Before missiles, why were jet fighters deemed to be so much better than WW2 era fighters? Both could only shoot each other down with guns. A higher top speed can mean you can choose your engagements and be like "eh, nuts to this" if you are in an unfavorable engagement. If you're escorting slow moving bombers or transport aircraft, I don't see how being a jet fighter helped that much. Later bombers could move at faster speeds and would outpace an old fighter and later fighters could shoot down a propeller plane easily with a missile (when the humidity didn't mess with the electronics... hey let's do all the testing indoors it's not like it rains in Europe), but I don't see why early on people didn't think "these fighters will be the future" as opposed to "the future is now the present, these shiny new jet planes are the king of the skies"
Early Jet Fighters vs Piston Engine Fighters
- Thread starter Alex Zetsu
- Start date
Jets fly higher and faster than piston engine aircraft and so can control any engagement. The engines also have far fewer moving parts so once the right alloys and fuel is used are far more reliable. Jet fuel is also safer than Avgas.
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During WW2 the faster fighter was often the one in a favorable engagement because of their speed.
Its worth noting that fighters on an escort mission wouldn't necessarily fly close escort for the reason you point out. They wouldn't want to get stuck with a bombers speed. Instead they sweep ahead or circle a bomber group so that they maintain high speed so that they can face any closing fighters with better odds.
Its worth noting that fighters on an escort mission wouldn't necessarily fly close escort for the reason you point out. They wouldn't want to get stuck with a bombers speed. Instead they sweep ahead or circle a bomber group so that they maintain high speed so that they can face any closing fighters with better odds.
The German BF110 pilots complained this exact problem. They were only slightly inferior to the Hurricane when they could use their tactic of a high-speed boom (in the sense that they almost traded evenly and some individual Germans even became BF110 aces who shot down fighters), but when stuck on escort duty the kills would be lopsided like 3 to 1 against their favor. Dropping from high altitude didn't work since the hurricanes would eat their bombers before the BF110s came to save them, so they predicably got butchered when stuck on escort duty.
It is no mean feat to be able to disengage and re-engage at will. People were aware of that, so we have fighters' speed increase from the day of the Fokker eindecker up to the days of MiG-25. Basically, whenever there was a practical way to increase the speed, it was taken advantage of.
A fast escort fighter is not chained to the bombers - it can use up it's performance advantage and close in with the enemy and try and kill it. Even in the days of BoB it was recognised that loose escort and fighter sweeps were an effective way to increase survivability of own bombers, even if these bombers newer saw thefriendly fighters.
Faster aircraft is usually a climber better than the slower aircraft, too.
Math is pretty easy on this: in 1944/45, we have a fighter A that does 550 mph (as it is starting out), and fighter B that does 450 mph (100 mph less, despite using all any any technological developement for it's piston neigne). 550 mph type was future, 450 mph type was not.
People chosen the fighter A, and rightly so.
Bf 110C was superior to the Hurricane if it is allowed to do the boom-and-zoom. If it is cruising at 250 mph, te Hurricanes flying at 300 mph will dicated the engagement. Bf 110s need to drop from high altitude many minutes before the LW bombers make the landfall.
Hurricane was the one with worse kill ratio, not Bf 110.
I'm asking what these "obvious" advantages. Everyone in the 1950s agreed jets were better and I don't think they got it wrong, but no one felt the need to put it down in a nice quote that ended up in a history textbook. So here I am as a non military guy and wondering "ummm... they go faster. And that's important. But why?"
Its not about speed, but about energy. The distinction may seem odd but its important. Energy wins, plain and simple. Everything an aircraft does (including turning) is dependent on energy and having more of it allows you to do more things. (it is of course important to build an aircraft that can take advantage of the increased energy)
A very popular way of describing dogfighting is that it is all about exchanging energy for nose position. With energy you can sustain turns, climb, avoid speed stalls in turns and a whole host of other advantages way better than a plane with a less favorable energy ratio that will leave you with a distinct advantage.
Try a realistic sim like DCS that has both jet and prop aircraft and it will become VERY obvious.
Speed was the very obvious advantage. There are some other advantages, too.
- no propeller to be designed, produced (makes sense with aircraft production supposed to be in the thousands), and controlled; propeller gets very ineffective past some speed; no prop means easier guns' layout to be engineered
- (good) jets are by default with tricycle U/C, that is a better thing than a tail-dragger U/C
- no prop means no torque reaction, so one thing less for the pilots to worry about, especially at low speeds when the control surfaces are least efficient
- jet engine is far easier to make than a high-power piston engine
- jet engine can use low-octane fuel (under 70 octane fuel was fed to the Jumo 004 at NACA, engine still worked well); can also use diesel fuel and kerosene
- easier operation, two levers and that is it
- jet engines are very light for the thrust they make when compared with high-power piston engines
- ancillaries, like intercoolers, ADI systems even oil coolers are not needed - increases speed of production both of engines and compete aircraft
In addition to what others have said, fast aircraft have other advantages.
- They can get where they're going faster. If you need CAS, fighter cover, or resupply, you'll get it sooner.
- They can get where they're going faster (part 2). If you need to redeploy the aircraft to another sector or theater, they'll be there sooner.
- They can get where they're going faster (part 3). If you need aircraft within X minutes flight time of area Y, you can either put the bases further away, or use fewer aircraft to cover the same area.
- They can get where they're going faster (part 4). If you need to intercept incoming aircraft, you can do it at a greater distance from the airbase without needing to increase the warning time (navy's love this one weird trick!).
Fewer aircraft for more area makes sense, but I don't see why close airfields to save on fuel costs wouldn't be a thing. Just because you can use a rather base doesn't mean you have to. I mean in Vietname a lot of the airbases were kind of far off from the action area, but some were really close to Khe Sanh, I think one was close enough that a WW2 CAS aircraft could make the run (and the modern ones obviously had a lot of loitering time since they were based from some place so close)
Again, not sure what you are arguing here? Are you arguing that less efficient planes are ok as long as you have bases closer to the combat area? Because that makes very little sense, one is still much better than the other, what advantages do you imagine that this would give you?
No I'm not arguing for propeller plane sin the modern era
When I reply to a post it can be tangetial to the reply and not the OP if someone vrought something up
There’s also the fact that jet engines were new technology and had obvious growth potential, while piston engines were significantly more technologically mature and reaching the end of their development potential by the mid 1940s. The Wasp Major shows the problems piston engine designers were having trying to get more power out of piston engines: the engine was unreliable, heavy, a pain in the ass to maintain, needed to babied when it came to heat management, and many designs using it had to use contra-rotating props to absorb all the power.
My inner fanboy is drooling over ramjets which don't need to worry about compression blades... I can't imagine what people in the 50s thought about how liberating getting away from all the moving parts of a piston must be.
Agreed all the way.
Piston engines' designers were looking to add more cylinders to the future designs. 16 cylinders for inline layout, 18 cylinders both for radial and inline models, 24 cylinders for inlines, 28 cylinders for radials, culminating with 36 cylinder Lycoming. Too big, too heavy, too complicated, requiring a huge prop, fuselage/wing to carry all of that, big undercarriage... All while still unable to beat 500 mph mark.
Jet engines offered the elegant way out.
marathag
Banned
But range does come into play.
So Jets working as interceptors vs incoming bombers, not a problem, compared to doing escort or long range interdiction or strikes