how much damage can a ME 262 take compared to a piston driven fighter

[snelson]

Steven, I'm not a fan of those flight sims in comparing to actual aircraft, they're fun and can provide a basic insight if programmed correctly, but they are not real. I could rant and rave about this but that's for another thread.

With that said, I feel airframe wise the -262 would be just as strong as any other piston engine fighter of the period. As stated, the turbine engine is the weak link. If a 262 took just a few rounds in an engine, many nasty things start happening almost immediately, where in a recip it may take some time before the engine "grenades," this even including in-line engines.

yea over all it is pretty obvious that it's not the most realistic game i mean what are the chance's that 4 ME 262's would get into a slow low level turning fight? i also get to fight 335 in a slow turning fight, in this game it 's much harder to kill a 190 than any other plane they just roll and dive away faster than any U.S. plane can follow. but it's just a game, i mean where else could i have 1300 kills and still be fighting into 1946. but i'm also cheating i have unlimited ammo and have the G force's turned off or i would black out every time i tried to turn. but it only cost $10 and gives me something to do at 2 o'clock in the morning

 

[Koopernic]

The Me 262 seems to have had a particularly large volume of fuel, which means a large volume of tank area to protect and a large target area. About 2,000 L (440 imp gal; 530 US gal).

This is 3-4 times the amount of fuel carried by say a Me 109 or Mustang. Perhaps it wasn't so much as vulnerable as more likely to be hit, in the manner of modern aircraft with little empty space.

I presume they were no more flammable than other types and had self sealing tanks typical of German aircraft: about an inch of rubber lining that expanded when wet by fuel to seal of the tank. It could perhaps accept a few stray 0.5 caliber rounds or absorb the external burst of a single 20mm round.

I presume one is relying on a damaged tank sealing itself so that there is insufficient fuel and inadquet air fuel ratio to sustain a fire. The tank can tolerate a few rounds but not too many. I imagine 1-3 might be fairly safe.

It should slow down the progression of a fire sufficiently for the pilot to get out. I would think that putting an ejection seat into the Me 262 such as that on the He 162 would be a priority.

One of the early decisions taken by Junkers was to run the engine of diesel fuel for the sake of economy and safety, it was hard to synthesize high octane gasoline but diesel and kerosene like fuels which are linear chains are much much easier. In fact the Me 262 was multifuel: it ran of diesel grade called K2, a specialist jet fuel the Germans developed called J2. Some Me 262 missions were flown on crude oil only that had been refined by passing through a centrifuge only. The fuel was simply preheated and pumped aboard. (Germany and Austria both had some oil wells, but they were not suitable for producing aviation gasoline due to their low quality). Typically German aviation fuel at the end of the war came from distillation of coke, the benzol process from coke or by steaming of coal (Kerrick process) the fischer-tropsch plants and hydrogenation plants had been severely curtailed by bombing.

Nevertheless diesel fuel is safer than gasoline. I expect the J2 jet fuel was really the scum left over from diesel and gasoline refining and perhaps not as safe as diesel.

Incidentally Frank Whittle chose kerosene because of its resistance to freezing (unlike diesel which thickens) and safety.

BMW had chose to use low grade gasoline to fuel its engines, certainly B4 and perhaps the training aircraft A4 77 octane. The German air ministry found the convenience of using diesel/crude style fuels compelling and ordered BMW to make its engine compatible. The need to re-engineer the fuel system completely greatly delayed the BMW 003.

The Jumo 004 engines of the Me 262 were built around a solid magnesium casting (which helped align everything) while the compressor shell was also a fairly solid item. The rest of it such as the combustion chambers and exhaust duct was sheet metal though if a 0.5 inch hit a combustion chamber I doubt it would pass through the casing but destroy only once chamber. The engine might be shut down to contain a fire, the Me 262 apparently flew well on one engine so long as speed was kept up to maintain rudder authority. I'm not sure of what single engine max speed was but using a square law for 50% thrust loss one would expect 70.7% speed which is about 375mph: perhaps enough to dive away and disengage. There was thus a degree of twin engine safety.

One last note: Me 262 had steal frame baskets that could be placed over the engine to prevent humans from being sucked in, as a safety item, it turns our the aircraft performance was unaffected by these baskets and flown in combat to protect against debris.

The ground attack version of the Me 262 presumably had considerably increased armor as was the manner of ground attack versions of German fighters.

The Luftwaffe was particularly concerned with protecing its aircraft, that is why the new generation of fighters was to have flush side intakes with the air drawn in using boundary layer suction. A wind tunnel model was built and tested fine, the compressor drew 200hp from the turbine shaft. It also helped area ruling.

 

[Koopernic]

yea over all it is pretty obvious that it's not the most realistic game i mean what are the chance's that 4 ME 262's would get into a slow low level turning fight? i also get to fight 335 in a slow turning fight, in this game it 's much harder to kill a 190 than any other plane they just roll and dive away faster than any U.S. plane can follow. but it's just a game, i mean where else could i have 1300 kills and still be fighting into 1946. but i'm also cheating i have unlimited ammo and have the G force's turned off or i would black out every time i tried to turn. but it only cost $10 and gives me something to do at 2 o'clock in the morning

I believe there were also strict orders to Me 262 pilots forbidding them to fly below 440mph, which is about the maxim speed of piston engine fighters.

 

[Denniss]

Even the air cooled engines could be easily killed once you hit the oil system which often lead to a terminal loss of oil.
With water-cooled engines you have water and oil, if one of them is gone so is the engine (although there's a very slim chance to use very low rpm on oil only).

 

[fastmongrel]

Was the 262 a heavily built airframe I have read that the Meteor designers built the frame and wings heavier than they needed to because they simply didnt have the experience of jets and played safe.

 

[stona]

Even the air cooled engines could be easily killed once you hit the oil system which often lead to a terminal loss of oil.
With water-cooled engines you have water and oil, if one of them is gone so is the engine (although there's a very slim chance to use very low rpm on oil only).

But these are not immediate and catastrophic failures as is the case if just about anything gets into, or rearranges any part of, a turbojet. Some radial engines flew for hundreds of miles with substantial damage. Even loss of coolant in an in line engine, particularly if fitted with a shunt (as in the DB installation on later Bf 109s) might not be catastrophic at all.

The Me 262 was not a particularly heavily built airframe. There are post war allied analyses of it. It was pretty much built with standard Messerschmitt techniques and he wasn't known for over engineering his designs, quite the reverse in fact.
The airframe itself would have been no more or less vulnerable than any of its contemporaries. The ability of an airframe to sustain damage is often a product more of luck than judgement and design rather than construction. I've seen a picture of a flak damaged Typhoon (JR427) with five wing spars destroyed and the rear spar severed. It survived because it was a two spar wing and the forward spar was missed by inches, a simple accident of design.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Shortround6]

Even the air cooled engines could be easily killed once you hit the oil system which often lead to a terminal loss of oil.
With water-cooled engines you have water and oil, if one of them is gone so is the engine (although there's a very slim chance to use very low rpm on oil only).

Granted it was a video game the poster was talking about and the damage model is probably no more accurate than the flight model.

But the problem with jet engines (especially the early ones) isn't so much a question of the engine being damaged and eventually failing (eventually being anything from 5 seconds to 20 minutes) like piston engines but failing in a catastrophic fashion that causes additional damage to the air-frame. The percentage of jet engine "fails" that result in such catastrophic damage is probably fairly low but it is just about non-existent for piston engines.

Modern Jet damage example:

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Even the air cooled engines could be easily killed once you hit the oil system which often lead to a terminal loss of oil.
With water-cooled engines you have water and oil, if one of them is gone so is the engine (although there's a very slim chance to use very low rpm on oil only).

The engine will still run even though catastrophic failure will eventually happen. If you major FOD a turbine engine or puncture any module, failure will be almost immediate.

 

[Donivanp]

From Military Aviation Museum of Virginia Beach "Warbirds factory" FB page form the air show last week I think it was. ME-262 fly by. This is one of the new builds from out in Washington a couple years back.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

From Military Aviation Museum of Virginia Beach "Warbirds factory" FB page form the air show last week I think it was. ME-262 fly by. This is one of the new builds from out in Washington a couple years back.

Got to see one of the new builds fly in formation with an original Bf 109G at an airshow in Germany a few years back. Absolutely amazing experience.

 

[Donivanp]

Look at the Mossy take off it is such a cool plane. Great history.

 

[stona]

Another related factor is the pilot survivability for an engine failure. Without any in depth analysis I would conjecture that an engine failure in an Me 262 was less survivable than one on most conventionally (at that time) powered types.
Cheers
Steve

 

[GrauGeist]

A quick look through youtube videos of Allied guncamera footage shows that Me262s do not do well when the engine(s) are hit.

The catastrophic failure of the engine rips apart the wing, sending the burning aircraft tumbling earthward.

 

[drgondog]

Structurally, Me 262 was very strong. The aero loads it was designed to take at max speed made the supporting airframe even stronger by comparison when it was below max speed. That said, as everyone has noted, the Jumo was a weak link and as also mentioned - it carried more fuel and hence more fuselage vulnerability area to API or HEI hits, although Kerosene/JP2 is harder to 'light up'.