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I wonder if the higher stress on the Jumo also leads to a shorter engine life.
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Much improved Me 109K?
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I wonder if the higher stress on the Jumo also leads to a shorter engine life.
Hello XBe02Drvr, soulezoo,
Basically Colonel Boyd figured out how to pull the F-100 into very high AoA very quickly and "Flat Plate" his aircraft and decelerate so fast that he would cause the F-100 pilot following him to overshoot and thus reverse positions in 40 seconds or less. Comments in his biography was that it only took about 10 seconds.
We had this discussion before in another thread and BiffF15 pointed out the evils of overstressing the aircraft and causing damage that might result in a structural failure on a subsequent flight even under lesser loads.
The F-100 also had a serious directional stability problem at high AoA, so this was not the kind of thing that was a useful maneuver to teach.
- Ivan.
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Some of the late 1940s and early 1950s aircraft were veritable death traps. Transonic aerodynamics was poorly understood at the time and some important engines were unreliable and unsatisfactory in various ways. Wikipedia includes the following on the F7U:
"the Cutlass suffered from numerous technical and handling problems throughout its short service career. The type was responsible for the deaths of four test pilots and 21 other U.S. Navy pilots.[1] Over one quarter of all Cutlasses built were destroyed in accidents.[2]" Generally improvements were made as the problems were identified and solutions devised, but not without grievous human costs.
Ah, the infamous "gutless Cutlass"!
Reason(s) for them being so?
Ascent
Senior Airman
The Meteor's single engine handling characteristics where notorious. It took them a while to figure out though that more pilots were being killed by practicing engine out procedures then were being killed by actual incidents.
And the ME262, while not as notorious, was no pussycat on one engine, though not as bloody a track record, since they were mostly flown by experten. All of these planes suffered from primitive fuel controls, which were prone to pilot induced flameouts if the non-intuitive, non-linear throttle schedules were not religiously adhered to. The ME163 had a rocket motor that was prone to unprovoked explosions, and like all of the others, lacked a truly effective escape system with a survival envelope including those airspeeds, altitudes, and circumstances where the pilot was most likely to get in trouble. These early jets were all underpowered, having been designed for more thrust than their engines ultimately produced, and were prone to getting into high-sink-rate, backside of the power curve situations on approach that their slow-spooling, anemic engines couldn't power them out of. On top of that, their primitive ejection seats couldn't provide a survivable escape in a high sink rate situation, or at low airspeeds, or on the ground at any speed. Designers hadn't figured out that jets needed to be provided with lots of quickly adjustable drag (BIG speed brakes) so they could fly approaches with the engines spooled up and have more thrust quickly available if needed.
These are a few of the reasons for the appalling carnage in the early jets, and failures of training, administration, and doctrine are fodder for another chapter.
Cheers,
Wes
With respect to your opinion , the vast majority of me 262 s were not flown by experten. Anyway , no one was experte at flying jets. Steinhoff in his first battle could not figure out how to take advantage of the vast speed advantage.
Me 262 was not at all a death trap aerodynamicaly. It was a pleasant and quite agile aircraft, that only required gentle throttle movements and keep speed above 300 km/h . Yes it was underpowered and would be very helpful to have air brakes. But late in the war pilots of reasonable experience were converting to the type with 30 min instructions by the ground crew
The two fuels that combined to propel the rocket would combust instantly if they, or even their vapors, came in contact. They were corrosive and tended to make most materials they came in contact with more brittle. A leaky fitting, a fatigue crack in a fuel or oxidizer line, or even a sloppy refueling job would set off a massive blast.
All multi engine planes (except Center Line Thrust) are less easy to fly on one engine than a single, but at least with recips, their behaviour was a known quantity, and most had assured takeoff capability with a worst-case engine failure. An ME262 low slow and dirty on one engine was described to me by Rudi Opitz as "a losing proposition". He repeated the old saw about the second engine taking you to the scene of the accident.
Cheers,
Wes
Perhaps experten (if taken to mean only top scoring aces) was not a good choice of words, but the intent was that they were mostly highly experienced pilots with sound aeronautical instincts and combat-honed confidence, the best equipped pilots to become experts in the new arena.
Cheers,
Wes
