Mr Flyboy j
1)I had no intention to insult american mechanics. But to assume that a couple of weeks of "training" made them experts on Me 262 is something diferent. In europe takes years of training for a mechanic to claim adequate training on an aircraft. The luftwaffe personel often provided false information or even sabotaged the aircrafts (see Erich brown and Ar 234 case) .German systems were unknown to these mechanics. Further more none of them had even seen a jet aircraft before!!! And in a few days became experts?!
Having worked for almost 35 years on a wide variety of military and civilian aircraft I can assure you that you don't have to be an "expert" to maintain an aircraft in the field and under the conditions that the first captured 262s were subjected to. Even as the 262 was viewed as "state of the art" technology during that period, ground operation of that aircraft and its contemporaries of the day was quite simple. Maintain fluid levels, establishing pre and post flight procedures checking such things as brake and tire wear and following structural inspection criteria from the airframe and engine manufacturer are all part of the procedure and that's why Col Watson relied on German ground crews for their expertise so his mission could be accomplished. Attempting to learn a forigen captured aircraft system without the benifit of manuals and instruction is a trial by error artform and those attempting to gain intelligence in this situation can hardly be blamed for "poor maintenance." Additionally I can also assure you that those American maintainers were well seasoned mechanics and knew what they were doing.
The german crew of cruiser Prinz Eugen was forced to train american crew in their ship . Then the americans took the ship for the america . Within days they broke it!!! It had to be towed to the pacific for the atomic test! And Prinz Eugen was not any revolutionary technology! And we well know how budly maintained were varius FWs ,Bfs in alleid captivity ( and still used to draw conclusions!)
And this has what bearing on this discussion?!? I know little about ships and did do a quick internet search on this and it seems the USN was only interested in the phase array radar of the ship. Regardless Prinz Eugen would have been placed at Bikini regardless as many captured and operation ships were destroyed during the atomic tests. Once again I ask you provide "specifics" on how the Americans made this ship inoperable, I see nothing to validate your claim.
Again, you say "badly maintained" tell me in what context? Were the aircraft NOT being maintained in accordance with original maintenance practices? Were wrong lubricants being used? Were aircraft being operated with control surfaces adjusted out of travel tolerances? These were captured aircraft and I'm not saying that early operation of these aircraft were done exactly the way the manufacturer intended , there was a lot of guess work behind how to operate these aircraft and I'm willing to say that abuse by maintenance personnel was never documented in detail.
2)Since you have the "Arrow to the future"you can find the sentence "the comparison was so favorable to the Me262 that the results were supressed" on page 139. On page 70 when Col.watson tryied to fly the Me262a FE110 found the elevators reversed and was barely able to recover from a dive. Does it sound as a proper maintained aircraft?
No it sounds like ground crews assembled a captured aircraft wiout the benifit of proper maintenance instructions, and this type of incidient was common during that era. Col. Watson holds some responsibility for this as he should of verified rigging prior to take off, especially when test flying a captured ship. I do have issues with this story however as if the elevators were reversed, Col. Watson should not have been able to take off and probably would have discovered this problem early in his flight. The fact that it is mentioned that he went into a dive with this condition is a bit stretched.
3) Eric brown writes: "If asked to nominate the most formidable combat aircraft to evolve in WW2 i would unhesitatingly propose Me262A" Wings of the Luftwaffe, page58 . On page 68 writes : " a hard hitter that outperformed anything that we had immediately available" He writes a lot of other good staff
4)The Me262A did flew combat night missions and scored victories . I believe that Mr Erich can confirm this. P80 and Meteor I/III could have/should have/would have fly in night but they never did
I can agree with Brown's assessment to a point, but over the years he's been proven to be very biased in many of his opinions. Yes, the 262 flew at night, the Meteor and P-80 had the capability to fly at night as well but never did so. Your original statement about night flying makes the 262 no better in this operation than any other aircraft. The only thing that can be said about the 262 is it actually flew combat at night during WW2. It wasn't until 5 years later when later versions of both the Meteor and P-80 (now F-80) actually flew many sorties at night, that being during the Korean war.
5)Heinz Bar scored victories with 4x30mm 2x20mm, Major Herget flew them 55mm in action, Jg7 used R4M rockets and 21cm mortar rockets and scored,Jumo004c&e were in production lines, protoypes were flying with higher degree swept wings and low drug canopies, x4 was in operational testing phase. If i wanted to speak for could/should/would iwould speak for pressurized cocpits, EZ42 gyroscopic sights, Mk213 revolver cannons, take off assist rockets,air brakes,advanced navigation and radar direction equipment(all of which were in final development stage), versions with the engines buried in the wingsroots,Henscel engines and finally Ta183
Your point? Within 2 years after the war you had such aircraft as the F-86 coming off production lines with many of the same systems developed independent of German technology. Aside from swept wing technology, systems within postwar US and British aircraft were well established and at the end of the war the allies had just about caught up with german turbine engine technology.
6) Me 262 had accidents because of the unavailable raw materials. Lets look the P80 record manifactured in rich America . 3 Prototypes crashed with a dead pilot and a another badly injured, Yp80 crashed in England in 28/01/1945 .Finally Richard Bong ,the man who claimed the most victories, killed in a P80 on August 1945 because of material failure.
7)Of course I like p80, everybody loves the T33
Are you trying to say that if germany didn't have a raw material problem, there would not have been any 262 crashes? Again you make no points here. The Me 262 had its share of developmental crashes as any early jet did. The 262 had an extremely high attrition rate during its initial operations. The P-80 crashes (including Bong's) have no bearing in comparing the two aircraft, in fact Bong's crash was preventable as he forgot to turn on a boost pump during takeoff. The early J33, like early Jumos, failed at take off.
So again I invite you to show "specifics" where US or even British maintainers conducted improper maintenance practices with regards to operation of captured German aircraft. The only real "abuse" that could be apparent was the lack of information or purposely being told wrong information.
