should have aided landing as well).

This was an after the fact realization as it was discovered that once you built up speed in a jet (even an early jet) it took a lot to slow it down. In jets I've flown you used the speed brakes to get you on speed in the pattern, kept them in base to final and deployed them during the roll out to aid in braking.

 

[stona]

The pattern of many combat reports does not show that the jets wanted to slow down. Many combats take the form of the Me 262(s) making a rapid pass at the target(s) which evade by breaking sharply port or starboard. The jets could then use their superior speed to set up another attack in classic 'boom and zoom' tactics. Often this pattern was repeated many times (eight or ten in some reports) with the intended target effectively evading every . Eventually the Me 262s were forced to disengage due to one of the most fundamental shortcomings of the type, a lack of endurance.

Flt.Lt. Jim Rosser tells of attacking a lone Me 262 which simply accelerated away from his Spitfire. Rosser survived the war and remained in the RAF and many years later visited an airfield occupied by the Federal German Luftwaffe. He related his experience to some of the German officers hosting the visit and amazingly one of them remembered a similar incident as he had been flying the Me 262. He told Rosser that he had seen the Spitfire coming.
"I opened up my engines flat out until I lost you. But if you had kept after me you would have got me for sure, because I had to shut down my speed after a minute or so, as my fuel tanks were all but dry."
If Rosser had known he might have been the first RAF pilot to down an Me 262. This was precisely how Pilot Officer Bob Cole managed to shoot down Unteroffizier Edmund Delatowski's Me 262 after chasing it for 40 miles in his Tempest.

It seems to me slowing down would expose the Me 262s to a bomber formation's defensive fire for longer (the reason head on attacks were developed) and give the escorting fighters a chance to get at them. They had to exploit the one clear advantage they had which was their speed.

Cheers

Steve

 

[davparlr]

Speed is life and certainly for the early jets, which were slow to accelerate, and especially the German jets who faced a horde of eager Allied aircraft. I am sure the Germans did not want to slow down, even with speed brakes.

 

[GregP]

Sort of makes them useless for fighter V fighter combat, doesn't it? Of course the bombers couldn't maneuver so quickly and so were relatively stationary targets.

But fighter V fighter, the jets would be OK against one another, not so good versus a good piston fighter ... and vice-versa. Good thing the timeline happened as it did.

 

[kool kitty89]

This was an after the fact realization as it was discovered that once you built up speed in a jet (even an early jet) it took a lot to slow it down. In jets I've flown you used the speed brakes to get you on speed in the pattern, kept them in base to final and deployed them during the roll out to aid in braking.

I would have thought it would have been realized during flight testing ... granted, it took a long time before dive flaps were introduced on the P-47 or P-38 (useful as air brakes and countering mach-tuck). For aircraft with serious critical mach performance issues, having air breaks for limiting dive speeds would be useful. (cases where you'd want to actually loose more speed than that would be more limited, but still notable -though without breaks, at moderate speeds, pulling high-G turns or even high-speed stalls to bleed energy is almost as useful)

I'm not sure when the Meteor got airbreaks ... I think the Mk.I had them, I know the Mk.III did. I think the P-80 got the wing-center/belly break in the YP-80A

Eventually the Me 262s were forced to disengage due to one of the most fundamental shortcomings of the type, a lack of endurance.

Compared to the BF 109, I don't think the Me 262's endurance was that poor at all, at least at high altitude (fuel consumption rapidly increases in denser air), but it would still be limited, yes ... and the high consumption at low level would mean more reserve needed for landing.

And yes, Boom and zoom would be the only consistently potent tactics to use against prop fighters. (like the 109 used against the hurricane or 190 vs Spit V or P-40 vs Ki-27 and Ki 43, or F6F and F4U vs A6M)

Basically the same tactics used against bomber formations, just trickier given fighters move around more.

Low speed acceleration is indeed poor. You need to get close to 350-400 MPH (or more or less .5~.6 mach) to have a thrust advantage over typical late war prop fighters, prop efficiency, airframe drag characteristics, and altitude performance depending. (airframes with high transonic drag and top speeds below or near 400 MPH would fall behind at lower speeds) With a loaded thrust/weight ratio close to .4, acceleration would have likely outstripped most piston engine fighters at all but takeoff/landing speeds. (a hypothetical Me 262 with mature HeS-006 engines or 003s using overrev might have gotten close, 004D/Es as well, and certainly BMW 003Ds)

It seems to me slowing down would expose the Me 262s to a bomber formation's defensive fire for longer (the reason head on attacks were developed) and give the escorting fighters a chance to get at them. They had to exploit the one clear advantage they had which was their speed.

Indeed, using the air brakes for that would seem unwise. Using them to manage steep dives when already well over 500 MPH and risking passing through limiting mach, brakes would be more useful. (more so if they were engineered to be safely operated for emergency use AFTER exceeding limiting mach and getting locked into mach-tuck)

Plus using breaks to moderate speed helps avoid using much throttle. Throttling the engines as little as possible should have improved the engine life and reliability somewhat. (jet engines also loose efficiency at lower throttle settings, so omptimal cruise is usually near max RPM at high altitude)

Sort of makes them useless for fighter V fighter combat, doesn't it? Of course the bombers couldn't maneuver so quickly and so were relatively stationary targets.

But fighter V fighter, the jets would be OK against one another, not so good versus a good piston fighter ... and vice-versa. Good thing the timeline happened as it did.

No more useless than the P-51, P-38, P-47, F6F, or F4U were against most Japanese opponents ... and probably better than P-40s and F4Fs vs A6Ms and Ki 43s, perhaps similar to P-40s vs Ki-27s. (armament aside -the MK 108 was useful for dogfights, but overkill and not ideal -the velocity and RoF of MG 151s would be far more useful and plenty devastating)

 

[GregP]

The pistons didn't have quite the disparity in performance between themselves that the jets had with the pistons.

I'll have to say I disagree considerably, Kool Kitty ... but, that's OK. The end result still doesn't change.

 

[stona]

There is also the pilot factor. With the use of the Me 262 as a bomber many pilots were converted bomber pilots who were lacking in the tactical know how of their allied opponents flying their fighters
The original intake for Me 262 fighters was of converted Zerstorer pilots, usually with the instrument qualifications so lacking in S/E fighter pilots, and with experience of T/E types. These guys would be expected to do better.
The lack of endurance of the Me 262 is bemoaned time and time again by the men who flew them. Only the bomber version could use the rearmost tank as this had to be counterbalanced by the external stores. A downside of this is that jettisoning the stores before said tank was exhausted made the aircraft impossible for the average pilot to control.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Koopernic]

"I'm not sure when the Meteor got airbreaks ... I think the Mk.I had them, I know the Mk.III did. I think the P-80 got the wing-center/belly break in the YP-80A"

The Meteor Mk.I didn't have air brakes, the Mk.III did. I would have thought that Me 410 style air brakes would have worked in the Me 262. The bomber versions of the Me 262 were supposed to use the TSA 2D toss bombing sight so they only needed a shallow dive to aim accurately. Bombing results were good compared to the Fw 190 as the jet engines lack of vibration didn't interfere with the gyroscopes and accelerometers that tacked the aircraft during the pull up 'toss'.

The tactical solution was to approach the bombers from below, then conduct a pull-up to wash off speed. Long term they weren't interested in washing of speed as introducing a radar device to inject range into the gyroscopic gun sight for a single pass accurate slashing attack from any angle. The FuG 248 "Elfe" was a ranging radar for jet fighters that calculated a firing solution for the EZ42 or EZ45 gyro sight (moving the gun sight recticle mirror to correct for ballistic fall of and target lead and air density.)

Funkgeräte

https://books.google.com.au/books?i...g&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=FuG 248&f=false

For night fighters the latter German microwave radars (FuG 247) were to incorporate track locking and allow autonomous aiming by injecting the aiming data into the auto pilot via a computer called Oberon. With the ground controller also able to inject interception data via telemetry into the autopilot complete interceptions and firing without forming up becomes possible.

They weren't planning on slowing down to aim at any time of day.

The Me 262 really was only transitional. The Ta 183 (to be produced in 1945) and Blohm Voss P 212 had prototypes under construction and Messerschmitt's P.1011 was also in the running. The latter German projects were obsessional about landing speed and wing loading due to runway considerations.

Post Script:

One of the variants of the bomber version was the Me 262 A-2a/U1. The aircraft featured the TSA 2D flight control system which allowed precision bombing in level flight or in dives. The system was tested in three airframes (W.Nr. 130 164, W.Nr. 130 188 and W.Nr. 170 070), which were later transferred to a frontline unit (JG7)

 

[stona]

Except on introduction the Me 262 bombers of 3./KG 51 / Kommando Schenk who later joined I./KG(J)51 were not fitted with bomb sights. Furthermore they were ordered not to operate below 4,000m in an effort to prevent the Allies realising that an Me 262 bomber was operational (something they soon knew anyway).
The 'bomb aiming' technique was simply to release the bombs as the target disappeared from view under the engine nacelles. Even in September 1944, long after the cat was out of the bag, the aircraft of KG 51 were still attacking the bridge at Nijmegen from an estimated 10,000 ft. They were difficult to shoot down as Gunner LC Betts of 405 Battery, 123rd Light AA Regiment of the Royal Artillery remembers that "we had 400mph clock sights and we had to be outside the sight to get anywhere near them." Again speed was the Me 262s best defence.

There are lots of ifs, buts and what ifs and had any of them been realised in time the Me 262 would have been an even more formidable aircraft than it anyway was, but they weren't.

Cheers

Steve

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I would have thought it would have been realized during flight testing ... granted, it took a long time before dive flaps were introduced on the P-47 or P-38 (useful as air brakes and countering mach-tuck). For aircraft with serious critical mach performance issues, having air breaks for limiting dive speeds would be useful. (cases where you'd want to actually loose more speed than that would be more limited, but still notable -though without breaks, at moderate speeds, pulling high-G turns or even high-speed stalls to bleed energy is almost as useful)

I'm not sure when the Meteor got airbreaks ... I think the Mk.I had them, I know the Mk.III did. I think the P-80 got the wing-center/belly break in the YP-80A

To answer that, one of the most critial considerations an aircraft designer has to deal with - WEIGHT. I think speed brakes were a secondary consideration especially during early development.

 

[stona]

I still don't understand why anyone thinks it desirable for the Me 262 to slow down, except possibly to prevent over speeding in a dive. Many of the accounts which I have read show that it could be fatal. Here's another excerpt, this time from an American P-39 pilot, Lieutenant Walt Carper.

"The pilot [of the Me 262] made a mistake when he tried to turn to position his aircraft, because evidently the jet lost speed in the turn and his rate of acceleration could not compare favourably with that of the P-38. Although I could not appreciably close the range, the Me 262 could not pull away and when I broke away I was at the same range as when I started firing."

Carper too, had some conclusions for the benefit of his Unit Intelligence Officer.

"The P-38 has a definite advantage over the Me 262 when the '262 attempts to make a tight turn because he must sacrifice the primary advantageof a jet - speed."

His colleagues in the RAF had reached the same conclusion. They adopted the tactic of firing at extreme range, hoping to make the jet weave, slowing it down and allowing them to catch up. It worked for Wing Commander Wray, flying a Tempest.

"He started to weave violently, which was not too clever at that altitude, but this allowed me to close to about 300 yards. I was about to fire again when his port wing hit a building on the edge of the Rhine, and he pitched right into the river."

This was the demise of Leutnant Wolfgang Lubke of II./KG(J)51.

The Me 262 was a formidable machine but it was far from immune to piston engine fighters. By early 1945 the USAAF estimated that it was destroying one Me 262 for every ten missions flown by their Groups. With the adoption of better tactics, better gun sights, g suits and other improvements along with increased numbers of jets to engage this ratio had risen to one Me 262 destroyed for every four Group missions by the end of the war.

Cheers

Steve

 

[BiffF15]

Lack of air brakes seems like a major shortcoming, yes, probably one of the most legitimate complaints regarding the Me 262 that could/should have been addressed. (should have aided landing as well)

They'd also be useful for staying below critical mach in dives and avoiding use of throttles.

Pulling extreme high, stall or near stall maneuvers are going to lose energy FAST though, so limited in practical use. (cases like pulling lead on a deflection shot for a very limited period or intentionally losing speed to make an opponent overshoot -a bad move if there's an enemy wingman or backup around further behind you, so a rarely useful tactic ... more useful on the P-38 given the much better low-speed acceleration)

Kool Kitty,

My first jet was the T-37 and if I remember correctly we landed it with the speed break out, and it had thrust attenuators (things that popped out into the engine blast to cut thrust but keep RPM up). The latter device was used to keep RPM up and thrust down (found on underpowered A/C with slow spooling engines).

The F-16 lands to this day with it's "boards" out, and the Eagle may as well (pilots option).

As for maneuvers that lose energy fast, well they are not limited in practical use, even for the Me-262. If they could get past the escorts, slow down (via a high g pull) to allow for more trigger time on the bombers, then roll over and take it down (continue the boom portion) then all the better. Speed brakes would have made this easier (possibly preventing high AOA induced flameout) while also making it easier to line up / sight in on the bomber streams.

There also needs to be some clarification on "intentionally losing speed to make an opponent overshoot". If you are being shot at the first goal is to survive, period dot. That includes not being hit by anything being fired at you, as well as not hitting the ground, anything attached to said ground, or anything that took off from or will land back there (carriers will be considered ground for the sake of this discussion). The second is neutralize, and the third is to reverse / employ or leave. If making your opponent overshoot is all you have in your bag of tricks or are capable of, then do it. Worry about the next guy when or if he becomes a factor or you have the ability (energy/altitude or maneuvers) to use against him. Just because he is back there doesn't mean he is ready, or will be able to get in range, in plane, and in lead in time. Killing with the gun is difficult, and even more so if the defender is aware and has usable altitude below him.

Cheers,
Biff

 

[wiking85]

That said, Delcyros pointed out in a lengthy previous discussion on this topic, that the consumption of explosive filler and (especially) propellant used for those rockets far exceeded that of conventional cannons and would have further hampered the strained logistics. (though the anti-tank version of the R4M would have been more useful than existing ground attack rockets)

Do you have that thread, I couldn't find it.