p-80 V Me 262

Poor photo, but T-33 with twin tail. Utilised by the US Navy during the test program to develop the T2V.

It looks like the P-38's tail. Nice find.

Just another comment on the He-280. Its wings may have been unswept but they were of low profile like the P-80 (the Meteor's were also not that thick, especially compared to the P-59) The wings were actually symilar to the P-47 which had decent high-speed maneuveabillity at altitude and a realitively high crit-mach (even without the dive flaps of the later models) and it had thick wings. The nacelles of the He-280 were no wider than the 262's (in with HeS-8, though it also used the 004 unsatisfactorily) so it couldn't be that bad. Anyway the Me-262 couldn't exceed .79 mach unless in a dive from high altitude (and certainly not in even a shallw dive even at ceiling, assuming 004B jets) Also where did you get the .79 figure? I still think the Me-262 is the better, especially in the interceptor role and had larger fuel capacity. Though there might have been room for increased tankage in the 280 since the fuel consumption rate was projected much lower than realistic and so tankage was low. And canceling the HeS-30 was definitly a big mistake and quite ironic, but ofcourse this is all with hindsight.

Claiming the Jumo 004B wasn't ahead of its time is abit ridiculous, esp. considering that it was a way more efficient and advanced engine than any Allied engine.

The Jumo 004B featured a very narrow frontal area which made it excellent for high speed a/c, and the thrust out-put wasn't all bad at 8.8 kN, it did after-all push the Me-262 past 900 km/h in straight flight. Shallow dives was a very effective method of quickly attaining speed in the Me-262, the aircraft accelerating much more quickly than any piston engined fighter and it didn't take much altitude to reach hair raisingly high speeds - 1,100 + km/h could easily be reached in a dive.

All this having been said, I agree the HeS-011 was a better engine as it was lighter and featured more thrust, its design was also way way ahead of its time, being by far the most advanced Jet engine to emerge from WW2.

Read my post again. I didn't advocate the HeS-011; I actually sait it was more of a waste of time and resourses. It would never have been ready in time, used a complex and problematic design, and worst of all contributed to the cancelation of the HeS-30, the best class I engine of the war and for some time afterwards. This was particularly bad since the HeS-30 would have been a great tandem engine, even in shared nacelles, it was as light and powerful as the whittle Engine and was shorter and narrower than either the o004 or 003, and concevably could have entered production arround the same time as the 004 as its prototype was running at full speed at the same time as the 004A. (certainly ahead of the 003. It also used an electric starter motor opposed to the motercycle motor on the 004B.

I said the 004 was innovative, and that the conservative design approach was a good idea, but it was verry long and heavy and at 32 in in diameter it had almost 2x the frontal area than the HeS-30 of 24 in diameter. And it wasn't ahead of the allies technology as seen in the examples I gave. It was the first into production though. Both America and England had advanced designs around the same time as the 004 but didn't put as much intrest tward their designs. Jumo chose a design that could quickly be implemented in production so they chose a balance of advanced design and conservative performance. Though you can say that the 004 is ahead of its time as any functioning turbojet was in WWII, even the centrifugal ones.

Some of the most advanced designs were the British Metrovick F.2 and the Lockheed L-1000 axial engines. The designer of the F.2 heavily crit The F.2 at over 2600 lbf thrust was even tested in the Meteor as an alternate powerplant, but it wasn't nearly as reliable as the competitors and like FlyBoy said reliabillity wins over performance every time.

Whittle design based engines were particularly nice since they had radial air inlets. They also used 2-sided compressor rotors which nearly coubled mass flow. Such a design wouldn't work in Ohain's radial engines since they used annular combustors and piping is needed for air to pass between into the 2nd compressor side. The radial inlet also solved the problems of unstable air influx since ti had smooth flow. Ohain solved this the same way Whittle initialy did on paper, with an axial impeller ahead of the centrifugal inlet. The radial inlet also facilitated the addition of wire screens to act as a filter, keeping foreign objets out. This inlet was not seen on the DH Goblin which also used a single-sided compressor opposed to whittle's design, though the Goblin had 2 side inlets converging on the compressor inlet instead of a direct inlet.

see: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/GE_J-31_Turbojet_Engine.jpg and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Aircraft_engine_RR_Nene_103_cut-out_RH.jpg for examples of the radial inlets and screens.

See: De Havilland Goblin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for the Goblin's inlet design

You didn't get my point.

My point is that the Jumo 004 is the most advanced efficient Jet engine to be used operationally in WW2. Sure there were more advanced efficient designs out there, but none of them ever went operational during WW2.

The 004 may have had decent aerodynamic efficiency but it's fuel efficiency and thrust/weight left somthing to be desired.

Due larely to political reasons. As in the HeS-30 it was advancing rapidly and was catching up to the 004 in development and was ahead of the 003 in that respect, but the RLM didn't see a need for another class 1 engine and saw the HeS-30 as behind the others so it was cancelled to divert attention to the HeS-011 which IMHO was not as good or practical of a design.

Also the 003 was more advance and was operational, if only very limitedly so.

The L-1000/L-133 wasn't taken up since the USAAF wasn't interested in Jets in 1941. The Westinghouse J30 was at least as good as the 003 and would have been ahead had it had government backing early on. As it was the J30 was developed independently at a slow pace and after the US government finaly took a serious interest in jets was able to finaly enter production in the early 1945. The J-35 was also advanced and had the government given more support it would have been ready for the war. (possibly along with the P-84)

The Germans had the advantage of supporting their jet program early on and thus were able to get them into production sooner. Still the cancelation of the HeS-30 was a big mistake, and though it wouldn't have changed the war's outcome it would have likely prolonged it. That design was probably the overall best of the war, light, high performing, small, efficient, and advanced but not so comlicated to cause production problems.

The Whittle engine development might have gotten ahead if: 1. the RAF had given funding sooner, and 2. Rover hadn't been chosen to produce it and Rols-Royce had been chosen from the start (the Rover development delayed production by about 2 years)

Its also too bad no 2-stage centrifugal-flow designs were put into production, they were still larger than the axial designs but smaller than single-stage centrifugals with the same positive properties and lacked the problems of axi-centrifugal designs. The Russians actualy designed one and built a prototype that produced 700kp of thrust by early 1943 and it could have been produced in quantity durring the war. There was even a decent airframe designed around it (single engine placement symilar to the Yak-15) and this was perfected in unpowered tests, but the engine was abandoned for a more advanced axial design which wouldn't be ready untill 1946. So the Russians lost their chance at an operational turbojet fighter durring the war.(and an indiginous one at that!)

see: EnginesUSSR for Soviet engines
EnginesUSA for US engines
EnginesUK for british developments and
Gu-VRD for Russia's jet.

The BMW-003 wasn't really more advanced than the Jumo 004, just smaller and lighter.

Soren said:

The BMW-003 wasn't really more advanced than the Jumo 004, just smaller and lighter.

Click to expand...

That would make the 003 more advanced.

No it wouldn't, its output wasn't as high and aerodynamically it was no better.

But the 003 had shorter spool-up time and less throttle-up and flameout problems and at WEP overrev it had slightly more thrust than the 004B, though the 004D or E would be at least as good overall the 004B was not. (accept in terms of maintanence as the 004D still lasted under 100 hrs and the 003E was known to last well over 100 hrs, iaround 500 hrs in som cases if memory serves) Though the 004 was much easier to produce and didn't need to be harmonized as delcyros mentioned with the 003, plus there were plans to produce an afterburning 004E while the closed thing the 003 had near production was the rocket boosted 003.

I still think the Germans had the best engine ready for production in time for use in the war in the HeS-30 (109-006) (originally a Junkers design started by Herbert Wagner and headed by Adolf Müller in 1936, but durring the merger with Jumo their engine seemed easier to get into production resulting in Junkers design being dropped and Muller with half the design team left and jouned Heinkel. This move severely delaying development.) but as said political events prevented its realization.

Before the British achievements in the Whittle designs were known to the US they had had some pretty advance designs around, but they had no government support. In fact all the US jet designs (except maby a GE paper design based on one of there turbochargers) were axial. The J31 and J33 only came about because of the modified British designs which were ahead in development due to a larger government intrest. What would become the J30, J35, and the unsucessful XJ37 (L-1000) had all been tested by 1943. Had the US designs had government support early on it's conceivable they would have been ahead of the Germans due to their larger pool of engineers and production capabilities. (as well as more advanced industrial metallurgy).

Though even with the US's advantages the HeS-30 would be hard to beat. (and it wasn't in overall performance and efficiency untill the 1950s)

delcyros has expressed similar opinions of the HeS-30 (I believe he also agrees that the HeS-011 was not that great of a design as it was overly complex, not able to produce expected thrust, and wouldn't materialize in the necessary timeframe)

The HeS-30 was also the only Heinkel-Hirth design that could have been worth producing, compared to the HeS-8 and HeS-011. (though this may not have been if Ohain had designed an axial design to follow on of the HeS-3 and 6, and indeed he favored these designs bu this time but the RLM wasnted to keep a centrifugal design going in case the axlial ones ran into problems. In the end the engine never produced the projected 700 kp and development had fallen behind the 004 and even their own HeS-30 by 1942)

Heinkel HeS 30 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Delcyros, I know its alittle late to comment again about the wihte paint of the Meteor III but I've read some more about it now. The F.III Meteors serving in Germany in early 1945 were painted white to distinguish them from the 262 AND as winter camoflauge as it was winter at the time. Also the white paint didn't help all that mutch to eliminate friendly fire as many were still fired on thinking that they were Me 262s with a different paint scheme.
I think the Meteor also had better low altitude speed than some other fighters intercepting the V-1s as they were able to do around 400-410mph at low altitude (less than 20 mph lower than top speed).

With thw 262's critical mach of .86 (for safty limited to .84) it still wouldn't be able to go faster than 600 mph with sufficiently powereful engines at altitude since mach 1 at 30,000-35,000 ft is around 700-670 mph so mach .86 would be 602-576 mph and .84 is 588-562 mph. Though this is decidedly better than the P-80 or Mk.4+ meteor with limits closer to .82 which means only 574-549 mph at high altitude and the meteor had the thrust to push past this with the Derwenr V engines so the airframe was the limiting factor and is thus why top-speed is at lower altitudes. (the F-84G had this problem too due to its thick wings and had a limit of around .88 or alittle higher, which wasn't a problem for earlier varients with less powerful engines but with its uprated J35 delivering over 5500 lbf, compared to 4000 for prevous models, it could exceed its limited top-speed of 622 mph, compared to ~595 mph of earlier models, which would result in its famous pitch-up stall, though at least one pilot did this intentionally when trying to escape some Mig-15s which couldn't follow the violent maneuver and one crashed into the ground. The F-84 survived with heavy warping.)

One more thing, I was wrong when I said the P-80's 169 gallon teardrop wingtip tanks increased drag. According to several sources I read the tanks reduced drag by improving airflow around the wingtips as well as improving roll (the same effect as the F9F's perminant wing tanks) and increased lift at the tips reducing in-flight wing loading. Though I doubt the T-33's tanks had the same effect due to change in aerodynamic shape and larger size resulting in high-speed interferance. (as FlyboyJ said they caused the wings to flap)

FlyboyJ, any idea of the volume of the T-33's wingtip tanks?

You've got to be kidding me Koolkitty!

In terms of metallurgy the Germans were well ahead throughout WW2, and they continue to be so till this day. The problem bugging the German Jet program was a lack of the necessary expensive metals needed to solve the reliability problems bugging their Jet engines. The Germans knew exactly what they needed to make their engines even more powerful reliable, problem was however that it wasn't in big enough a supply, as much had to be used for other projects.

I also strongly disagree with your false theory that the US would've been ahead had they showed interest earlier on. Fact is Germany possessed better educated engineers aerodynamicists right from the start of the war, and they were well ahead in both fields from the beginning till the end (Hence the performance they managed to achieve with the Me-262 design) In fact the Germans have been ahead in aerodynamics all the way back since 1904 and up until the end of the 2nd world war. All of this mainly thanks to the fact that all of the ground breaking research before and during WW2 was carried out at the laboratory of Ludwig Prandtl at Göttingen, which was the main center of theoretical and mathematical aerodynamics and fluid dynamics research in the world from soon after 1904 to the end of WW2. This is where the term boundary layer was coined as-well as the place where modern mathematical aerodynamics was founded. The laboratory first lost its dominance after the war when the researchers were dispersed.

The German lead in metallurgy is also clearly demonstrated in their AFV's, esp. the Tiger Ausf.E which featured the strongest and most durable armour of any AFV of WW2. German projectiles were also of higher quality and aerodynamic efficiency than their Allied counterparts, German armour piercing projectiles being made of harder and more durable metals - you can read about this as-well in the book "WWII Ballistics Armor and gunnery" by Lorrin Rexford Bird Robert D. Livingstone.

Also remember its not like the Jet programme was supported full out by the RLM, and funding was limited.

I said Industrial metalurgy. Sure they had produced things like stainless steel (though the Brits invented an equivelent with in the same time period) and high-temp metals in the lab but their industry wasn't equipped to produce them in large quantity. Granted this was largely due to lack of raw materials (why build factories to produce things they can't make much of). But the factories they did have weren't producing all that high-quality of steels for production (like in the case of many 004Bs). Though I'll also admit that the allied bombing contributed heavily to this. But note again I said INDUSTRIAL metalurgy not their metal engeneering in general. I agree that they had a great variety of advanced alloys but the industry lacked the raw materials, and to a lesser extent, the technology to produce it on a large scale.

One of the major breakthroughs for Whittle is when a high-temp Nickel-Chromium alloy became industrialy available, this is a large part of what made his engine feasible. Though the German metalugists had also been working on high-temp alloys (most likely a nikel-iron alloy) that used available, nonrestricted metals, and this was put to use in the turbojet industry before the end of the war (I believe ith was planned to be used in the 004 and 003 engines possibly the 004D or E)

The US certainly had advanced designs (look at the L-133) and as said before all the engines in serious development in the us by 1941 were axial designs. The Westinghouse J30 was in production by the war's end producing 1600 lbf and most of its development had been privately funded, untill the navy took interest in what would become the FH Phantom. Likewise went the L-1000 engine project with the L-133 design were private company designs, but work pretty much stopped when there was no intrest given by the USAAF. (that engine was to produce around 3000 lbf) The J35 I've already covered. The only engine design truly more advanced IMHO is the HeS-30, smply beautiful!

Granted the Germans had a greater number advanced designs and projects but when you compare the best of each Germany is ahead only by a little, and with the US's massive resourses production of such designs would be much easier and go much faster.

Another thing the US had were advanced turbochargers. The US was the only county to use turbos widely in the war. The Brits perferring to work on powereful 2-stage superchargers as seen in the Merlin-61. The Germans were also working on turbochargers, in particular I remember Junkers and Jumo doing some work (axial compressors I believe) before they started work on their jet projects in the late 1930s, but a large portion of the development staff was diverted to jet development and I'm not really sure how their turbocharger projects ended up. Do you know anything about German turbos durring the war? I don't seem to remember any production aircraft or engine to use them.
Also, Varients of the P-47 Thunderbolt were faster than any prop planes the germans had , even the fastest production varients, the P-47M and N had top speeds of 470 and 460 mph respectively. That's better than the F.3 Meteor with short nacelles. The P-47J topped out at 506 mph and the XP-72 was projected at a theoretical max speed of nearly 550 mph with contrarotating propellers and a 3500 hp engine. (though 520 mph is more reasonable and only 490 was reached with the standard prop, but I wouldn't be too surprised if a modified version optimized for top speed and without armament could reach 550)

There have been a couple of points of interest recently.

The Jumo-004B is not a bad engine per se but as Koolkitty pointed out, it was the second worst possibility (I believe the radial HeS08 would have been even worser but that´s another matter) to choose from the german perspective. The BMW-003 is indeed better in almost every respect and the 003 along with the -004e would have received afterburner in later 1945 (that was the first german scientists did on those engines in russia). The BMW-003D with improved fuel consumption and 1100 Kp thrust on the benchtest is an excellent engine for Ar-234 and He-162 even if it did not managed to get into mass production due to factories beeing overrun in march 1945 in Silesia.
The -004 was upgradable and thus would be improved as well but more importantly, it was produced in huge numbers! The good point on the development of the Jumo-004 is that in the cause of it´s development pioneering techniques had to be developed. It´s a point of "we do not learn from success". While the Jumo-004 was not initially successful it paved the way from a technology point of view and would have made successing axial designs much easier. I believe BMW enjoied some of the related experiences, esspeccially in it´s large axial jet engine, the BMW-018 (which can be grossly correlated with the RR Nene, altough not as efficiant and much heavier).
However, I fundamentally agree that nothing beats the HeS030.
The HeS011 is difficult to have a position towards. It is somehow comparable in development to the Dervent V (both engines went airborne the same month!) and would have resulted in very comparable thrust ratings later that year. But as complicated as it´s vibration issues proved to be, I see lot´s of problems to overcome beforehand.

The big advantage the US had was basic tooling level as pointed out years ago by Lunatic. Had they ventured sooner into jet engines, they could have tipped the balance, true. The industrial implementation advantages, typical for the US has it´s own, unmatched quality.
I have always been impressed how they made british radial jet engines a subject of mass production in an outstanding short timeframe. I don´t think that the L1000 engine would have been possible for the US, there were actually more problems to be adressed previously (such as compressor stall, blade cooling techniques, vibrition issues and the details of a usable combustion chamber) than was known by then and that´s why this engine, altough beeing transferred from one authority to another, never worked on the testbench (well into the early 50´s).

The UK also made notable progress in jet engines (the Nene and Dervent V come to mind), even the soviets rapidly designed an indigenious Ljulka TR-1.

As I said a major advantage of the 004 design is that it was easy to produce. On the same note it was said that a combination of conservative and innovative design approch was taken. This is what may have made it a great (but not necessarily high performing) engine, though not that advanced compared to some other designs, it was able to be produced in the thousands!

I agree that the HeS-011 is kind of a gray area, but it ceartinly shouldn't have taken presidence over the HeS-30. (neither should the 003, though as said the 004 had inherant production advantages) The HeS-30 would ceartainly have developed to production before the 003 seeing how fast it was progressing and was catching up to the 004 in development timeframe.

I'll also agree that the L-1000 wasn't a practical design (though it was advanced) but what would become the J30 (later developed into the much more powerful J34), and the J35, would have ceartainly have developed faster had there been a strong government intrest.

As you probably know the Nene and Derwent V are the same engine, just on different scales. Don't forget De Haviland's work on the Goblin and Ghost. (also bassicly the same except for scale and flame-can design)

One more note on the British is that, though both Whittle and Ohain had their first engines run in the same month (April of 1937, Whittle's on the 12th and Ohain's a little earlier), Whittle's design was able to run on liquid disel while Ohain's had to use hydrogen. Though Ohain did Produce the first flyable model but even it had to use hydrogen for the first flight. (the first HeS-3 was having trouble with clogged fuel injectors so a compressed hydrogen tank was temporarilly fitted to the He-178 so it could fly on schedule) Though whittle's WU engine tended to accelerate out of controll at startup, this was found to be due to excess fuel leaking into the combustion chamber, this was later solved by adding a drain to remove fuel before startups.

And on the Russians, remember Lyul'ka had the 2-stage centrifugal-flow RDT-1/VDR-2 I mentioned prevously in 1943. They could hve produced it for the war for the Gu-VRD but chose to divert work to the axial S-18/VDR-3 which was developed into the TR-1 , which wasn't ready for anpther 2-3 years.

once again I'll list: EnginesUSSR for Soviet engines
EnginesUSA for US engines
EnginesUK for british developments

As for the Me-262's armament, a combination of 2 heavy 30mm cannons and 4 MG 151/20 with mine rounds would be one of the best all around configuration. I'd say MK-103, but the Luftwaffe seened to perfer the MK-108 plus with the 103 the barrels would protrude from the nose. The MK-108 was easy to produce, had a higher ROF, much less recoil and (not sure) a higher ammo load at the expence of lower velocity, range, and trajectory.

Another note on the He-280, I ask again where the Mach .79 figure came from delcyros? (,82 seems more reasonable, as the design was cleaner than the Meteor) Also, I've looked through my sourses again and found where I got the idea that the RLM was uninterested in jets. I was thinking mostly about Heinkel's projects, which were a private venture initially and the RLM was angry about this and less forthcoming with support than in the rest of this feild. And on the earlier comment on the wing design eating up speed, it was certainly thinner than the meteor's and the HeS-8 engines were as narrow as 004Bs (both about 31" in diameter andmuch smaller than the 42" welland or derwent of the meteor). Overall the 280 (with HeS-30 or 003 engines) was at least as good in all respects as the He-162 except production cost. It certainly could have outfaught the P-80A and would have made a good plane to complement the 262, as I believe it would have more trouble with the P-80 than the 280 would. (though the Me 262 was still superior in speed and versitillity)

see: Heinkel He 280 archive file

Delcyros, you also said " Heinkel wasn´t much into jet engines at all (he perhaps delayed the HeS-030 project more than accelerated it) but he had the right impetus and showed initiative to advance the by then new field much." with wich I generally agree, one argument between Heinkel and Adolf Muller (the Head of the HeS-30 project) led to Muller leaving Heinkel. But as you said he was verry interested in the concept of jet aircraft (he seemed to like designing high-speed aircraft best) and I've read that quote: "Helmut Schelp, in charge of engine development at the RLM, refused to give Heinkel a production contract, an event that Hans von Ohain claims brought Ernst Heinkel nearly to tears."

The .79 crit Mach figure does come from a factory intern writing directed to Dir. Francke and Dr. Motzfeld, dating on dec. 6th, 1942 (so called "EHF Aktenvermerk"). It is termed as "erwartete finale bahngeschwindigkeit", so it is no empirical data. You should keep in mind that the airfoil of the He-280 was to thick to allow higher speeds. In a corresponding writing towards Dir. Francke, Dr. Motzfeld and Mr. Eichner dating from dec. 12th, 1942, Heinkel suggests the following points to improve the He-280 for serial production:

-VERBESSERUNGEN HE 280-
IMPROVEMENTS HE 280

1. Sechs Kanonen,
1.) six cannons,

2. Wesentlich mehr Brennstoff und deshalb dickeren Rumpf,
2.) considerably more fuel buncerage and therefore a larger fuselage diamter,

3. Modernes Flächenprofil,
3.) modern airfoil,

4. Zentral-Leitwerk,
4.) central tailplane (normal tail)

5. Rumpf um 50 - 80 cm verlängern,
5.) fuselage to be elongated by 50-80 cm,

6. Möglichkeit der Unterbringung von Bomben unter dem Rumpf prüfen,
6.) checking the possibility to take two bombs under fuselage,

7. Zwecks Berücksichtigung einfacher Fertigung und bequemer Montage soll Gestängeführung und Leitwerk zu beiden seiten aussen sein, zweckmässige Baugruppen-Unterteilung usw.,
7.) (...)

8. Im Prinzip sonst alles ähnlich.
8.) pricipally everything else likewise


gez. H E I N K E L
sig. Heinkel

You see on what these improvements are aimed for. Mainly to be competetive with the Me-262. The max. allowed speed of the He-280 was 820 Km/h and a higher speed would make structural reinforcements necessary (skin was typically 1.2 - 1.5mm dural. The V7 had to reinforce the skin between frame 26 and 30 to 2mm dural). All the improvements together would drastically increase the gross weight of the He-280 and thus offset the advantages this plane theoretically had in terms of low speed handling and acceleration over the Me-262. The changes would also mean a substantial delay, add the engine problems and the decision of the RLM to drop the He-280 on 27th of march 1943 becomes understandable, esspeccially as the serial He-280 with the improvements suggested by Heinkel would resemble a fairly comparable appearence, altough slower.


(the comparison flight between Fw-190 and He-280 is often misinterpreted. The He-280 did not OUTTURNED the Fw-190, she OUTACCELERATED and OUTCLIMBED the plane).

Soren said:

In terms of metallurgy the Germans were well ahead throughout WW2, and they continue to be so till this day.

Click to expand...

The Germans did some things very well, others they had to rely on substitutes in materials as they did not have the luxury of large furnaces and processing facilities, especially later in the war.

And in what way is Germany "well ahead" in metallurgy today? I don't see any breakthroughs in heat treating, processing, welding or any other processing associated with producing aircraft that is no different than any other developed western country.

BTW - here ate the top 10 heat treaters in the world today. Germany is represented as "part of Europe."

1) Bodycote International. Without a shadow of a doubt UK based Bodycote is the largest commercial heat treater in the world and generally the largest in each geographic area around the world. Overall sales are in the order of $1 Billion US which includes "Testing" and "Hipping" although heat treating sales are roughly 75% of Bodycote's overall sales. If you feel the inclination, a browse through our archives (a long browse) will give you a lot of Bodycote's history. A browse will also give you a good feel for where they are going, namely expansion into new developing markets. You can see their financials and locations at Bodycote plc Website :: Home

2) Nihon Parkerising. It would appear that the second largest commercial shop in the world and the largest in Japan is Nihon Parkerising who have commercial heat treat sales of roughly $280 million USD almost all of which is salt heat treating based on the former Degussa Tennifer (MELONITE) technology. In addition they have huge sales of salt. Staggering that a commercial heat treater does such volumes in such a specialized area.

3) Aalberts Industries. Based in the Netherlands Aalberts is the second largest commercial heat treater in Europe. This large conglomerate is split into two parts, Industrial Services (under which their heat treating companies fall) and Flow Control. While the second largest in Europe they have a very small presence in North America and virtually no, if any heat treating presence outside of Europe and NA. Aalberts Industries N.V. Aalberts heat treating sales are about €280m (at the time of printing this would be about $375 million USD) but this is split roughly 50/50 between commercial heat treating and Anodising/electroplating which means heat treat sales of approximately $187 million USD.

4) Bluewater Thermal. (previously Gibraltar Industries). Again another large conglomerate US based Bluewater Thermal is clearly the second largest in North America with sales of about $120 million USD. They are best known for their individual companies such as Brazing Concepts, CCHT, B W Heat Treat, Harbor Metal Treating, Hi Temp Inc., Pennsylvania Industrial Heat Treat, Rock River HT and SCM Metals. All of these shops were part of the heat treating division of Gibraltar Industries based in Buffalo, NY until the heat treating operations were bought by a private equity group in June of 2006 and the name changed to Bluewater Thermal. Bluewater Thermal Processing commercial heat treaters

5) DOWA in Japan, Thailand and the USA. Dowa is one of the giants in the industry both when it comes to commercial heat treating and building new furnaces. They have numerous heat treatment facilities in Japan and operations in Thailand, USA and others as they tend to follow Toyota and Honda. (1) Dowa Holdings Co., Ltd. consists of five member companies such as Dowa Metals Mining, Dowa Eco-Systems, Dowa Electronics Materials, Dowa Metaltech and Dowa Thermotech. Dowa Holdings Co., Ltd. USD90 to 70m range One which certainly deserves to be on the list is Dowa Thermotech who had 2005 sales of $193 million USD for their new furnace business and commercial heat treating division. Our belief is that roughly 60% of total sales are commercial heat treating which would mean $115 million USD.

6) The HEF Group. HEF is a European based company that describes itself as a 'surface engineering company', (HEF is a French acronym meaning "wear and friction"). They provide surface treatment technologies – chemicals and/or equipment - and commercial processing in the areas of liquid nitriding, sulfurizing, carburizing/heat transfer salts, boriding, PVD/CVD, etc. Estimated sales for their heat treating and PVD business is a little over $100 million USD. HEF - Tribology, Surface engineering, Surface treatments and coatings, Surface characterizations I

7) ONEX. Again another Japanese commercial heat treat chain. They do not have a presence outside of Japan and do not appear to have an interest in doing so. Our understanding is that commercial heat treat sales for ONEX are a little under $90 million USD. English@Page

8 ) TOHKEN THERMO TECH CO. LTD. One of the largest commercial heat treaters in Japan with a number of locations in Japan, one in Thailand and one in Malaysia. By anybody's standards a very large, well established heat treater that has been around since 1927. TOHKEN Overall sales for the company as a whole are between $70 and $80 million USD.

9) RIKEN. This Japanese manufacturer of piston rings also builds furnaces and does a great deal of commercial and captive heat treating. In 2006 their sales were $771 million USD and we believe their commercial heat treating sales to be between $60 and $70 million USD. RIKEN

10) Paulo Products. US based Paulo Products is the largest of the privately held commercial heat treaters in North America, long owned and run by the Rassieur family Paulo Heat Treating, Brazing and Metal Finishing They currently have 5 plants pretty much covering most types of heat treating including Batch IQ furnaces, vacuum and continuous to name a few.

And as Delcyros said earlier the Germans had to use alloys like Tinadur and Chromadur for turbine use the second one replaces nickel with manganeese and both use a fair amount of chromium, wihch is surprising since I'd think that chromium would be in shorter supply than nickel.

And I think Soren meant in development of new alloys (metalugical engineering) not so much production of advanced matals and metal processes. But I'd have to say that the UK and US certainly have similar merits in this feild. (like in the US with Nickel Aluminide, Ni3Al developed at the US government's Oak Ridge National Laboratory at Tennessee, which is 6x stronger than stainless steel and actually gets stronger as it gets hotter, being 2x as strong at 800C* than at room temperature!)

Thanks for that info on the 280 Delcyros, its just that in all the diagrams I've seen the 280 apears to have a fairly thin wing (thinner than those of the meteor) and the P-47 had a similar wing, probably even thicker and was able to stay in cntroll at higher speeds, known to dive at 550 mph, though dive flaps had to be used. But, nacelle size was certainly no larger than with the 004, and the Meteor with it's bulky engines did well once longer, streamlined nacelles were fitted. Since the 280 was still in prototype stages of these corections to the design had been made early it would have performed much better.

Too bad they didn't work on there problems durring the lengthy engine gestation period. And too bad Ohain was made to focus on the HeS-8 after the Hes-3 and 6 instead of starting on an axial design. The misfortion of the HeS-30 has already been discussed extencivily. Both Heinkel and Ohain viewed the HeS-30 as the favorable design, and it had been suggested as a replacement for the HeS-8 in designs using that engine. (since the HeS-30 was't too much longer or heavier than the HeS-8, and thus would fit most designs)