Which jet was better, the Me 262 or the Gloster Meteor? (1 Viewer)

[Magnon]

Many of the Me-262 pilots were also inexperienced, and flying an aircraft with performance greater than any operated before would have been a challenge to more professional aviators. Hitting Allied bombers while streaking through a formation at high speed was difficult, and if an Me-262 pilot slowed down to take more careful aim, he became a good target for the bombers' defensive fire and escorting Allied fighters.

The Messerschmitt ME 262
THE 456th FIGHTER INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON

QUOTE]

As against the problems of German pilots in coming to terms with the Me 262, the Meteor was argualbly relatively benign and easy to master:

By July 1944, the first Meteor Is were delivered to No. 616 Squadron. This unit included two members of the Royal Canadian Air Force—flying officers William H. McKenzie and Jack Robert Ritch.
No. 616 Sqdn. had flown Spitfires before converting, and the pilots had been assigned to twin-engine training on Oxford aircraft. Unaware that this was leading to the Meteor, they feared they were being prepared for something less exciting than their beloved Spits. Once the pilots met their new aircraft, the switch proved remarkably easy. The Meteor I had excellent cockpit visibility, helped by the presence of a tricycle undercarriage and the absence of a piston engine up front. There was no dual instruction; pilots simply taxied the Meteor for several minutes and then took off. McKenzie recalled that the most difficult thing was to get accustomed to jet flight. "It was very quiet because you were up in front of the engines. All I could do was sit there looking at the holes where the props should have been, and thinking, 'I see it, but I don't believe it! What's holding me up?'"​

http://www.aviation.technomuses.ca/assets/pdf/e_shield.pdf

 

[Magnon]

magnon,

please, stop, it becomes ridiculous. next post will be what? the switch for the electricals was badly placed on the 262? (to an english pilot opinion off course, those who didn't liked the lean position in german planes).
You always come back with the meteor turn, but there is someting you don't seem to understand: to initiate a turn, you apply stick on the ailerons! if the ailerons are HARD and low responsive at medium and high speed, how will you start the turn?

simply admit the meteor was a bad plane without maneuvrability, with a bad cockpit layout (in1946!) and tiring to fly( in combat, where each maneuvre starts with AILERONS), yes it had a "reliable" engine but that's all.

and forgot: those plane(262)s werent' build to last, they were tools. the airframe of a 109 in 45 has something like a 10h life from factory fresh to the end of life moment, sowhat if the 004 engines were able to be used 20h max? who cares?

The Me 262 controls became very stiff at speed:

...This balance is in addition to those already noted as being set in the elevators themselves, and may be a late modification. Reports from abroad have indicated that at speeds over 500 mph. the ailerons and elevators of the 262 become extremely hard to move and that an extendable control stick designed to give increased leverage had been developed. However, no such stick, or provisions for its installation could be found on the craft studied, and it is held possible the mass balance just discussed has been utilized in its stead...​

www.enginehistory.org/German/Me-262/Me262_Airframe_2.pdf


Regards,

Magnon

 

[Magnon]

magnon,

and forgot: those plane(262)s werent' build to last, they were tools. the airframe of a 109 in 45 has something like a 10h life from factory fresh to the end of life moment, sowhat if the 004 engines were able to be used 20h max? who cares?

Sorry Bada,

This looks to me a bit like trying to make a virtue of necessity.

Ten hours design life? That is frankly pathetic. A good designer should have made an aircraft that could outfly and outfight the Allied fighters with at least a 300 hour combat design life. If you read the article on Pfeil, you will see the design parameter given to the metallurgists for the British metal turbine blades was 0.1% elongation over 300 hours "...the nominal life of a fighter aircraft in wartime..."

Regards,

Magnon

 

[Glider]

Bada
Don't worry. It doesn't matter what is posted, even if the Meteor had plush carpets, touch screen controls, air conditioning, a drinks cabinet, soothing music, in flight food with Cuban cigars with a built in lighter. It still went 40-50 mph slower than the 262, was 100 - 120 mph slower in a dive, was a hard work to throw around the sky and a dreadful gun platform.

Nothing that can be posted can get away from those basic truths.

 

[Magnon]

magnon,

simply admit the meteor was a bad plane without maneuvrability, with a bad cockpit layout (in1946!) and tiring to fly( in combat, where each maneuvre starts with AILERONS), yes it had a "reliable" engine but that's all.

Some people think the Me 262 was not manoeuvrable, Bada. Check out this comment regarding the night fighter version, benchmarked off the day-fighter:

Study of the plans for this change does not indicate that much, if anything, had been done to compensate for the added weight aft of CG and, since the craft had to be trimmed nose heavy for take-off as originally designed, it is believed that even more trim had to be applied for the night fighter version. Too, since the 262 was not the most maneuverable to begin with, it is believed that the radarloaded version was not as good a combat craft as the original day fighter version.​

www.enginehistory.org/German/Me-262/Me262_Airframe_2.pdf

As I have pointed out before, the Meteor F3 was able to hold its own in a dogfight with a Banshee, a second generation US fighter. Personally, I think the Banshee would have eaten the Me 262 for breakfast.

 

[bada]

Glider:

magnon: the germans didn't build their planes to last, they bild to fight, with thus a high risk of beeing self destroyed, even if the plane is called wonderweapon by some stupid small "moustachu" with a bad haircut
And yes, the lifetime of a 109 was somethin like 10hours, even the engines weren't build as in the begin of even the half period of the war, a DB was build to last 20h in 45!

Now, fo the radar version of the 262: who cares about maneuvrability? will a fully loaded lancaster outturn a fighter, even an overloaded fighter? will this big viermot make fast and short evasive maneuvres? The first question to ask ourself about that would be: will the viermot crew even notice the presence of the overloaded nightfighteron it's A*s untill the moment they receive a salvo of 30mm shells?... my answer to that is simply: NO.

now, let's back to the perfect fighting machine that the meteor was( in 1946, more than a year after the end of WWII, with thus more than a year of devloppement on the aircraft, also more than a year after the complete stop was done on the devloppement of the 262):

Edit: forgot the source: http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ ....voilà

 

[Magnon]

Hi Bada,

You've been busy. But I've seen all that. I have been quoting from it for several months.

The British were being conservative in terms of the airframe. Limitations were there to be broken in wartime as you've admitted yourself.

The F4 airframe served for over two decades in Argentinean and Brazilian service, retiring in 1968 and 1970 respectively. Much more than ten hours...

The snaking was a problem in the Me 262 as well, so don't raise it as a Meteor-only issue:

The evaluation did show that the Me-262 was not only fast but was responsive and docile. However, it did tend to "snake" at high speeds, reducing its accuracy as a gun platform, and it was underpowered, with a long take-off run​

According to the Me 262 pilot's handbook, Me 262 pilots were forbidden to do aerobatics, the Meteor not.

Do you know what G loading the Me 262 airframe was designed to withstand?

Regards,

Magnon

 

[bada]

the first gen JET were all underpowered, even the meteor, they all needed a long way to get to speed before taking off or even start to climb. the 262 was not the only one in this scenario.

About the G-loads, have to look in books.Got a good one on the bird, but the book is in german and my german is very basic, it would be more like a fishing for a word in the entire book.
the only person that could give a direct answer was banned few months ago. he has a large amount of technical info about the 262.

 

[drgondog]

Bada - I suspect you mean Soren - but I doubt that he had actual data on the g limits as we went round and round on that for some time re: Documented vs anecdotal. Allied design engineers (Britain/US-not sure about USSR) for high performance a/c were typically 8g limit/12 G ultimate for a specific gross weight (NOT max gw). Soren stated that German doctrine was 13 G ultimate, implying 8.5 Limit but no documentation was submitted for that claim. Nevertheless, there is no reason to suspect the 262 would be designed to lower structural standards at Messerschmidt unless some definitive is presented.

Bada - one note on your comparison of Meteor vs Fw 190 speed limit at 20,000 ft. The table showed 400 IAS which is Indicated Air Speed not True Air Speed. The Fw would do 400mph TAS but closer to 280-300 (a guess - I don't have my books unpacked to do the math) IAS at 20,000 feet.

Magnon - IIRC the high speed snaking was pronounced with full fuel in aft fuselage tank (extreme limit aft cg) but I will have to look up the Wright Pat reports from 1946. At any rate as a gun platform it was just fine in a speed range of 90% (50+ mph faster) than any Allied conventional fighter.

As to comments on Me 262 'triangular' fuselage cross sections being a dead end - look to blended fuselage/wing combinations for the future extension - such as the SR-71. Anecdotal discussions about the drag components of the Me 262 are somewhat worthless - as much as any similar discussion regarding any other aircraft... regardless of the source.. unless the data and the assumptions build up is presented in its entirety.

 

[Magnon]

Dragondog:
I don't think the design of the SR 71 fuselage is particularly relevant to the Me 262... that is unless the German aircraft designers had some strange priorities or were prescient about hypersonic flight?

Lockheed F-12/SR-71 Wing/body blending on this aircraft consists of the use of a fuselage chine (Fig 154) which extends from the extreme nose. Operating as a very-low-aspect-ratio wing, it produces lift as a function of the square of the angle of attack which acts well ahead of the CG (i.e. as a destabiliser). This helps to offset the large rearward movement of aerodynamic centre with Mach number, which is particularly large for a delta wing. It thereby reduces what would otherwise be a very large static margin at Mach 3, together with the trim drag that this would generate. The influence of the chine on the neutral point is shown in Fig 155. To further reduce trim drag the nose of the aircraft just forward of the canopy is cranked up 2° so that it operates at a higher AOA than the wings. This produces a further positive increment in Cm0 which collectively halves the bending moment on the very long forebody.

The chine also has a strong influence on directional stability, and Fig 154 shows how the side-force was reduced by the addition of the chine. In elongating the forebody's cross-section, the chine allows an ordered crossflow instead of the separated region that exists behind a circular cross-section. Without the chine, the long, slender forebody displays a marked decrease in directional stability with increasing AOA. With forebody side-force reduced, however, directional stability increases with AOA. The chine's impact on directional stability is discussed further in Chapter 5.​

Regards,

Magnon

 

[drgondog]

Dragondog:
I don't think the design of the SR 71 fuselage is particularly relevant to the Me 262... that is unless the German aircraft designers had some strange priorities or were prescient about hypersonic flight?

Lockheed F-12/SR-71 Wing/body blending on this aircraft consists of the use of a fuselage chine (Fig 154) which extends from the extreme nose. Operating as a very-low-aspect-ratio wing, it produces lift as a function of the square of the angle of attack which acts well ahead of the CG (i.e. as a destabiliser). This helps to offset the large rearward movement of aerodynamic centre with Mach number, which is particularly large for a delta wing. It thereby reduces what would otherwise be a very large static margin at Mach 3, together with the trim drag that this would generate. The influence of the chine on the neutral point is shown in Fig 155. To further reduce trim drag the nose of the aircraft just forward of the canopy is cranked up 2° so that it operates at a higher AOA than the wings. This produces a further positive increment in Cm0 which collectively halves the bending moment on the very long forebody.

The chine also has a strong influence on directional stability, and Fig 154 shows how the side-force was reduced by the addition of the chine. In elongating the forebody's cross-section, the chine allows an ordered crossflow instead of the separated region that exists behind a circular cross-section. Without the chine, the long, slender forebody displays a marked decrease in directional stability with increasing AOA. With forebody side-force reduced, however, directional stability increases with AOA. The chine's impact on directional stability is discussed further in Chapter 5.​

Regards,

Magnon

Only relevant in that the cross section of the Me 262 wasn't strictly 'triangular', that the blended fuse of the SR-71 without the chine still provided less wing/fuselage interference drag than 'classic rectangular or circular' fuselage cross section.

Magnon - I was part of a team at the Skunk works that pioneered the application of finite element modelling to both aerodynamics and structures. The SR-71 was NOT designed with NASTRAN (structures) or the aero model (I can't recall the name of the in house model) but we applied both to the original analyses and wind tunnel data to determine the applicability. We also looked at the U-2 and the F-104. One of the engineers (not me) also explored several past designs including the Me 262 and one other t/e (can't remember that one either but it might have been the B-57) wing/engine/fuse approaches to twin engine vortex drag interference. One of the outcomes was the 262 fuselage/wing design was remarkably clean wrt to vortex drag for the low wing design.

I didn't see the data (on the Me 262) and my comments are strictly anecdotal...as are all of the google research presented on the 262 so far in this thread.

 

[Juha]

Hello Bada
thanks a lot for the scans!
BTW, as Drgondog wrote, at 20'000ft IAS and TAS are very different figures, 400mph IAS means c. 550mph TAS, 190, any version, didn't reach that speed, even max for 262 was 540mph at altitude.

Juha

 

[Magnon]

I didn't see the data (on the Me 262) and my comments are strictly anecdotal...as are all of the google research presented on the 262 so far in this thread.

If we can't quote anecdotal material, things are going to be very quiet here. As far as I am concerned the material from sources such as Meteor-CFE, the Me 262 Project, NASA, Kerosene in the Blood, Design for Air Combat, AeroNotes, Spiritus Tempus, ME262 PIlotDebrief, ME262 Wendell, RAE German Jets, ME262 Airframe, ME262 Engine, Me262 Pilot Handbook etc., is extremely worthwhile.

On the other hand, if you have access to first-hand analytical design and test data, particularly aerodynamic and structural for the airframes, and thermodynamic design and testing of the engines, all the better. With your background in Computer Aided Design of advanced aircraft, I will be very interested to see the material along with your analysis as it comes through.

I will try to contribute some very modest effort from this end.

Regards,

Magnon

 

[drgondog]

On the other hand, if you have access to first-hand analytical design and test data, particularly aerodynamic and structural for the airframes, and thermodynamic design and testing of the engines, all the better. With your background in Computer Aided Design of advanced aircraft, I will be very interested to see the material along with your analysis as it comes through.

I will try to contribute some very modest effort from this end.

Regards,

Magnon

Everything I did at Lockheed and Bell was classified secret for all military programs..

On the other hand - if you wish to discuss the background math and techniques of Rod, Beams, Panels and Plates behind finite element structural modellling or distribution of source/sinks over a fine mesh as it relates to potential flow/pressure distribution - we can talk.

 

[drgondog]

If we can't quote anecdotal material, things are going to be very quiet here. As far as I am concerned the material from sources such as Meteor-CFE, the Me 262 Project, NASA, Kerosene in the Blood, Design for Air Combat, AeroNotes, Spiritus Tempus, ME262 PIlotDebrief, ME262 Wendell, RAE German Jets, ME262 Airframe, ME262 Engine, Me262 Pilot Handbook etc., is extremely worthwhile.

At no time did I say they weren't worthwhile - I did say what you presented here is anecdotal and you haven't made clear why you accept anecdotal references to such quantifiable topics as Drag. Wind tunnel results are useful in these discussions as well as accepted computer models with reasonable boundary conditions. The latter are available today - presumably the former are available from German sources but they haven't been entered into this discussion as Exhibit A.

Let me help you out with my problems with your references.

E.G. The Quote "The effect of sweep with the Me 262 wing was 'negligible'."

The question to be asked, and answered in context, is: Would the Me 262 had the same achievable dive speed with a straight wing - same airfoil/same thickness spanwise and same AR". From my background I strongly suspect the answer is 'NO' - but neither your selected references, nor your quoted selections from those references shed light on this subject.

When I ask you what the definition of 'negligible' is, and you have no answer - then it begs the second question. What is negligible in terms of say, Mach no at critical mach with or without sweep? was it 3%, 1%, 0.1% ??

Extrapolated further, if Mcr for the Me-262 was only .8M in a dive, it was within the envelope of a pursuing Mustang - and that would not be 'insignificant'.

If you care to go back into the threads re: Me 262 you will find references to recent computer modelling and results on the Me 262 - check them out. They may not change your mind but they will offer more insight to your deliberations.

What I am saying is that for me, I remain agnostic on your representations from the sources you have quoted, for the above reasons - and ask you why you accept the same anecdotal claims if the data from wind tunnel results are in existance or computer models are in existance.

 

[Magnon]

There is a good analysis of some available data on post #34 on http://warbirdsforum.com/showthread.php?t=451&page=4

It is well worth checking out.

Regards,

Magnon

 

[Magnon]

Quote:
If you care to go back into the threads re: Me 262 you will find references to recent computer modelling and results on the Me 262 - check them out. They may not change your mind but they will offer more insight to your deliberations.

Sorry DragonDog,

I've been back through the posts in the thread and haven't seen any results of recent computer modelling posted. Can you point me to the post number?

Regards,

Magnon

 

[drgondog]

Quote:
If you care to go back into the threads re: Me 262 you will find references to recent computer modelling and results on the Me 262 - check them out. They may not change your mind but they will offer more insight to your deliberations.

Sorry DragonDog,

I've been back through the posts in the thread and haven't seen any results of recent computer modelling posted. Can you point me to the post number?

Regards,

Magnon

i'll see what I can find - IIRC it was a debate about whether the 262 ever exceeded Mach 1 in a dive and a recent computer modelling exercise. Juha and I had a pretty spirited argument with Soren on the subject and others may remember the thread location also. Here is a reference to the aforementioned study whil I look for the thread.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sound_barrier

Bill

 

[Magnon]

Magnon - IIRC the high speed snaking was pronounced with full fuel in aft fuselage tank (extreme limit aft cg) but I will have to look up the Wright Pat reports from 1946. At any rate as a gun platform it was just fine in a speed range of 90% (50+ mph faster) than any Allied conventional fighter.

The snaking - it wasn't specified as just occurring at high speed - was raised by Wendell apparently for an early condition where the aircraft had only two main tanks and an auxilliary tank. (For a total capacity of 529 US gallon).

The Me 262 Pilots Handbook indicates that a further 158 gallon rear auxilliary tank had been added and the rear main tank slightly reduced in capacity (total capacity 655 US gallon). One would have to assume that the CG problem had been exacerbated. The last page of the Handbook also indicates that there was going to be provision for two jettisonable tanks of 158 gallon. One would surmise that these would be wing tanks, which would raise the mass moment of inertia of the aircraft again and probably compound the snaking problem.

Wendell states that the aircraft would automatically stall in a turn if the CG was too far aft. The CFE report on the Meteor states that the CG remained within its design envelope at all times. Your feedback on the Me 262 would be appreciated, especially if you have access to other sources (e.g Wright Pat?). It seems to me to be an intriguing and critical aspect of the aspect of the viability of the aircraft as a dogfighting machine.

It would seem to me to be extremely naive to expect that in all cases of air combat you could have consumed enough fuel to keep the CG within its design envelope, particularly as Allied aircraft were lurking around the German airfields.

For viable gunnery, not only does the aircraft have to be controllable, but the gun should not be liable to jamming during high-G manoeuvres. The Schwalbe cannon was notorious in this regard. It would seem that the strategy was going to have to always be hit-and-run tactics at high speed. That's very narrow and suited only to a specialist interceptor. But that's exactly what the Shwalbe was designed for.

Regards,

Magnon

 

[Magnon]

What I am saying is that for me, I remain agnostic on your representations from the sources you have quoted, for the above reasons - and ask you why you accept the same anecdotal claims if the data from wind tunnel results are in existance or computer models are in existance.

Extrapolated further, if Mcr for the Me-262 was only .8M in a dive, it was within the envelope of a pursuing Mustang - and that would not be 'insignificant'.

The Spitfire was said to have had an Mcr of 0.89, the Tempest 0.83, the Mustang 0.8, the Meteor 0.83 and the Schwalbe 0.86. Any advantage to the Schwalbe over the Meteor would be at least partly due to the higher aspect ratio of the wing, surely. And that advantage is bought at the expense of lower wing second moment of area and hence structural strength, a tradeoff which only makes sense for a specialist interceptor.

Regards,

Magnon