ME-262A in 1943

Firstly let me say that the 262 will not win Germany the war, it will just be cool and fight some cooler air battles.

The 262 was let loose too early, and the development unit took losses and had to be withdrawn. Perhaps if the 262 was introduced in 1943 when the situation was not so desperate it would have been allowed to shake down in central Germany and work a lot of kinks out. This would also address a lot of the pilot training problems.
 
Firstly let me say that the 262 will not win Germany the war, it will just be cool and fight some cooler air battles.

The 262 was let loose too early, and the development unit took losses and had to be withdrawn. Perhaps if the 262 was introduced in 1943 when the situation was not so desperate it would have been allowed to shake down in central Germany and work a lot of kinks out. This would also address a lot of the pilot training problems.

Having a safe area to train would help, and perhaps aid the single engine fighter pilots in adapting to their new bird... but it doesn't address the Luftwaffe's inability to produce NEW pilots which was endemic at all levels

@nota

The fuel consumption only became a serious problem in 1944 and beyond (ie the the Germans cut the amount of flight hours given to their recruits for training so they wouldn't burn so much gas, plus they desperately needed to graduate their cadets as soon as possible to get them on the front lines)

This problem didn't exist very much 1940-1943 and yet the Germans where still chronically short of fighter pilots, which was a function of:
not rotating their aces back home for tours as instructors
not setting up additional fighter schools after the battle of britain
not producing the quantity of trainer editions of their latest aircraft required to increase their pilot pool

1300 me-262's produced but only 200 saw combat (mainly due to lack of pilots certified)
 
Next time you decide to curbstomp an obviously new entrant to the forum, please have a glass of warm milk first.

How can you be an obvious new entrant to the forum when you have 80 posts under your belt?
It took me about two-thirds of a year to get to 80 posts.


Still, rereading my post it does come over unfriendly, even a bit hostile.
You are right about that.
 
So were the ME-262s more of a detriment to the Germans than an asset?
All the Nazis have today is legions of techno-fanboys so no. The ME-262s were a great asset there :p

I remember that the Reich was short on Chromium or Tungsten or something that was needed for jet engines, and instead made them out of a lesser material, which meant the engines had to be replaced often. No matter when the 262 was introduced, Germany would still have this shortage.

Yep.
I think the design may have been a bit crappy too
The ME-262 was a pretty awful plane really. The Meteor was far superior.
The M2-262 was good up in the air but it could only last half an hour or so before the engine started thinking of blowing up.




The big factor I would put up against all these 'What if Germany gets jets earlier' is that Germany does not exist in a vacuum.
Let us assume for a second they can get their jets earlier without big cut backs in other stuff they need for a war (a big and false assumption).
Then you have this big German jet push. A big move towards jets....The British could hardly let the Germans do this without having something to counter it. The British will never be too far behind the Germans in jet development. Its rule of AH 101- the ripple effect. Your changes will not remain in the immediate area whilst everyone else acts as per OTL. The relevant world as a whole will react.
 
Yep.
I think the design may have been a bit crappy too
The ME-262 was a pretty awful plane really. The Meteor was far superior.
The M2-262 was good up in the air but it could only last half an hour or so before the engine started thinking of blowing up.

There's a big difference between crappy design and crappy application, and the 262 was let down by crappy application. The big one everyone knows about is the strategic metals, mainly chromium and nickel, one of which came from Turkey where the Allies made vast pre-emptive purchases and had the sea power to ensure the deliveries.

The wartime Meteor was not superior to the 262, it didn't become equal in performance terms until late model F MkIIIs came out with 2400lb thrust engines and long nacelles whch pushed the top speed up to 490mph, still 30-40mph short of the 262. The well-and-truly-postwar F MkIV was well and truly better than the wartime 262, but then again so is an F/A18E which was also built years after 262 production ended. I think the best Meteor we can hope to see go head to head with a 262 is the F MkIII, the war will still end before the F Mk IV enters squadron service. So it will be slightly inferior performance but much better reliability and usability F MkIII against slightly better performance with fragility 262. Cool!!!
 
Not to be a Luft 46 fanboy, but the most advanced thing on the Me-262 were probably the swept wings. If I am wrong, I look forward to be enlightened.
 
All 3 first generation jets had their own advantages and disadvantages. To get the very best performance, you'd want to combine British engines with a cross between American and German fuselage design and German wing design, all built to American industrial standards.
 
Yeah, so basically in some "Nazis win" TL where Britain is a German sort-of-ally and BMW or whoever get to licence-build the Rolls Royce Nene, those *Ta 183s will be The Business (and bear even more of a coincidental resemblance to the MiG-15 than OTL). In all other possible TLs...
 
There's a big difference between crappy design and crappy application, and the 262 was let down by crappy application. The big one everyone knows about is the strategic metals, mainly chromium and nickel, one of which came from Turkey where the Allies made vast pre-emptive purchases and had the sea power to ensure the deliveries.

The wartime Meteor was not superior to the 262, it didn't become equal in performance terms until late model F MkIIIs came out with 2400lb thrust engines and long nacelles whch pushed the top speed up to 490mph, still 30-40mph short of the 262. The well-and-truly-postwar F MkIV was well and truly better than the wartime 262, but then again so is an F/A18E which was also built years after 262 production ended. I think the best Meteor we can hope to see go head to head with a 262 is the F MkIII, the war will still end before the F Mk IV enters squadron service. So it will be slightly inferior performance but much better reliability and usability F MkIII against slightly better performance with fragility 262. Cool!!!

I said nothing about performance. The German plane did indeed tend to do better there, which has a habit of misleading people into thinking it was the better plane.
I'd rather have a slightly worse plane for a good few years than a slightly better one for the better part of an hour. In a prolonged war reliability trumps all else.
 
I equate better performance with better design.

On a tanget, how would the 262 have fared if Britain started lobbing V1s at Germany?
 
I said nothing about performance. The German plane did indeed tend to do better there, which has a habit of misleading people into thinking it was the better plane.
I'd rather have a slightly worse plane for a good few years than a slightly better one for the better part of an hour. In a prolonged war reliability trumps all else.

Agree mostly with this, although the better part of an hour is a bit of exaggerated. I thought it was ten hours, which is still very short. :D

I'm far from an engineer, but AFAIK the Junkers Jumo 004 was a technological dead end and it's problems were far from only in the using of scarce metals the Germans couldn't afford.
If that engine truly had been good, or even decent, the Soviets would have used it a lot post-45 and I don't think they had any comparable problems with scarce metals.
 
I've been trying to remember what the Luftwaffe Nazi training time/regimen was like for Hitler's Republic. But, all I can remember is that it was shorter than the Allies'; I can't even remember where I read that.

Does anybody here remember the answer?
 
Erich Hartmann did basic training from March 1, 1941 to Oct, 1941. Advanced training from Nov,'41 to Jan 31, '42. Training on type, Me 109, was Mar 1, 1942 to Aug 20, 1942. Assigned to JG 52 Oct, '42. Crashed his plane on the first mission. Two victories by the end of 1942. 350 more later. He was possibly one of the last pilots to have the full training, but not the least. I think he was shot down 18 times.
 
I think all the big German aces were trained like that, when there was the leisure of time and resources to devote to proper training.
 
Agree mostly with this, although the better part of an hour is a bit of exaggerated. I thought it was ten hours, which is still very short. :D

I'm far from an engineer, but AFAIK the Junkers Jumo 004 was a technological dead end and it's problems were far from only in the using of scarce metals the Germans couldn't afford.
If that engine truly had been good, or even decent, the Soviets would have used it a lot post-45 and I don't think they had any comparable problems with scarce metals.
True but the 004 was deliberately designed to get into service quickly:D. The BMW 003 was a more elegant design and was by no means a dead end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNECMA_Atar. However, its annular combustion chamber etc. made it harder to develop.
 
True but the 004 was deliberately designed to get into service quickly:D. The BMW 003 was a more elegant design and was by no means a dead end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNECMA_Atar. However, its annular combustion chamber etc. made it harder to develop.

Yes, but the Me-262 didn't fly with the BMW 003 but with the dead-end Jumo, apart from a few tests.
Am I mistaken in thinking that the BMW engine had it's own problems because of it's lacklustre performance?

Weren't the German jets either much less reliable or produced much less power, or both, compared to the Allied jetengines of that time?
 
Weren't the German jets either much less reliable or produced much less power, or both, compared to the Allied jetengines of that time?
The problem is separating out the effects of the lack of really good high temperature alloys. If you have to design the turbine blades to be cooled by air taken from the compressor, you may not be able to produce as efficient a turbine as if you can use smaller solid blades and the design becomes more complicated. Of course modern single crystal blades are cooled by airflow, so the Germans just needed a little time:):).
 
The problem is separating out the effects of the lack of really good high temperature alloys. If you have to design the turbine blades to be cooled by air taken from the compressor, you may not be able to produce as efficient a turbine as if you can use smaller solid blades and the design becomes more complicated.

I understand.
But the Soviets took the German engines and tried to make these work post-WWII.
Still they ditched those engines eventually, while not having any issues with scarce metals as the Germans had during WWII.
 
Agree mostly with this, although the better part of an hour is a bit of exaggerated. I thought it was ten hours, which is still very short. :D

I'm far from an engineer, but AFAIK the Junkers Jumo 004 was a technological dead end and it's problems were far from only in the using of scarce metals the Germans couldn't afford.
If that engine truly had been good, or even decent, the Soviets would have used it a lot post-45 and I don't think they had any comparable problems with scarce metals.

hmm. Yeah, 10 hours sounds more right to me too....hmm...I think the better part of a hour number could be how long it can fly at a time whilst 10 is the overall life expectancy.
 
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