will we ever know Uksubs ? there just was not enough comparison testing between the two craft even the production model of the 262 was adjusted for fit and form.
Don't you think if they went with the He 280 they would of had a operational jet fighter a lot quicker the Me 262
I think they made the right choice in the Me-262, it was the more advanced of the two and better performing with equal engine power. The big mistake the luftwaffe, or should I say Goering, made was not investing enough money and interest in jet technology earlier on. Had the funds been there the Germans could've had a jet fighter already in 1941, Heinkel having successfully built & flown the He-178 in 1939.
Not to mention Hitler's insistence that the Me 262 had to be a bomber, which apparently set development back by about a year. Presumably if the He 280 had been in a similar state of development, it would have encountered the same problem.
This seems to be the conventional wisdom with regards to development delays of the Me-262 (ie Hitler's insistence that it be developed as a bomber) - but, in the last few years or so, I seem to be reading an awful lot of information that indicates that Hitler's edict had less to do with the delays than development problems with the BMW engines, which were ultimately replaced with the Jumos when they became available. I've read numerous accounts of both scenarios, but the engine development delays seems to be taking precedence. ...new information, or revisionist history.....I, for one, don't have enough solid information to make that call. -whatever -Lou
Well, I am hardly an expert, so I won't challenge your view. It is certainly true that the engines of the Me 262 had problems, right up until the last production model.
I'm certainly not presenting myself as an expert - only trying to point out that there seems to be a couple different views with regards to the delay in deploying the Me-262. There's no question that Hitler wanted to have a jet bomber. There's no question that there were development delays with the original BMW engines, prompting the move to the Junkers Jumo's, with their own set of problems. There's no question that there was a delay involved in switching from manufacture of the Swalbe (the Me-262 fighter) to the Stormvogel (the fighter/bomber version). It also turned out that as they were closing in on working through the production issues with the Stormvogel, the Arado Ar-234 was coming down the pipeline, too, providing Hitler with a jet bomber, and taking some of the heat off of the Stormvogel. I've yet to read anything that I considered definitive- I'm waiting for one of the experts to tell me -whatever -Lou
It really doesn't matter neither was really that good an aircraft. Both had serious issues that never got corrected before the war ended. The He 280 was a small aircraft by jet standards. Henkel designed it more as a practical test bed than as an operational fighter design. This left it critically short on fuel as the tank size had been predicated on piston engine aircraft standards. Jets of the period consumed about three times more fuel. Then there were continuing problems with the HeS 8 engines. Fuel accumulated in the nacelles creating a massive fire hazard. Most test flying was done with the nacelle covers removed for that reason. The engines themselves had other design issues as well. The Jumo 004 was too big and heavy to be a realistic replacement while the BMW 003 arrived in production too late to be useful in this aircraft. Structurially, the tail on the 280 was weak much like the one on the later He 162 was as well. Of course, Henkel didn't have the facilities available to produce the plane in mass production. The Me 262's problems mostly revolve around quality control and design issues related to that. The nose wheel was weak. The landing gear was made from poor quality steel components. Landing gear collapse, particularly nose wheel failures, were relatively common. The hydraulic system had difficulty maintaining pressure. The flight controls were difficult to properly balance and usually required several test flights to get right. Stick forces were extremely high making maneuver at speed difficult. The Jumo 004 engines had a service life of about 10 hours on average. One could reasonably expect to have to replace an engine after every sorte. This alone makes the plane virtually self-defeating as Junkers could not possibly manufacture enough engines for replacements and new production to maintain any large number of aircraft in service. The fuel issue is also a major problem. Basically, the Germans were simply not in a position to exploit jet technology with their extant production facilities and materials availability. Neither plane was going to see service on a regular basis in more than miniscule numbers and intermittent use because of it even if the OKL and Hitler pushed it into production.
Heinkel certainly could have produced the first combat jet fighter. He was slightly ahead of Messerschmitt in the jet department. The problem was Heinkel was in political disfavor and Messerschmit was favored. Now you would think that in the middle of a world war with your nation's very existence hanging in the balance, that smart people would be able to set petty differences and "politics" aside and do what was best for the country; but the Nazis were proof that this was and probably is an insoluble problem. In favor though he was, Messerschmitt was continually stonewalled by Hitler when it came to the ME 262. It was known by all major powers during the war that jet engine technology would eclipse the entire concept of propeller driven aircraft; but problems of fuel consumption, metallurgy, lubrication and literally hundreds of other issues had to be overcome first. The Germans had the most aggressive approach and the most advanced technology in this field, slightly ahead of the British (who seem to have regarded their own jet engine inventor and genius Frank Whittle as a bit of a crackpot for a long time) and so the Nazis had Heinkels jet aircraft almost combat ready by 1943. (Goerring, due to probably realizing full well where the war was inevitably headed, by this point in time was acting as little more then a figurehead to the luftwaffe so in reality he had little influence on the jet aircraft issue either way.) The designers did not say no to jet fighters in 1942/1943, Hitler said no. The Heinkel fighter and ME 262 could possibly have been fielded as early as late 1942 (since the me 262 was test-flown in that year) and certainly by 1943. And the jet fighters would have probably achieved dramatic results in the air war over Germany, at least for several months. The impact of the sudden introduction of a German jet fighter, in large numbers, might have been such that allied bomber losses, and plummeting bomber crew morale, could have caused allied strategic bombing to temporarily halt for months (until the allies created a jet fighter of their own to counter the German's). But same as with the MP44 sturmgewehr, and again due to Hitler's amateurish meddling on every decision, the jet fighter was another example of a German "too little-too late" weapon.
As I briefly discussed before, this is actually not the case. While Henkel certainly did have a very practical operatonal test bed in the He 280, it was really more in line with two other contemporary jet developments, the Gloster E-28/39 and Bell P-59. All three were flying fairly early in the war. The He 280 first flew on 30 March 1941, the Gloster E-28/39 on 15 May 1941 and, the Bell P-59 on 12 September 1942. But all three proved impractical as the basis for an operational fighter plane. Henkel and Bell both produced planes that had many of the characteristics desirable in an operatonal fighter in their designs but, these were more demonstrative than practical. The Henkel lacked the necessary flying time and range due to its small size. It would have been difficult to put a really useful armament on that aircraft as well. Bell's design lacked sufficently better performance over contemporary piston engined aircraft to make it worth putting in service. The Gloster remained just a proof of concept plane and, it would be the larger Meteor that would end up becoming the operational jet. Another major, and this was major, problem for Henkel was his HeS 08 engine was horribly unreliable. It leaked fuel everywhere. Fuel often pooled in the engine after flights causing a fire. The two practical alternative engines were not yet available. The Jumo 004 was at least a year away from production. It was also far larger and heavier than the HeS 08 that the He 280 was designed for. The BMW 003 could have been made to work but it too was over a year away from production. Also, at the beginning of 1942 the Germans were yet to become desperate to salvage a win in the war. Hence the decision in part to go with the Me 262 that promised better performance on what looked like a better engine. Yes, there were politics involved but, in this case these were likely working to Germany's favor for once in the case of the He 280. I say this because had the Henkel gone into production it would have forced tool ups of various factories to produce it. This would have made the shift to the better Me 262 more difficult down the road. Also, the Henkel likely would have forced the Allies to respond in kind. It is very likely that aircraft like the Meteor and P-80A would have been rushed into service much sooner as a counter to the German jet.
I have to wonder if it would not have been more effective for the Nazis to cancel the V-weapon programmes and put the effort into jet fighters instead. Probably best they didn't, since German rocket technology was picked up by the Allies after the war, and developed into space programmes.
in hindsight yes, this would have been the better strategic decision and throwing more resources into jet fighters could have kept the war going for a longer time. (Unfortunately it would have been just long enough to make Germany the first nation to get nuked by the USA but that's an entirely different issue.) The luftwaffe throughout the war, while often brilliantly led and very effective in the beginning, had many problems: an incoherent and uneven strategy, leadership problems, infighting, and politics all played their part in making it much less powerful then it could have been. To top it off Hitler's continued meddling in every aspect doomed the luftwaffe almost from the get-go. The major strategic mistakes are regularly laid at Hitler's feet, since, always the diletante, he insisted on micro-managing everything. However he made decisions based on what he was told not always on how things actually were and in the end, was really only a layman. The jet fighter concept was stalled by Hitler who had become convinced, probably until Kursk, that the Germans would win the war before these would be needed. Hitler was never much impressed by any sort of defensive weapon or strategy (and in fact loathed the entire concept since he always insisted that you could never win a war by defensive action)and that is what jet fighters were: very advanced weapons but defensive weapons nonetheless. The V weapons offered Hitler what he wanted, an offensive weapon to fulfill his veiled promises of new secret weapons that were sure to turn the tide for Germany and win the war. And so he ordered full speed ahead on both the rockets, which consumed vast quantities of materials and slave labor that could have been better used, as you state.
Again, it wouldn't make that much difference. First, the Allies possess jet engines and prototype jet fighters too as previously demonstrated. Unlike the Germans they are not strapped for fuel. Jets of this era take roughly three times the fuel a piston engined fighter does for the same flight time. The only thing going for the Germans is that they are several years ahead in near-sonic and trans-sonic aerodynamics theory and practice. They have more and much larger supersonic wind tunnels available for testing of various aerofoils etc. The Allies would be playing catch up in that field. This is offset by the Allied jet engines being literally hundreds of times more reliable and giving equal or greater output for their weight to the German ones. So, the Allies could substitute brute force for finesse in airframes while the Germans can substitute better airframe designs to make up for crappy engines. It would have all come out a wash in by say, 1944 in any case. As for the V-1 and 2, these really bought the Germans little. The US had a working copy of the V-1 flying just 60 days after the first launch (aka JB-2 / Loon). The V-2 was a bit harder but, using captured wreckage and such, the USAAF started the MX-773 project (one of about 20 missile projects going in 1944) to produce a better V-2. Convair did the airframe, Rocketdyne did the engine. Sperry Rand did the guidance system. The project by the end of the war progressed far enough that post war Convair delivered several complete missiles. These were tested in late 1946 and found to have triple the payload and double the range of the V-2. As you can see, a technological advantage is fleeting if your opponet has the ability to reproduce that technology too. The best technologies to persue the most are ones that your opponet cannot match without massive new investment in multiple fields. An excellent post war example would be solid state electronics. It took the Soviets several decades to catch up with this technology and even then they never fully did; remaining reliant on tubes well into the 80's.
