No it climbed faster and retained speed in tight turns much better, something which is made quite clear by both Allied German pilots who flew it.
From Me-262 A-1 Pilot's Handbook, put together by US UK test pilots:
"(2) The airplane holds its speed in tight turns much longer than conventional types."
And you have a comparison which states the radius of the turn in a High spped turn of the Me 262 is equal or less than say a Spit or 51 - at any altitude?
Luftwaffe test pilot, Hans fey:
"The Me-262 will turn much better at high than at low speeds, and due to its clean design, will keep its speed in tight turns much longer than the conventional type aircraft"
Hans stated it will turn better than "what" at low speeds? and what is a High, medium and Low speed in these anecdotal conversations?
Bill as you have just demonstrated it depends entirely on the situation, and you don't know the story of the Allied fighter pilots shot down by the Me-262.
The only ones I have read basically have the same story - approach at high speed from behind, shallow dive to remain unseen, accelerate through the 6 o'clock shot and continue past at high speed. What do you have to offer for different scenarios? Not that I would dispute it but would like to see a couple of claims made by 262 pilots in which they engaged and stayed in the horizontal.
It is highly likely a P-51 seeing a Me-262 in his tail took the fight to the horizontal as-well only to be cut off in the turn and recieve a stream of 30mm HE projectile to his cockpit. Its not hard to cut off a turn and get a deflection shot, even against a better turning a/c, and esp. not if you have fast and flat firing guns.
Totally agree.
In short it was by no means a mistake for a Me-262 pilot to engage in the horizontal with a Mustang as long as he knew what he was doing and didn't let speed drop too low. He had to keep the speed up, which he could do by dropping his nose down.
We know that the Me-262 was considerably faster, climbed faster and maintains speed in tight turns considerably better than any piston engined fighter.
Soren - I am ok with everything you say, including better energy retention in a high speed turn as it's drag was lower to considerably lower than the Allied fighters. The 51 was close as far a total wetted drag, however.
As Erich noted, fooling around in the horizontal attracted a crowd in most cases, and while the 262 may be losing energy slower than his horizontal opponent, there was a high probability that a wingman or another flight was not laboring under that challenge.
Soren - it is a fact that pilots that spotted Me 262s on their tail nearly always pulled into a high G turn and shallow dive or steep climb to evade - of course we only read about the successes. The MACRs I have read regarding eyewitness accounts of a Mustang loss all have the 262 scoring from 5-7 o'clock and continuing on with no return.
And we know the approx. Clmax of the wing as-well, so we know that above 450 km/h a Me-262 will black out the average pilot in its tighest turn. Not on top of this we know the Me-262 mostly flew at speeds higher than 600 km/h, at which speed a whole lot of G's could be pulled.
The only difference in this discussion between say a Spit XIV or a P-51B and a Me 262, for both of those scenarios ,is that the 262 fully spooled up has more thrust available over the thrust required for the maneuver at those two speeds for the same turn and velocity, and as you note the 262 is cleaner so it will lose energy (velocity) slower - but the Spit and 51 will be able to turn with a tighter radius depending on the pilot's ability (both) to sustain the G's. Back to the G suit discussion and the fact that all US pilots wore them after October 1944.
The absolute no no in any of the early jets was however getting into a low speed turning fight as acceleration was very sluggish at slow speeds.
I agree, and until afterburners were developed that principle applied throughout
I'm sure you both agree.