Zyzygie’s Mumbles and Rambles

[Zyzygie]

Zyzygie - Another Brit who preferred the Me 262...

Spitfire pilots and aircraft database - Flt lt Reginald C Gosling RAF

View attachment 570397

"...The first confirmed Allied air combat with an Me 262 occurred on July 26th, 1944 when Luftwaffe Me 262 test unit Erprobungskommando 262 (EK 262) pilot Lt. Alfred "Bubi" Schreiber targeted a high flying de Havilland Mosquito photo reconnaissance aircraft from RAF No. 544 Squadron over Munich. The RAF pilot Flight Lieutenant A.E. Wall saw a German aircraft approaching and increased his speed to leave the enemy behind (as would normally happen) but was surprised that the German was suddenly alongside him to confirm the aircraft was Allied!"

"Schreiber quickly changed position to attack the Mosquito but the British aircraft could turn more quickly and was able to get out of his line of sight. Schreiber used his speed advantage to get back into position and opened fire but was unsuccessful in doing serious damage. This continued back and forth four more times before Schreiber attempted an attack from beneath the Mosquito. Wall evaded again and dived at full speed into clouds below, escaping the attack and getting safely back to Italy. This encounter signalled that high flying Allied reconnaissance missions were no longer invulnerable!"

See: The Survivors: Messerschmitt Me 262 – Germany's Jet Fighter

The Mosquito was known for its speed, not maneuverability. The Meteor was never tested against a Mosquito in terms of maneuverability, but was against the far more agile Hawker Tempest, and was judged to have beaten it in virtually all respects but roll rate.

Checking the Me 262 vs the He 162, again a similar story:
"...The aircraft itself was very effective as a fighter interceptor, equalling the Me-262. In some ways it was superior: "The BMW engine proved to be far less sensitive to throttle movements than those of the Me 262, though still prone to flameouts. This allowed the He 162 to be flown up to the limits of the pilot's confidence in the aircraft, unlike the Me 262 whose engines restricted much in the way of maneuvers." It was very fast and well armed. However, it had a problem of having a very short flight time of 30 minutes, and many operational losses were due to running out of fuel..."

From He 162 Spatz Miroslav Bilous, Miroslav Bouli

Even though Eric Brown criticised the Me 262 JUMO engines, he skipped over it in about one line, referring to the "adrenaline" effect of trying to deal with the highly sensitive engine throttle control:
"Flying in a captured Me-262 he had nothing but praise for the advanced jet except for one thing, the unreliability of the engines."

Royal Navy's Most Decorated Pilot Reveals The Me-262's Fatal Flaw

See post 704 for comments by a Luftwaffe pilot re this problem.

 

[Zyzygie]

"...Me 262 losses were reported as only 100 in air to air combat but up to 1,200 Me 262's were destroyed on the ground and in accidents – on April 10th, 1945 a formation of 55 Me 262's went up to attack Allied bombers and by the end of the day 27 of them had been lost mainly to accidents! The jet age had come and changed air combat forever but it was all too late to help the battered Luftwaffe turn the tide of the air war over occupied Europe and Germany..."
The Survivors: Messerschmitt Me 262 – Germany's Jet Fighter

Now who needs enemies when you have a reliability record like that?

Suffice to say that those "accidents" were often fatal, as the aircraft was difficult to bail out of, (impossible at low altitude) and it had "the glide angle of a brick":

"I flamed out once when I was in transition training. I was used to pushing the throttle full to increase takeoff power. This was a great error in the jet. I know that many of the pilots who were killed flying the jet probably died due to stalling out this way. The 262 was a very heavy aircraft when compared to the 109 and 190, and at low speed I would equate it to flying a brick..."

Walter "Graf" Kuprinski

 

[Zyzygie]

German Jet rivalry - (from Flight September 1945):

 

[Zyzygie]

The Gloster Meteor (Flight October 1945)

 

[Zyzygie]

Turbine engine activity at Ernst Heinkel Aktiengesellschaft:

The interesting He S 011 was a hybrid axial/centrifugal engine spinning at around 13500 rev/min. The stress in the turbine blades is a function of the rotational speed squared, hence around 2.4 times that in the JUMO 004 blades running at 8700 rev/min, all other factors being equal.

https://www.cdvandt.org/CIOS-XXIII-14.pdf

Turbine stress and creep were problematic in the JUMO, so it's hard to see how the Heinkel could have worked without radically improved turbine materials.

 

[Zyzygie]

Turbine engine activity at Ernst Heinkel Aktiengesellschaft:

The interesting He S 011 was a hybrid axial/centrifugal engine spinning at around 13500 rev/min. The stress in the turbine blades is a function of the rotational speed squared, hence around 2.4 times that in the JUMO 004 blades running at 8700 rev/min, all other factors being equal.

https://www.cdvandt.org/CIOS-XXIII-14.pdf

Turbine stress and creep were problematic in the JUMO, so it's hard to see how the Heinkel could have worked without radically improved turbine materials.

Errata: The quoted speed of 13500 rpm applies to the He S 10. The He S 11 is rated at 11000. The resultant stress multiplier is around 1.6.

Still much too high.

 

[Zyzygie]

Eric Brown - The Me 262 was a bomber destroyer, not a dogfighter:

 

[Zyzygie]

Drag statistics of the Meteor vs. that of some contemporary aircraft, including the Me 262:

 

[Zyzygie]

A detailed review of the JUMO 004 in Aircraft Engineering January of 1946:

Yes. To consider using a centrifugal compressor operating at 16,000 rev/min, the Germans would have needed Nimonic turbine and flame tube materials to resist the temperature and resulting creep.

An understatement: 9000 rpm is totally inadequate for a centrifugal compressor. The discharge pressure is a function of the square of the impeller speed.

 

[Zyzygie]

Drag statistics of the Meteor vs. that of some contemporary aircraft, including the Me 262:

Critical Mach number:

Critical Mach number - Wikipedia

Performance characteristics shown in table I give a maximum speed for the Gloster Meteor F. Mk. 4 of 570 miles per hour, or a Mach number of 0.81, at 20000 feet.

ch11-2


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...rns.svg/800px-Transonic_flow_patterns.svg.png

 

[bada]

Interessant flow of archives Zyzygie, but when comparing the 262, you can't go higher than the MKIII for the meteor. everything beyond that Mark is like what-if/Luft46 stuff...
And the RAe report tell us the MKIII sucked badly in combat maneuvers as it's rollrate was inferior compared to a C5 Galaxy fully loaded
A combat plane unable to execute combat maneuvers is not a combat plane, it's a flying platform.

 

[Zyzygie]

"...Now who needs enemies when you have a reliability record like the Me 262?..."

 

[GrauGeist]

"...Now who needs enemies when you have a reliability record like the Me262?..."

Considering that the Germans had:
· No suitable raw materials for the engines
· No safe manufacturing facilities
· No skilled labor workforce
· No reliable supply of fuel and rubber
· No large numbers of experienced pilots
· No secure airfields to operate from

*IF* even one of those items listed above were available in abundance, the Me262 would have been far more than a nuisance...

 

[Kevin J]

Considering that the Germans had:
· No suitable raw materials for the engines
· No safe manufacturing facilities
· No skilled labor workforce
· No reliable supply of fuel and rubber
· No large numbers of experienced pilots
· No secure airfields to operate from

*IF* even one of those items listed above were available in abundance, the Me262 would have been far more than a nuisance...

IMO what the Luftwaffe needed in 1943 was the He 280 with centrifugal flow engines and the Me 262 in 1944 as a fighter bomber.

 

[Zyzygie]

IMO what the Luftwaffe needed in 1943 was the He 280 with centrifugal flow engines and the Me 262 in 1944 as a fighter bomber.

IMO what the Luftwaffe needed as a bomber destroyer was the Me 262 with Rolls Royce Derwent engines. But hold it, didn't Adolf Galland say something like that down the track? And, as Eric Brown said, it should have had air brakes...

The Meteor F4 would do just nicely as a dogfighter.

 

[Zyzygie]

Interessant flow of archives Zyzygie, but when comparing the 262, you can't go higher than the MKIII for the meteor. everything beyond that Mark is like what-if/Luft46 stuff...
And the RAe report tell us the MKIII sucked badly in combat maneuvers as it's rollrate was inferior compared to a C5 Galaxy fully loaded
A combat plane unable to execute combat maneuvers is not a combat plane, it's a flying platform.

You betcha: from Hans Fey:

http://zenoswarbirdvideos.com/Images/Me262/ME262PILOTDEBRIEF.pdf

From Me 262 Pilot's Handbook:

http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/Images/Me262/262PilotHandbook.pdf

The Meteor vs the Tempest V:

Initial maneuvers...

But OK. As Eric Brown said, the Me 262 was a fine bomber destroyer, not a dogfighter.

 

[Zyzygie]

IMO what the Luftwaffe needed as a bomber destroyer was the Me 262 with Rolls Royce Derwent engines. But hold it, didn't Adolf Galland say something like that down the track? And, as Eric Brown said, it should have had air brakes...

The Meteor F4 would do just nicely as a dogfighter.

See an assessment of performance attached. Unfortunately the Me 262 isn't included:

 

[GrauGeist]

The Me262 was not a dogfighter, it was an interceptor (read: "heavy fighter") where the He280 was.

The perfect pairing would have been the He280 flying top cover for the Me262 on Jabo missions - the Ar234 didn't need an escort.

 

[Zyzygie]

Considering that the Germans had:
· No suitable raw materials for the engines
· No safe manufacturing facilities
· No skilled labor workforce
· No reliable supply of fuel and rubber
· No large numbers of experienced pilots
· No secure airfields to operate from

*IF* even one of those items listed above were available in abundance, the Me262 would have been far more than a nuisance...

Maybe, but maybe not...

When the Russians captured the German engineering teams who designed the Messerschmitt and Heinkel aircraft, they had access to whole Me 262 including engines. They had plenty of raw materials to build them properly. Even with a proverbial gun at their heads the German designers decided to give the German axial flow designs a miss and go straight for a copy of the Rolls Royce Nene.

On the other hand they did mix the powerful, rugged and reliable Nene with advanced aerodynamics to create the excellent MiG 15...

 

[GrauGeist]

The Me262 was originally designed to use the BMW003, not the Jumo004.

The 004 never had the thrust to weight ratio like the 003. And both did not have the performance profile that the Hirth engines produced.
I understand that many people out there are fans of the Rolls Royce engines, but if Heinkel was allowed to fully developed the HeS8 engines (008, 011, etc. which had a superior thrust to weight ratio) then the BMW and Junkers engines would have taken a back seat to history...