Me-262

[cheddar cheese]

Originally Posted by plan_D

If that thought was anything sexual, or more importantly homosexual. I will come and strike you with a sharp object known as a No-Dachi Sword.

Then strike me with a sharp object

[plan_D]

I did actually state what the sharp object was.

[cheddar cheese]

Cant I choose my death?

[the lancaster kicks ass]

hot poker up the ******* would suit you to the ground.............

[cheddar cheese]

I was thinking being chased by an Apache through the alps, with me driving a 1965 Mini Cooper S That would be Fantastic.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

hot poker up the ******* would suit you to the ground

oh but if we do it my way we could say you died like you lived, with something long and hard up ur ass................

[cheddar cheese]

I would laugh, but i can kinda see that you set yourself up to say that so its not funny...

[plan_D]

The Apache wouldn't really need to chase you unless you're refering to the A-36.

[cheddar cheese]

Nope. I want it to chase me, like with the Lotus on Top Gear. That looked fun...

NO!

In fact the Me262 hurt Germany's chances in WWII!

German industry was incapable of producing the engines for the Me262. The Hitler ordered the 262 to be a bomber argument having delayed the 262 is a known falsehood. This at most reduced the number of operational 262's by a hundred planes. In all of the war, about 2500 Me262 aiframes were built, but less than 400 saw combat. The reason was the engines.

Germany could build workable jet engines in one's and twos, but when it came to trying to mass produce them they just could not do it. Average service life of a 262 engine was about 5 hours, including initial testing and proving, leaving a flight or two in the plane before it needed new engines. The most hours I've seen on any 262 airframe is about 20, and there is no record how many engines it went through. Most show less than 10 hours.

Germany should have focused it's efforts on producing lots of FW190 Dora9's, not fantasizing about a jet that was beyond its industrial capability. 5000 Dora9's a year earlier, rather than the less than 1000 that were actually produced, would have made a meaningful difference. 200 more Me262's, about the best the German's could have done, would not. The 262 was a waste of German industrial capacity and resources.

=S=

Lunatic

[cheddar cheese]

I totally disagree...the 262 was a fine plane that was being ruined by Hitler.

Originally Posted by cheddar cheese

I totally disagree...the 262 was a fine plane that was being ruined by Hitler.

For a time historians believed that Adolf Hitler's order to build the Me 262 solely as a bomber delayed its introduction into combat as a fighter interceptor. This is not the case. Rather jet engine development proved lengthy and difficult. Hitler's order did divert some 30 percent of production airframes to the Me 262A-2a Sturmvogel (Stormbird) bomber type.
...
Although 1,443 Me 262s were completed, it is estimated that only about 300 saw combat.
...
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/me262.htm

So Hitler's meddlings maybe meant about 100 fewer 262A's in WWII. Not significant.

I suggest you spend a few hours reading through the entries in the Werk Nummer Resource Center Database at:

http://www.stormbirds.com/werknummer/

before you make a conclusion. Look at how few of them ever saw combat, how few actually flew, how few flight hours and how frequently the engines went bad for those that did actually get into the air.

Germany had fine designers, but their industry lacked the level of automation necessary to build something as precise as a workable jet engine in quantity. Germany, like Britian and indeed the rest of the world except the USA, still utilized a "shaper" based machine industry, where an highly skilled individual hand crafted such parts. This made mass production of turbines very difficult, as even the smallest variance would prevent an engine from having any durability. Germany was unable to make a reliable Turbo-charger unit during WWII for the same reason.

I'm not saying the 262 was not a fine design. I'm saying it, like many of the German super weapons, ate up too much of the engineering talent and industrial capacity for too little effective returns.

Do you disagree that 4 or 5 thousand more late model FW's would not have been better than 300 Me-262's for Germany's situtation in mid-late 1944? This is what the 262 cost them, perhaps more.

=S=

Lunatic

[cheddar cheese]

I agree that more 190's would have been better, but you cannot say the 262 didnt play its part in the war. Also in the long run, if it wasnt for the 262 then I dont think a lot of the modern jets we have today would even exist.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

the germans had lost the war on the ground, by 1944 nothing was gonna save it for them...............

[cheddar cheese]

Except maybe an American A-bomb accident that wipes out America, Russia and th UK leaving only mainland Europ and Africa. The ol' Frenchies would have their work cut out then