The Fw 190 A was outclassed even at low and medium altitudes?

According to the Stormbirds group, who built six replica Me 262's so accurately that the Messerschmitt factory issued them consecutive serial number plates, the redline airspeed for a production Me 262 in WWII was 540 mph, where the replicas are redlined today. If you go faster than that, you are a test pilot, and they all wish you good luck.

The P-80 was quite good, especially without the wingtip drop tanks. Of course, being an early jet, it was woefully short ranged without same ...

Most WWII jets could take off, fly fast for a very short time, and then land. Any dogfighting would run them out of fuel quickly. There was no jet-on-jet combat in WWII, so any encounters were at what would have to be disparate speed differential ... for BOTH parties.

In the end, the Me-262 claimed about 545 kills agianst about 100 losses. Not bad for a new technology.

But not a war winner when compared with the war losses. Overall, it was a non-factor and was in service only from about mid-1944 (26 July 1944 was the first combat encounter with an Me 262). So, although revolutionary in design, it did virtually nothing for the war effort when compared with the conventional piston fighters in use at the time. Just the top three Me 109 Aces shot down about 960 aircraft ... never mind the rest.

So the Me 262 was NOT the great fighter it has been portrayed to be ... IN WWII.

After WWII, jets were supreme by virtue of being the only game in town but during WWII jets were a non-event except for a few kills by both sides. I wonder how many Me-262's were lost to engine failure and "teeting troubles" as opposed to combat? My bet is more.

We lost more Hellcats to operational issues than to combat. Why should the Me 262 be different? Methinks it wasn't, especially since it was a new technology at the time ... and axial-flow jets were NOT perfected in WWII.

GregP said:

According to the Stormbirds group, who built six replica Me 262's so accurately that the Messerschmitt factory issued them consecutive serial number plates, the redline airspeed for a production Me 262 in WWII was 540 mph, where the replicas are redlined today. If you go faster than that, you are a test pilot, and they all wish you good luck.
.

Click to expand...

what's for you redline airspeed?
in the manual was reported max speed allowed in horizontal fly under 8 km 950 km/h, over 8km 900 km/h
max speed allowed in dive 1000 km/h

davebender said:

During 1943 the Allies still had thousands of older type aircraft in service such as the P-40, Hurricane and Spitfire Mk V. The newly introduced P-47B and P-47C were nothing to brag about. Early model Fw-190As compare well to all of those aircraft.

The P-51 starts showing up during early 1944, the same time the improved Fw-190A8 entered service. The P-51D arrived in Europe during the summer of 1944, just a few months before the Fw-190D9 entered service.

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Dave - the P-51B's first flew combat missions at group force level on December 1, 1943. IIRC the first Fw 190A-8's arrived in April, 1944? The first P-51D went to the 4th FG in late may - approximately 6-7 months before the first 190D-9s arrived at JG26.

BTW - nobody I know or have researched ever considered the Fw 190A's to be anything but a very difficult opponent when flown by a skilled pilot at all altitudes up to 20,000+ feet (this point not directed to you).

Regards,

Bill

Siegfried said:

I The FW 190's harsh stall is a bit exaggerated: some allied tests on captured FW 190s talk of aileron flutter making the pilot unconscious. A fluttering aileron is not normal on a 190 and signe of bad adjustment of the complicated pushrod linkages. (latter modified). Obviously its going to stall your tips earlier (stalls start at the rear of a wing) and the shaking will disguise your warning.

The real cause of the sharp stall was the two spar wing. The two spars made the wing torsionally stiff and unlikely to be twisted in the opposit direction to the aileron and thereby reduce the roll rate (a big problem for the spitfire with its thin single spar wing). However under heavy G the tip could twist up more than the trailing edge and thereby reduce the 2 degree washout angle. There was a FW report on this. .

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Siegfried - the above comment needs more insight. The Fw 190A (and Fw 190D with same wing) had wing twist out to 80% semi span, at which point the twist was "0". ALL wings will torse to a certain extent under high deflection aileron input, some more than others due to different control surfaces, different torsion stiffness, etc.

Having said that the violent snap roll experienced by Fw 190 pilots that pulled too many G's in a hard turn was more likely due to a stall effect not mitigated by continuous wing twist all the way out to the tip. We had a deep dive on this a couple of years back with respect to a reference contained in a Lednicer report.

BTW - I think you meant P-51B first arriving in December 1943 - not P-51D

Regards,

Bill

Bill, the first Dora 9s entered Lw operations in Sept 1944 with III./JG54 based at Oldenburg (5.9.44 - 11.44).

@drgndog, thanks for the correction re P-51B/C service date. Re FW-190 stall characteristic: the aircraft was apparently known for soft stalls in the landing (low g maneuvering) and quick recovery (when the wing stress was off) which leads me to think the harsh reported stalls were purely an aeroelastic issue. Puzzling is that this was possibly not fixed with the enlarged FW109A6 wing. Ta 152 series had a completely new wing structure and materials (steel/wood) and more washout.

@ GregP. I don't accept the 540mph red-line limit, I'm sure there IS a red line as you say but it's an arbitrary but convenient pilot safety feature The reason I say is that aircraft like this aerodynamically have a Mach limit not a TAS limit. In the case of the Me 262 this was 0.86 maximum and useful to 0.84. The speed of sound is about 750mph at sea level and 660mph at 36000ft (above which it stays fairly stable). Hence at sea level Mach 0.84 is 630mph and at 36,000ft it is 554mph. At 20,000ft speed of sound is about 700mph.

The fastest an Me 262 achieved in level flight was supposedly 578mph, Probably the V12 number VI+AG work number 130007 with Jumo 004C or D (given in Anthony Kay's German jet engines and gas turbines). There was one other with a miniaturized canopy.

It seems the Me 262's best speed was at 20,000ft compared to the P-80A. This may be due to lower high mach drag or its slightly higher Mcritical: Although many customely dismisses the wing sweep of the Me 262 as insignificant but cos(18degrees) is 0.95 and a so 5% increase in mach.


It is the Mc or critical mach that gives the aerodynamic limit ie when wing center of lift changes. There can be others due to airframe stress.

Note the 'clipped wing' derwent V Speed Meteors' and record P-80R broke their 600+ mph speed records at low altitudes. The P-80R even had sharp brass leading edge extensions (shades of F-104) which can't have done much for low speed handling.

Sure the Me 262 was late but technically it had a few tricks to go. The engines reliabillity I think would've stabilized significantly with the modern fuel control system. We are also dealing with at least 4 different engine types

Jumo 004B-0 fairly reliable hand built model
Jumo 004B-1 unreliable, poorly productionised
Jumo 004B-4 with hollow tinidur blades from about November 44
Jumo 004B-4 with hollow cromidur blades from about Feb 45.

Most of the Jumo 004 was simply plane sheet steel including the combustion chambers and variable area nozzle. Plain stainless steel would have greatly improved reliabillity in these areas.

The Me 262 would need to be improved sufficiently needed to hold the fort against P-80 and Meteor III until the next generation of Luftwaffe light weight fighters was debugged Ta 183, BV.215 or Me P1011 V2.

Sounds unlikely to me.

The Me-262 could achieve 540 mph in level flight. If 540mph was also the redline you would need to throttle back prior to diving. That would be a horrible distraction in the middle of aerial combat.

the P-80 and the Me 262 are OT please get back on topic if you all would

The increased performance obtained with 150 Grade Fuel was put to good use by Mustangs, Tempests and Spitfires in intercepting Buzz Bombs launched against Britain beginning mid June. Performance increases at sea level were as follows:
150 Grade Fuel

130 Grade...............................150 Grade
Spitfire IX 335 mph...................358 mph +25 lb
Spitfire XIV 359 mph.................366 mph +21 lb
Tempest V 372 mph..................386 mph +11 lb
Mustang III(V-1650-3) 360 mph..390 mph +25 lb


At the time the FW 190A8 could do 359mph on C3 fuel (about 96/130). The tempest v entered service in April 44 around the same time as the FW-190. So the
Tempest V on 100/130 was 12 mph faster than the FW 190 on a slightly inferior fuel but had inferior high altitude performance. 100/150 fuel however created
a greater gape.

The following sheet
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/leistungsdaten-1-10-44.jpg

Shows FW 190A8 speed was 548kmh/336mph on military power and 578kmh/359mph on emergency power.

FW 190A9 speed was 560kmh/348mph military power, we have no data on the A9 with emergency power but a pro rata increase suggests
590kmh/366mph and I think it was actually much more than this due to the new boost system which was not just C3 injection but C3 injection plus MW50.

The A9 incorporated, for the first time, MW50 and had a new engine.

I don't think the FW was outclassed, at least around june.

Siegfried - "@drgndog, thanks for the correction re P-51B/C service date. Re FW-190 stall characteristic: the aircraft was apparently known for soft stalls in the landing (low g maneuvering) and quick recovery (when the wing stress was off) which leads me to think the harsh reported stalls were purely an aeroelastic issue. Puzzling is that this was possibly not fixed with the enlarged FW109A6 wing. Ta 152 series had a completely new wing structure and materials (steel/wood) and more washout"

I suspect that the elimination of washout was prime cause but areoelastic torsion was a contributor,

What is your source that the A6 wing structure was different from A5 and below series? The A6 and beyond, by all acounts, behaved similarly in high G stall, as well as 190D (with same wing)

Siegfried said:

The increased performance obtained with 150 Grade Fuel was put to good use by Mustangs, Tempests and Spitfires in intercepting Buzz Bombs launched against Britain beginning mid June. Performance increases at sea level were as follows:
150 Grade Fuel

130 Grade...............................150 Grade
Spitfire IX 335 mph...................358 mph +25 lb
Spitfire XIV 359 mph.................366 mph +21 lb
Tempest V 372 mph..................386 mph +11 lb
Mustang III(V-1650-3) 360 mph..390 mph +25 lb


At the time the FW 190A8 could do 359mph on C3 fuel (about 96/130). The tempest v entered service in April 44 around the same time as the FW-190. So the
Tempest V on 100/130 was 12 mph faster than the FW 190 on a slightly inferior fuel but had inferior high altitude performance. 100/150 fuel however created
a greater gape.

I don't think the FW was outclassed, at least around june.

Click to expand...

You might note that the 1650-7 gave 2 to 12 miles per hour better speed in the Mustang III than the 1650-3 on the deck...and correspondingly faster than the Tempest.

Most of the RAF was converting from the -3 in their Mustang III's for the same reasons as the 8th AF converted to the 1650-7 for all P-51B/C's by June 1944.

Operation Market-Garden was the British Schwerpunkt during September 1944. Take a look at the RAF OOB which supported the British offensive. Those are the British aircraft the Fw-190A8s will be fighting. Chances of encountering a Tempest are rather slim.

What is interesting about the introduction of 100/150 fuel (in limited use) was the extraordinary improvement it had on Merlin performance.
The Spitfire IX increased speed at SL by 23 mph from 335 to 357 an increase of 6.5% (still 2mph slower than a FW 190A-8 on C3)
The Mustang increased speed at SL by 30mph from 360 to 390 an increase of 8.33%.

By contrast the Griffon engine Spitfire XIV increase in speed only 1.9% and the Tempest V only 3.7%.

The proportionatly higher speed increase on the Mustang over the Spitfire IX is probably explained by the lower tendancy of the Mustangs laminar profiles wings to develop compressibillity drag (shock drag)

It would be interesting to know what the BMW 801D2 radial would have been able to do with 100/150 fuel.

it would be interesting to know what engine modifications ( if any ..on the merlins, P&Ws, etc) were done for them to run with the higher octane fuel. were the existing valves, etc. able to cope with the higher octanes without burning up too quickly, did engine life suffer or was the merlin so robust to be able to absorb the additional temps and stress like it was made for it... you step up too far the engine will scream like a raped rabbit but could start to throw rods..burn pistons or valves..etc.

bobbysocks said:

it would be interesting to know what engine modifications ( if any ..on the merlins, P&Ws, etc) were done for them to run with the higher octane fuel. were the existing valves, etc. able to cope with the higher octanes without burning up too quickly, did engine life suffer or was the merlin so robust to be able to absorb the additional temps and stress like it was made for it... you step up too far the engine will scream like a raped rabbit but could start to throw rods..burn pistons or valves..etc.

Click to expand...

There seems to be kits provided to upgrade the various aircraft but the big issue seemed to be reduction of interval of replacement of sparkplugs, approx after every two missions for the P-51. You can read all about it at spitfireperformance although what made up a kit is not defined.

Siegfried said:

It would be interesting to know what the BMW 801D2 radial would have been able to do with 100/150 fuel.

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I think the R2800 went up from 2300 hp to 2600 hp, a 13% increase, but the water injection makes it a little confusing.

IIRC the big problem with the spark plugs was leading. they were using leaded gas for lubrication of the valve train/ upper cylinder and reducing engine knock. after a few rough missions they would have a tendency to foul out...