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The Me-262 entered combat (albeit in limited numbers) during 1944. At that time it was about 100 mph faster then contemporary fighter aircraft. How many other WWII era fighter aircraft can claim a 100 mph advantage over their rivals?
My sentiments too.
Maybe the design was not that advanced. But too me it's greatest advance is the performance advantage it had over it's enemies fighters it encountered. I know that is not where you are wanting this to go, but for me it's speed is what made it advanced, it's what made the plane. It took the whole design of the plane to achieve that. Was it a huge step technically? Maybe not.
I also think that if it had not been that advanced of a design, so many of it's attributes would not have found their way into other planes, or influenced designs.
Interesting thread too by the way.
The metals that were used in the engine were because of what was available. If they had the needed tungsten, would it have been better? Likely so.
What, from the 262, would you say influenced or found its way onto future types? This is something I've tried to work out for myself but the ones I can think of were all done before somewhere else.
The Me 262 isn't particularly advanced over contemporary aircraft. There were some incremental improvements over previous generation piston engined aircraft in the aerodynamics (thinner wings for higher Mcrit), but pretty much everything else is technology you'd find on a piston engined aircraft. The jets engines gave it a performance advantage, but this doesn't make it advanced as such. The Meteor is in exactly the same position.
Tungsten was for armour piercing projectiles. Nickel and Chromium were of more concern for jet engines. Its worth pointing out that the Germans stuck with high temperature stainless steels for turbine blades (like Whittle's W.1), they never developed nickel superalloys like Nimonic and Inconel. It wasn't from lack of materials, it just wasn't done, it was only done (at first) by a single British company. Nickel superalloys were a British advancement, something new and better. The Germans started developing hollow air cooled blades, this was also an advancement.
I think it's worth noting that the German technological advances with regards to aviation are widely publicised, whereas very similar contemporary work elsewhere is hardly known about.
Pretty much only the MiG I-260 and Su-9/11/13 were influenced directly by the Me 262, the first wasn't built, the second family didn't see much success. Its more a case of "the Me 262 has jets. I've got to get me some of those". Aside from being a jet aircraft, there were no other special advanced features to adopt.
drgndog - every single source I have seen (which I admit can only be a small fraction of those available) specifically details that the wing was NOT swept for that reason. I am not sure they could have simply moved the wing as you say, that would certainly be a much more involved redesign than simply cranking the angle a bit. Also, I don't know if this is a red herring or not, but I am struck at how, on examination, there is nothing specifically 'swept' about the design of the wing outboard of the engines. For instance the tip shape and aileron shape etc, it looks as if it would have been perfectly happy if also fitted straight . You could not say this of the F-86 or P.1101 wing for example as they are clearly designed with sweep in mind. Does that makes sense as an explanation of what I'm trying to say, as I'm not particularyl technical?
As I understand it the first use by Messerschmitt of swept wing aerodynamics to increase performance was the P.1070, the 262 was the P.1065.The P.1070''s nosewheel was incorporated into the later tricycle 262's following the earlier prototypes, but how about the wing design? Did that also change between the tailwheel and nosewheel versions?
At the risk of looking like I'm contradicting myself, wouldn't you say that the narrow chord wings of the Me 262 were more modern in design than those of the Meteor? This in itself is not an advancement as narrow chord wings hwere already in fairly widespread use but aI did always think the wing of the Meteor was slightly 'backward'.