AHC: WW2 jet-on-jet battles

FBKampfer

Banned
Well if we're talking about extending the war in Europe, then the primary jet faced by the Allies probably would have turned into the He-162 instead of the Me 262.

Food for thought.
 
If we want an expert opinion Eric Brown, who flew them all, considered the Me 262 to be the superior plane. And the He 162 to be an excellent craft, but it needed to be handled with care.
 
As I understand it, one of the problems with German jet engines was the metallurgy. Absent various metals, the alloys simply did not stand up well and the engines had a very short lifespan. The amount of these key metals that Germany had was only going to decrease rapidly as all imports had been cut off for some time. With continuing bombing raids on factories, rail lines, etc how many jet engines can Germany turn out to replace those worn out on existing planes or to put on new aircraft. As all know, jets, especially the early ones, were tremendously thirsty and Germany's fuel supply wasn't getting any better. On top of all this, the Allies are going to have prop fighters waiting over airfields and when the German jet fighters make an appearance they will be mobbed by Meteors or P80s, even if those are not as good. As far as the HE162, if Eric Brown said it needed careful handling, it is a sure bet that most of the Luftwaffe pilots alive in 1945 could not handle it.

doesn't mean there could not be jet on jet, but no matter what the German jets will be quite rare.
 
the postwar TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE T-2 AMC report
You can read about the US 262 testing here
It would be interesting to read the full report. I can only find a summary which says the Me-262 performs the same or better than P-80A, without a mention of high-speed snaking. I did read that the report was edited due to unfavorable results. So I still haven't read a report of snaking.
 
It would be interesting to read the full report. I can only find a summary which says the Me-262 performs the same or better than P-80A, without a mention of high-speed snaking. I did read that the report was edited due to unfavorable results. So I still haven't read a report of snaking.

It started at at 350mph and got worse the faster traveled. You can google around on this
But from the PDF copy I have it says this
Page 5
The handling characteristics were poor at all speeds above 350mph. The airplane would not make a satisfactory gun platform because of a tendency to hunt directionally, which resulted in snaking at speeds above 400 mph IAS
 
It started at at 350mph and got worse the faster traveled. You can google around on this
But from the PDF copy I have it says this
Page 5
The handling characteristics were poor at all speeds above 350mph. The airplane would not make a satisfactory gun platform because of a tendency to hunt directionally, which resulted in snaking at speeds above 400 mph IAS

The handling characteristics might have been better with the aileron and elevator electric servo tabs connected. It was noted that they were not, and no attempt was made to do so. No other flight evaluation makes the claim of snaking, while flight test reports of Gloster Meteors do make such a claim, as did the Bell P-59 Airacobra. The Meteor problem was caused by the tail, corrected on the F.8 model in 1948, and the P-59 caused by poor jet air inlet design, never rectified.
 
The handling characteristics might have been better with the aileron and elevator electric servo tabs connected. It was noted that they were not, and no attempt was made to do so. No other flight evaluation makes the claim of snaking, while flight test reports of Gloster Meteors do make such a claim, as did the Bell P-59 Airacobra. The Meteor problem was caused by the tail, corrected on the F.8 model in 1948, and the P-59 caused by poor jet air inlet design, never rectified.

Didn't bother due to the terrible engine reliability, wasn't worth it

At high speeds, the F-86 had similar stability issues, that was tied to the automatic wing slats that were -very- close to the Messerschmidt designs (Thanks Op. Paperclip) but were deleted with a new wing design on the F-86, the '6-3' wing that deleted the slats in favor of boundary fence. This hurt the low speed handling. The slat were brought in with the last versions, but the had improved boosted controls with a full flying stabilizer, rather than an elevator, and yaw damping stabilization LINK

Now the 262 and F-86 were not alone with snaking in the transonic envelope, a number of others also had this trouble, like the MiG-15

In any case, the Me-262 would have needed much more than manual adjusted tabs to eliminate that stability trouble. It took the USAF years, it would take the Luftwaffe just as long.
 
It took the USAF years, it would take the Luftwaffe just as long

Nash all the LW needs to do is doodle it on a piece of paper stick a wonky cross on the side and it's perfect. By 1946 the LW would have been flying swing wing supersonic jets carrying fire and forget homing missiles anyway.
 
Alfred Price wrote that the Me 262 peaked at 58 F/B sorties in Dec 44 and 55 Fighter sorties in Mar 45. The At 234 also did some missions, but I don't know how many and on what days.

Does anyone know how many sorties the Meteor managed on a single day?
 
Nash all the LW needs to do is doodle it on a piece of paper stick a wonky cross on the side and it's perfect. By 1946 the LW would have been flying swing wing supersonic jets carrying fire and forget homing missiles anyway.

I forgot about how magic the napkins they drew on actually were.
 
So magic they kept the designer from being given a rifle, helmet and a train ride to the Eastern Front.

Which is why the napkinwaffe were the most successful aircraft designs in history
Jokes aside one aircraft that doesn't enough credit IMO is the P-59. Yes it was a dog. It looked like a dog, barked like a dog and left doggie ornaments on hardstands and runways. But it performed a valuable service for the USAAF in that it allowed them to learn how to operate jet aircraft in terms of service, maintanence, and availability. While at the same time the USAAF was flying combat in multiple theaters. operating patrol A/C from the South Atlantic to the Northern Pacific. Something the RAF never had The real luxury of doing.

One thing I question is the repeated German swept wing mantra. British and US designers weren't dummies. They had all of the tools, they had the wind tunnels. If they lacked I think it was in not seeing the jet for what it represented.
 
One thing I question is the repeated German swept wing mantra. British and US designers weren't dummies. They had all of the tools, they had the wind tunnels. If they lacked I think it was in not seeing the jet for what it represented.

The wing sweep on the 262 was to correct a CoG problem and wasn't enough to provide the sorts of mach number benefits the more sharply swept wing on the Sabre had.

IIUC it was the more sharply swept Me163 and the Me P1101 that got the victors of the war the data on swept wings.
 
If I remember correctly, most ME-262s that were shot down, were shot down while landing as they had terrible low speed manoeuvrability and couldn't accelerate suddenly.

P-47s did well against them at high altitude. They would dive one them from above and in a dive the P-47 was let's just say really fast...

Back around 1970 I met one of my fathers war buddies, a Mustang pilot who nailed a Me262. The German came at him from behind & he did a split S, taking him out of the line of fire and killing all his airspeed letting the German overfly him. Instead of continuing with a boom n zoom out of range the German pilot tried to make a tight tight turn and get back at the Yank. It did not work, the Mustang pilot was able to accelerate, turn inside the German, & set up a deflection shot that hit. When I heard the story it was difficult to see the plump smiling banker from Elmer New Jersey as a hot 24 y/o fighter jock.
 
This vignette illustrates one of the issues with the Luftwaffe in 1945. While anyone flying the Me-262 had to be one of the better/experienced pilots, but a truly experienced pilot would know his aircraft well enough to realize horizontal turning with a mustang was not a good idea. Certainly the experts would know that and pass the word, but he obviously did not listen. Green pilots, or before the capabilities of the zero were known, would try such things, but soon that foolishness stopped between experience and training. The popint being that with very few exceptions, even the Luftwaffe pilots considered experienced enough to fly the Me-262 were still well behind allied pilots.
 
The wing sweep on the 262 was to correct a CoG problem and wasn't enough to provide the sorts of mach number benefits the more sharply swept wing on the Sabre had.

It did provide the 262 with a higher critical mach number than Allied jets.

IIUC it was the more sharply swept Me163 and the Me P1101 that got the victors of the war the data on swept wings.

It was the Busemann papers, and Busemann himself that provided the data. The Me163 spawned the deadly DH 108, X-4, and F7U. The P.1101 spawned the F-111, F-14, MiG 23, Tornado et al, with a gestation period far beyond '46. The papers were readily available in Rome, 1935.

A few of those napkins were paperclipped to guys like Lippisch, who created some useful stuff.
 
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