Dogfight between Gloster Meteor and ME262

I personally think the Me262 is on paper the better fighter than the short nacelle Meteor by a decent margin. My misgivings about it come from the fact that with the Me262 the paper was often a long way from reality, whereas the F3 was well-built.

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Build quality is hard to achieve when you have to build aircraft in caves and forest clearings. Using slave labour that's being deliberately worked to death doesn't help either.
 
The average life was 10 hours because pilots were treating the aircraft like a piston engine and flaming out the engines through too fast of acceleration. That cut the average life of the engines in service to less than half their rated 25 hour service life due to flame outs weakening the blades, which used a less heat resistant alloy than the original design. The frequency of flame outs due to pilot error forced them to add an aerial restart mechanism before realizing they needed to just add a restrictor to the throttle to prevent the flameouts in the first place.
Keep in mind that was the first model of Jumo 004B, later versions increased engine life substantially as did better training and the throttle restrictor. The models about to phase into production in 1945 when the war ended with rated for 50-100 hours life.

There is a good book on the various German wartime jet engine projects:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/ge...MIwfuA64D05AIVaf7jBx0gBgTdEAQYAiABEgJmJPD_BwE

IIUC the blades underwent 'creep' and when they crept a certain amount the engine had to be changed for a rebuild.

Interesting points about throttle mods and training extending engine life. I think people (certainly me) focus too much on a snapshot of a paper spec and make x or y conclusions, but the Me 262 was much like the Meteor, even the ~200 F3 had several different engine specs and the 200th Me262 would have a substantial list of detail differences from the 500th and the 1000th would have even more. Further, with months of furious combat experience methods of operation would evolve to maximise the potential of the aircraft.

I'm reminded how the V2 increased in range from ~300km to ~360km by better trajectories developed from war experience and much better accuracy by both more experience and by adding a radio beam guidance to assist the gyros.
 
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