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But they were, right?...the ra ra LW boys will try and tell you they were unstoppable...
It depends who you talk to. Chuck Yeager thought both aircraft were evenly matched.The me 262 was the superior jet according to the US air force...the testing was done on a 1946 p80, which had some changes made to it.
An interesting tidbit about the p80 was that 548 mph was the fastest speed achieved, that particular aircraft was the p80 chosen to enter the famous race that the me 262 didnt take part in...i can only imagine how a me 262 built by US standards would have performed, especially considering that an me 262 described as being in very poor physical condition achieved 568 mph.
262 was the fastest of the 1st gen jets, also the most heavily armed, but the build quality was poor and the engines suffered reliability. I have no idea on its handling in the horizontal, or even its climb or dive rates.
Another issue I think worth at least considering is the "stretchability" of a design. The first gen jets were all pretty limited with regards to engine power mostly, but also a range of other issues. Second gen of the same types were generally far more potent. compare a meteor F8 with an me 262, and the meteor is a far superior aircraft. For the germans we don't really have much information on how adaptable their designs were....the ra ra LW boys will try and tell you they were unstoppable, and yet, these designs were not stretched by the occupying powers after the war. For various reasons they were all found to have pretty severe limits on their applied technology potential.
It depends who you talk to. Chuck Yeager thought both aircraft were evenly matched.
Maybe when you think you are flying the dogs balls of an aircraft, prepare for a rude awakening.So what's the lesson learned here?
Prop drivers shouldn't underestimate the climb performance of a jet.
Maybe when you think you are flying the dogs balls of an aircraft, prepare for a rude awakening.So what's the lesson learned here?
Prop drivers shouldn't underestimate the climb performance of a jet.
If you're talking about the November 8, 1950 claim by Russel Brown, yes, there is strong evidence that he never shot down a MiG-15 on that day and it looks like the first jet to jet kill was scored on Nov 1 by a MiG-15 over an F-80.and even the so called first "Jet vs Jet" victory in Korea has been discounted.
Totally incorrect, especially in it's construction. The engine bay of a MiG-15 is similar to an F-80 if anything else.Yes, that is the one. It appears that Brown claimed the Mig, which according to the other side, returned to base undamaged. As an afterthought, some previous posters had suggested that the Mig 15 was developed from the Focke wulf Ta 183, but I suspect this is also incorrect.
The only notable thing really "taken" from German research on both the MiG and F-85 was the 35~ degree swept wing design. North American was developing the FJ-1 in 1944 which became the design basis of the F-86 once it was decided to go with a swept wing design, the rest is history.The Mk 3 version of this aircraft bears a superficial resemblance to the Mig, and the Soviets have always claimed it is an indigenous design. You would have to admit that there was definite advanced Luftwaffe aircraft plans, prototypes and mock ups that fell into the Russians' hands, and they, like the rest of the allies, benefitted from German research. The Ta 183 saw life briefly as the Pulqui in Argentina post war, but never really had its inherant design flaws ironed out, although it actually did fly a couple of armed operational missions. Peron ended up buying Meteors for Argentina's airforce, which Adolf Galland had a major hand in. A strange twist on the WW2 jets that never met, with Galland allegedly stating that the "perfect" weapon would have been the 262 fitted with the Rolls Royce engines. Obviously he was talking about the later model engines, and not the WW2 contemporaries. By the 1950's the Meteor had been sufficiently developed engine wise, and you really can't directly compare the two. In one of my advanced Luftwaffe project hardcovers, it shows a picture of the respective wing profiles of a Mig 15 and an F 86 facing each other, with the caption "Messerschmitt vs Focke Wulf". The author was inferring that the two opposing jets owed their developmental heritage to two seperate companies and schools of thought. Any logical analysis of the closing months of WW2 would support the idea that 2nd generation Jets were just around the corner theoretically, but with no industrial back up, it was never going to happen.
That's the problem with many legends, is that in some cases, being elevated to "super star" status eclipses the pioneers that arrived first. Sure, the Me262 was the first jet fighter to see combat, but the He280 was the first armed combat jet and yet very few people know of it or how how close it came to being a production fighter, arriving over the skies of Europe at a time when the Luftwaffe still had air superiority.No amount of discussion in this forum will change the Me 262's entrenched "worlds first Jet fighter" status in the urban myths of the general populace, even though this is historically incorrect.