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Hi,
I did a quick summary of almost 100 of the Me 262 losses from 1944, and they were broken down as follows:
Abandoned and Found by Allied troops at Airfields: 2
Bombing Raids on Airfields: 13
Strafing Attacks on Airfield: 21
Shot down by Enemy Fighters: 9
Cause Unknown, Non-Combat Flight: 14
Cause Unknown, Combat Mission: 14
Engine failure: 10
Collision on Ground: 1
Forced Landing: 1
Crash-landing: 2
Ran out of fuel: 1
Technical issues: 5
Cheers,
Andrew A.
Air War Publications - www.airwarpublications.com/earticles
Hi,Andrew - thank you very much for the detailed breakdown
Per chance, do you now the likehood of a survival of the pilot if the aircraft was lost due to engine failure, and/or due to the aircraft lost during the non-combat flights?
As an aside That's interesting in that there is a much higher ratio of night to day fighters than I thought there would be at the beginning of 1945.The numbers are slightly different by Alfred Price.
Hi,
I did a quick summary of almost 100 of the Me 262 losses from 1944, and they were broken down as follows:
Abandoned and Found by Allied troops at Airfields: 2
Bombing Raids on Airfields: 13
Strafing Attacks on Airfield: 21
Shot down by Enemy Fighters: 9
Cause Unknown, Non-Combat Flight: 14
Cause Unknown, Combat Mission: 14
Engine failure: 10
Collision on Ground: 1
Forced Landing: 1
Crash-landing: 2
Ran out of fuel: 1
Technical issues: 5
Cheers,
Andrew A.
Air War Publications - www.airwarpublications.com/earticles
Just for the record, the Allies were pretty sure that a 7% loss rate would render the bombers unsupportable. If you start with 100 non-replaced airplanes and a 7% loss rate, you have no airplanes after 30 missions. A 42% loss rate means you have no airplanes after 7 missions.
Only sustainable if you can immediately replace the lossesEven a sustained 5% loss rate is substantial. If you start with 100 aircraft, at a 5% loss rate, that force is down to 63 aircraft after just 9 missions.
The good thing was the distance from the factory to the front line was, well, short. Little flying time put on the engines prior to combat.Only sustainable if you can immediately replace the losses
The Me 262 was a desperate gamble because the Germans WERE desperate.
Before you start shooting your mouth off, maybe you should explore the background of some of the "speculators" making these comments!All of you speculators and what-if's , you all forget the 262 was a new aircraft, new technology, new flight requirements. There will be, always will be these problems even with new aircraft built today. You cannot state the aircraft of 80 years ago compare to today, the metallurgy was there, the manufacturing processes were not there. Also the 262 were axial where the meteor was centrifugal. Just a side note, its amazing the number of aviation experts that don't know the early jets were started by cartridge or 2 stroke motors
Only sustainable if you can immediately replace the losses
Darn... you could have flown the thing they new build if you realley had wanted to .aware how the -262 started!!!
The following quote is from:IIRC, it was either the Meteor or Canberra, more pilots were killed practicing engine out emergency procedures than the actual situation happening.
But right to very end, the Canberra could not be trifled with. When I worked
in the RAF Inspectorate of Flight Safety, we calculated that more Canberras
were lost from practice asymmetric flying than from actual engine failures
themselves. The last of these took place in March 1991 when the station
commander of RAF Wyton asked to perform a simulated engine failure after
take-off (SEFATO) in a T4 for his currency training. Start-up and take-off
were normal until just abeam the ATC tower, where the undercarriage had
just retracted when the station commander called for a SEFATO on the
starboard engine. The T4 was seen to roll slightly left and then right but then
hold a slight right bank at about 200 ft AGL. The T4 then began to roll and
turn to the right at an alarming rate before descending. It then struck a road
sweeper that was parked between two buildings before hitting a small garage
and bursting into flames. None of the three aircrew on board survived.