Right...the 262 would or should employ its speed in a single pass at an enemy fighter and never try to turn with one. The Me-262 was an interceptor of bombers, not a jet "fighter."
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
I am not an expert in these things but I think the major tactic was just being there as an escort, this meant the 262s must keep their speed near the maximum which restricted them to high speed staffing passes, if they slowed down to make an easy kill they were sitting ducks themselves.
That is another question - after the war, German engineers went off to the Soviet Union and the US. The result was the MiG 15 and the North American Sabre. If British engines had been coupled with the German swept-wing concept in 1941, no nation could have competed. There is some credible evidence that Britain went within an ace of joining with Germany after Dunkirk. Lord Halifax was claimed to be an influential leader who wanted that. Hence the fact that Rudolph Hess, the deputy Chancellor of Germany was confident enough to go over to carry out negotiations. The truth has been suppressed until 2016. It will be fascinating to see then what actually happened at the time.
See Rudolf Hess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's a bit like the allegory of the The Lord of the Rings , where the possessor of the Ring can have stupendous power, just as long as he is prepared to sell his soul...
Edger Schmeud - the designer for the Mustang was also the head of design for the F-86.. which 'German' engineers did you have in mind as the F-86 major contributor?
If you revise your statement to say Schmeud was influenced by 262 design sweep and leading edge slats you be closer to the facts.
Edger Schmeud - the designer for the Mustang was also the head of design for the F-86.. which 'German' engineers did you have in mind as the F-86 major contributor?
If you revise your statement to say Schmeud was influenced by 262 design sweep and leading edge slats you be closer to the facts.
The 262 wing sweep makes it as advanced as a douglas dakota, the sweep was to adjust the CofG not to reduce drag at high speed
That has nothing to do with my comment. Having said that if the only reason was to adjust the center of LIFT to accomodate the cg, they could have adjusted the cg in different ways.
The wing wind tunnel data was extensively reviewed by Edgar Schmeud and the resultant wing design on the F-86 was both to delay transonic drag rise (sweep) as well as improve low speed and turning qualities (leading edge slats).
Everything I have read on the 262 says the wing sweep was to adjust for heavier than expected engines and that the wing sweep on a 262 would have little effect. The DC3 Dakota has swept wings
I don't really understand what your point of view is regarding 'wing sweep on a 262 would have little effect'.
1. it would move the center of lift (aerodynamic center of the wing) aft from a straight wing design. This would change the static margin (the relationship between cg and ac), change the necessary relationship of the horizontal stabilzer on pitch effectiveness. Do you consider these effects negligible?
2. it would increase the aircraft speed capability before experiencing transonic drag by effectively reducing the t/c ratio (and the velocity component chordwise). It would have the effect of raising the Mcr. Is this not important in your mind?
3. both of those effects were 'significant' not 'little'.
as for the C-47 it was 'little' not significant - but it (sweep) also had the effect of moving the aerodynamic center of the wing a little bit aft in comparison with a zero sweep wing.
Hi Magnon
probably my bad wording, the wing sweep was for your point no 1 (obviouslly important) but the actual sweep used was not sufficient to make a substantial difference to the transonic performance (your point 2) as below.
from Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe / Sturmvogel
quote
Swept wings had been proposed as early as 1935 by Adolph Busemann, and Willy Messerschmitt had researched the topic from 1940. In April 1941, he actually proposed to fit a 35° swept wing (Pfeilflügel II) to the Me 262. Though this suggestion was not implemented, he continued with the projected HG II and HG III high-speed derivatives of the Me 262 in 1944, which were designed with a 35° and 45° wing sweep respectively. The production Me 262 had a leading edge sweep of 18.5° primarily to properly position the center of lift relative to the center of mass and not for the aerodynamic benefit of increasing the critical Mach number of the wing (the sweep was too slight to achieve any significant advantage). The aircraft was originally designed as a tail-dragger which it was built as in the first (Me 262 V1) through fourth (-V4) prototypes, but it was discovered on an early test run that the engines and wings "blanked" the stabilizers, giving almost no control on the ground. Changing to a tricycle landing gear arrangement, firstly as a fixed undercarriage on the fifth prototype aircraft, then a fully retractable one on the sixth and succeeding prototypes, corrected all of these problems immediately.
unquote
It seems that the 262 was used for tests with higher sweep which certainly would have improved the transonic performance.
I mentioned the Dakota as its wings were swept for similar reasons, to adjust CofG/Cof Lift
The effective chordwise flow component for an 18 degree sweep is .951057 Vfreestream -
V=Vfs x cosine 18%. This says that the velocity over the wing, parallel to the aircraft CL axis, in a wing chord wise direction - is .95% of the same flow for a straight wing of same airfoil, as a function of freestream velocity.
Further what it means that as the Me 262 was enetering Critical Mach for a straight wing, it was only at 95% of the velocity required for critical mach with the 18 degree sweep.
Hence ~ 5% increase in Mach crit over the swept Me 262 wing. Not insignificant
From the figures I have seen the 262 had a critical mach number of about 0.84 to 0.86 with its swept wings similar to a spitfire where I have seen 0.86 to 0.89 mentioned. Whether the sweep is significant depends on the eventual aim since the 262 never had enough power to reach its critical mach number in level flight.
A 5% reduction in drag is useful, but as I said everything I have read the sweep wasnt introduced for aerodynamic reasons . If the original design (with straight wings) had 5% more drag then it was not as aerodynamic as many prop designs but it probably wasnt intended to be. The 262 was the "first off" to prove jet engines the next generation were proposed to have the jets in the fuselage and 35-45 degree swept wings.
TEC - It wasn't a 5% reduction in drag, it was a 5% increase in speed (or delay to effect) before Mcr was reached - and it definitely was reached in a dive in the .82M-.87M range.
As to everything you have read - is that the same as 'read everything written'? particularly by the Me 262 designers - versus the author that wrote Stormbirds? I can almost (but not quite as I have not read everything that was written about the design choices made) that the sweep was selected for more than just shifting the aeordynamic center of lift movement slightly aft.
The Me 262 was cleaner than the Mustang and the Mustang was the cleanest of the conventional aircraft of WWII. It was definitely intended to be extremely clean.
BTW aeros would kill their mothers for a decrease of 5% in drag - it is that 'useful'!
You cannot get a meaningful picture of the Meteors capabilities, during WWII, because of its extremely limited deployment. It seems to me that the British made sure they could build Jet technologies, just in case they were needed, and then more or less left the technology at that experimental state until after the war. To determine the true potentialities of the Meteor one has to look at its postwar applications, but then that raises the tricky question of what might have happened to the me 262 if it had been allowed to develop postwar in the same fashion.
My opinion, based on very little admittedly is that the Me 262 had the advantages of speed, and firepower, it seems likley that the Meteor could outturn the 262. I dont know about dive or climb characteristics. Whilst the Me 262 had a firepower advanatage, the Meteor carried more than enough punch to deliver lethal blows in a short space of time. It seems a lot would depend on the combat situation and the pilots flying the aircraft in that fight.....
From DESIGN FOR AIR COMBAT
"The more conventional Me 262 was originally designed with straight wings. But, because it was one of the world's first high speed aircraft not to have the forward weight concentration of piston engines, it turned out to be tail heavy. In order to restore the balance between the lift and mass centres, the wing outboard of the engine nacelles was swept back, as it had been on the DC3 airliner for similar reasons. Eventually the Me 262 was given a leading edge sweepback of 18.5 degrees across the span, a modest sweep which had little effect on drag..."
It had a significant effect on delaying Mcr - 5% for ideal (infinite wingspan), less for 3D but significant nevertheless. It would have no material affect in the lower velocity ranges except to possibly increase wing drag due to a longer relative lifting line due to the sweep and drag associated with surface area
Also there are stuctural implications for swept wings. All things being equal, the deflection of a uniformly loaded cantilever (which the wing approximates) is a function of the fourth power of the length. A swept wing of a given span is necessarliy longer than a straight wing. For a 18.5 degrees sweep, assuming constant cross-section, that would result in over 20% greater deflection, not taking into account the greater (around 50%) wing loading of the Me 262.
The wing is Not a uniformly loaded cantilever - the span wise loading is elliptical in shape. It is True that the length of the spar increases due to the sweep, and also true that torsion increases are intruduced as a result of the center of lift moving aft of the normal location for a straight wing of similar sirfoil and twist.
The design criteria to reduce the stresses would be to a.) consider a deeper (higher t/c) root chord to enable a deeper beam, coupled with decreasing the t/c outboard to shift the lift distribution inboard, b.) integrate a more robust torque box by virtue of another beam at the flap line., c.) introduce twist slightly higher to shift the lift center inboard.
In any case, the location of the engines necessitated a deeper and stiffer inboard wing section.
There are other factors: see The Penalties of Sweepback in DESIGN FOR AIR COMBAT
Overall, it seems the gains were minimal and the penalties were significant.
Define 'minimal' gains, and 'significant' penalties - those terms in this discussion are minimally objective to debate in a significant manner.