Fw-190

Originally Posted by plan_D

P-51H and P-47M in escort, the Ta-152 could have dealt with them.

You say that so confidently. What makes you think the Ta-152 would have "dealt with" the P-51H or P-47M? By VE day, there were already more than twice as many P-51H's flying as Ta152 airframes laid down (ie: given a werknumber), and 7 times as many as Germany had been able to actually field.

The P-51H had a higher top speed (at a lower altitude, they were about equal at around 30,000-33,000 feet), could sustain higher speeds longer, had a better fighter vs. fighter armament, better visablity, a much better gunsight, better rate of roll, superior dive and zoom performance, and the pilot had a G-suit.

Typical combat would have been engaged at around 35,000-40,000 feet from which it would have descended, with the P-51H gaining hugely from its radiator thrust in the dive, giving it a huge relative power advantage at the bottom of the dives.

P-47M's likewise performed very well at 35,000 feet, and the tech from the P-47J would probably have been fully applied to a later model P-47 had the B-29 been deployed to Europe as a very high altitude bomber.

Only if the Ta had been produced in huge numbers would it have been able to "deal with" the P-47M and P-51H, and since it was much harder to manufacture this was not going to happen, even if Germany had not been crippled by Allied bombing.

Originally Posted by plan_D

Since when could Germany not produce Me-262s? Is it me, or did they actually produce -262s that claimed a lot of bombers...

Ummm... lets see.... Germany laid down some 2500 Me262's, finished at least 1500 of those, but could only produce enough engines for 300 of those to actually fly. Of those 300, excluding those which were damaged or destroyed by the allies, the average engine life was about 5-7 hours, including about 2 hours of initial testing. So you tell me, could Germany produce the Me262? Seems to me the more appropriate assessment is that it tried to do so and failed.

Here's the complete list of Me262 kills, confirmed by post war cross reference:

29: Kurt Welter
24: Georg-Peter Eder
16: Heinz Bär, Rudi Rademacher, Franz Schall,
12: Erich Rudorffer, Hermann Buchner,
11: Karl Schnörrer,
8: Theodor Weißenberger, Walter Schuck, Heinrich Ehrler, Feldwebel Büttner (Erprobungskommando Nowotny), Feldwebel Lennartz (Erprobungskommando Nowotny), Günther Wegmann
7: Adolf Galland
6: Johannes Steinhoff, Fritz Müller,
5: Wolfgang Späte, Hans Grünberg, Klaus Neumann, Helmut Baudach, Gefreiter Heim, Leutnant Schreiber (Erprobungskommando Nowotny),
4: Wilhelm Steinmann,
3: Rudolf Sinner, --- Munz,
2: Walter Nowotny, Hans Waldmann, Walter Krupinski, Oberleutnant Bley (Erprobungskommando Nowotny), Oberfeldwebel Göbel (Erprobungskommando Nowotny), Walther Dahl, Heinz Gutmann
1: Wilhelm Herget, Gottfried Fährmann, Leo Schuhmacher, Erich Hohagen

In almost a year of combat, those 300 Me262's managed a total of 253 kills (including all plane types) -- not very impressive.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

I've seen 426 for JG-7 alone. Even if it was 253, it's still impressive. As most of the -262s were not shot down in the air.

And, as we're going on to what-ifs with the Ta-152 and P-51H...there'd be more Ta-152s, than there was in real life...see, it's a what-if like..if the war carried on.

Originally Posted by plan_D

I've seen 426 for JG-7 alone. Even if it was 253, it's still impressive. As most of the -262s were not shot down in the air.

And, as we're going on to what-ifs with the Ta-152 and P-51H...there'd be more Ta-152s, than there was in real life...see, it's a what-if like..if the war carried on.

The 426 figure is "claimed", the 253 figure is verified. Germany stopped verifying claims in late 1944. If you can find a documentable kill not on that list I'm open to change my mind, but so far that's the number I've been able to find verified kill claims to support.

Well, there would be more Ta-152's than there really were of course, but the point is the Ta-152 was a difficult plane to mass produce, where the P-51H was an easy plane to mass produce. This combine with the larger industrial might of the USA means there would have been far more P-51H's, even if Germany were totally uneffected by Allied bombing or resource shortages at that point in the war.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

True, there would have been more. Still, you do have the shipping problems. I'm thinking normal bombing formations would be escorted by P-51Hs - mostly. Attacked by Me-262A-1as...or Fw-190A-8/R8 with Ta-152s hold high escort.

Just the same dogfights, with more advanced aircraft...

[Erich]

more dreaming and more BS ost war stats. ok as I have said in the past and I will repeat one last itme before I bid you all adue

Kurt Welter did not score 29 victories in the jet.

we have the full kills confirmed listing for our book for 10./NJG 11.

The Me 262 was going through redesgning in May of 45 so if and a big what if the table had not turned agasint the Luftwaffe the 262's would of come out in much larger numbers and aided by TA 152's as high cover.

We will never know just like the hypothetical what if of the P-80 agasint eh 262. It appears yes the P-80 was superior but if the techs would of been able to promote the swept wing 262's and Fw experiments into reality then things could of easily turned pages...........well enough of this

good bye gents

[plan_D]

Like the Ta-183

[GermansRGeniuses]

Do you mean the prototype for the Mig-15 and F-86?


:wink

Well, once we get past the planes that were actually flying at the end of the war, it really becomes impossible to know what might have happend.

Originally Posted by Erich

The Me 262 was going through redesgning in May of 45 so if and a big what if the table had not turned agasint the Luftwaffe the 262's would of come out in much larger numbers and aided by TA 152's as high cover.

Erich - how was Germany going to overcome its inability to produce turbojet engines? Germany had no solution to this problem in sight.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

No, I don't mean the prototype for the MiG-15 and F-86. The F-86 wasn't based off the Ta-183, just improved to be swept wing off it. Now, the MiG-15 was just a Ta-183 with it's tail plane moved down midway the fin and given a Rolls Royce Nene engine. B-29s kind of fell like flies to that but that was Korea, let's not get into that.

Although had the war carried on Ta-183 would probably rule the skies but that would take another 2 years by my estimate.

[Erich]

=S=

I totally agree a terribly large what-if............

the jet engines were being reasessed and revamped in the caves of Oberammergau. In fact some of the caves and secrets are still left there.
I approached the area in July of 1980 was immediately turned back by two US Military personell armed to the teeth. A Military barracks has taken over the hillside and lowland vicinity. We will share some secrets on the Me 262 in our book, but yes the problems were getting resolved but of course not adequately by war's end due to lack of time.

Originally Posted by plan_D

Although had the war carried on Ta-183 would probably rule the skies but that would take another 2 years by my estimate.

And it would have faced the F-84. The Allied jet programs would have continued on at full speed, rather than facing the stiff cutbacks following the end of WWII. Most likely, US (and British) jet development would have outpaced German development and by 1948 planes similar to the F-86 would have been flying.

And German industry still would have lacked the machine tools to mass produce jet engines.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

You do realise the F-86 came about as it did mostly because of the Ta-183, don't you? And the MiG-15 came about because of the Ta-183, as well. It was Korean war technology on a World War 2 German design table.

Originally Posted by plan_D

You do realise the F-86 came about as it did mostly because of the Ta-183, don't you? And the MiG-15 came about because of the Ta-183, as well. It was Korean war technology on a World War 2 German design table.

Negative.

If you study it a bit, you will see that the F-86 had little to do with German designs. The only thing taken from German technology was the swept wing technology, and in this, only the use of leading edge slats to deal with low speed stability problems associated with swept wing designs. All this was garnered from the Me262, not the Ta183. Beyond that, the F-86 was pure North American Aviation engineering, even the airfoil of the wing was drawn from the P-51 wing, not the Me262's wing.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

The swept wing came from the Me-262? No, the swept wing came from the tests and records from the German RLM. They didn't just get the Me-262 and go "Oh, it's got swept wings. We'll use that idea" The Ta-183 also came from those tests, so the F-86s swept wings came from the SAME tests as the Ta-183s.

Now the MiG-15...that is just a Ta-183 with a Nene engine. So, again, Germany had Korean war design technology in World War 2.

Originally Posted by plan_D

The swept wing came from the Me-262? No, the swept wing came from the tests and records from the German RLM. They didn't just get the Me-262 and go "Oh, it's got swept wings. We'll use that idea" The Ta-183 also came from those tests, so the F-86s swept wings came from the SAME tests as the Ta-183s.

Totally indpendent of German research, Robert T Jones of the NACA presented his work on swept wings as a way to overcome compressibility at transonic and supersonic speeds in February 1945, and these were confirmed in wind tunnel tests in March of that year. In these tests it was found that a strait wing had nearly 14 times the compressibility drag coefficient of a wing swept back at a 45 degrees. This was formally presented in a report in June 1945.

At this point, the German research also became available, but the point I'm making is the USA was hardly unaware of the potential for swept wings for high speed aircraft. The big issue to overcome was the instability problems of swept wings at low speeds, and one solution to this was the leading edge slats from the Me262. The NAA team actually acquired Me262 wings and the first 7 test aircraft utilized German slat hardware.

You try to make it seem like the USA had no clue and simply took and used the German research. This was hardly the case. In fact, in terms of airfoil, the F-86 wing bears a lot of resemblance to the P-51 wing. The idea to sweep the wings back 35 degrees came first and foremost from R.T. Jones's research and extensive wind tunnel testing. The idea to use wing slats to overcome low speed instability issues came from the Me262. As far as I can find, nothing from the Ta183 specifically was involved at all, and since the facilities working on the Ta were in the east, there is a very good chance that little if any of that research was even available to NAA engineers.

I agree, the Mig-15 appears to be a Ta183 knock off, but this is simply not true of the F-86.

=S=

Lunatic