103 pictures of US experimental aircraft, the majority are ww2 vintage.

United States by Grey Falcon

 

In the same vein, here is a fun link to "Strange Planes" from the Discovery/Military Channel, since the advertising remains, I don’t think it is any sort of infringement for me to share it with the forum.

If the link worries the admin. feel free to delete the thing. There are over thirty short (1 to 3 minute) clips on-site starting with the "Super Guppy" modification of the B-29. They play with short commercial breaks between each clip.

Goto:

MIL- Strange Planes : Videos : Military Channel

 

What always gets me is how aircraft like these remain virtually unknown while German ones of equal obscurity are better known and often touted as being so much more advanced than those of other nations.

 

As mentioned in another thread the Swastica sell's!

 

They were more advanced. Not experimental...and jet powered.

 

Thanks for the links they are quite interesting!

 

.. but were they really ? ...development and deployment of these 'advanced' German types was compressed into the most restricted time frame possible - with almost inevitable consequences. No aircraft can go from drawing board to combat service without lengthy developmental testing. Since this was always lacking most of the types you are referring to were little better than 'pedestrian' ....and very 'dangerous' ..especially to their own pilots!

 

The P-59 Airacomet flew before the Me 262 did......

 

So the Aircomet flew before 1936?? Pffft....Oh and the aircomet was a bag of sh*t.

 

Watch the language. The Me 262 fyi first flew on 18 July 1942 while the P-59 flew on Oct 2 1942. But, the Me 262 V3 being a tail dragger proved all but impossible to take off in except when flown by very experianced pilots while the Bell product flew nearly flawlessly right from the start. It took Messerschmitt until June 26 1943 to have a nose wheel version first fly (the V5). At that point there were just 5 prototype Me 262 in existance. At that point the US already had 2 XP 59 flying with few to no problems and another 13 YP 59 flying as well. The 412 Fighter Group was also formed and operational by then to begin testing and development of jets for the USAAF on a large scale while the Germans didn't even have the Me 262 in squadron service.

So, while the Me 262 did out perform the P 59, the P 59 proved far more useful as an early test bed and development aircraft for US jets in general. It was reliable. It had no real vicious tendencies and, it had a reasonable performance. The Me 262 proved horribly unreliable primarily because of its engines. It suffered from weak landing gear, poor aileron and control surface mating to the plane, very high stick forces, and had a vicious tendancy to spin if it lost an engine.

On the whole, the Me 262 was under developed and rushed into production. The P 59 on the other hand represented a more conservative approach that allowed a smooth transition to jets by the USAAF.

 

Yeaaaahhh.....The 262 protype first flew in 1936 mate FYI!(with a piston engine mounted on the front)...could even dig up a picture for you i think. The 262 was cutting edge and despite its early problems proved itself a devastating fighter aircraft...unlike the "test bed" P-59 which used directly British engine technology strapped to a design that illustrated the allies ignorance for high-speed aircraft. The 262 was not rushed into service...it was put in before the niggles had been ironed out though. And still it blasted allied aircraft out of the sky.
The 262 would have been introduced way earlier had Hitler (here he is again) demanded that it could carry a bomb and be a fighter bomber...I can go all day mate.

The P-59 was considered a dissapointment....because it was.

 

The Me 262 V1 (PC + UA) with a Jumo 210G piston engine first flew on April 18 1941. The test pilot Flugkapitän Fritz Wendel nearly crashed trying to take off in it as it consumed the entire runway at Ausburg and barely cleared the trees beyond. It proved exceptionally underpowered...

The max speed was found to be 260 mph on this engine but in dives 335 mph was attained at which speed severe buffetting of the tail and elevators appeared. One flight with BMW 003 engines was attempted on March 25 1942 but, after the plane barely got airborne on both jets and the still installed Jumo 210 engine it managed to reach about 150 meters where one BMW 003 flamed out followed moments later by the other partially detonating. Wendel, the pilot barely kept the aircraft flying long enough to make a circuit and landing on the Jumo pistion engine alone.

The Me 262 (Projekt 1065) started at the end of 1938 and the proposal pitched to the RLM was made in January 1940 when Messerschmitt was authorized to make a prototype mock up of the plane. Originally it was to use the BMW 003 engine but, this proved impossible as BMW couldn't get their jet to work right so Messerschmitt had to redesign the aircraft nearly entirely to take the heavier and larger Jumo 004 engine. The new design was approved by the RLM in July of 1940 and Messerschmitt proceeded to start a prototype.

So, between roughly July 1940 and the end of 1943 the Me 262 was flown occasionally and about a half dozen prototypes existed riddled with bugs and flaws. Even after it went into service it remained a problem aircraft. As I stated earlier, the biggest problem was the engines. These had a service life of 10 or less hours on average. An engine change after each flight could reasonably be expected. The landing gear was weak and nose wheel collapses were common occurances on landings. The ailerons often had serious issues with proper fit and took several flights to adjust. Stick forces were high (on the order of 60 pounds or more at high speed).

It wasn't going to be introduced earlier either. Junkers and BMW couldn't get their engines to work right. There were issues with materials and also more technical ones matching the compressor stages properly. This alone would delay the Me 262 by at least a year if not longer. Then there were the issues with the design. The nose wheel as pointed out took over a year to develop as Messerschmitt had no experiance with nose wheel aircraft designs (unlike Bell).

Concurrent with the Bell P-59 the British were flying jets as well. But, both nations did not push development as the engine technology still had bugs to work out and, both were focused on war production and winning rather than trying to use a technological trick (a common fall back for a nation losing a war). The P-59 wasn't a "disappointment" but rather a starting point and, a more successful one than the Me 262 in terms of development.

 

not sure about your engine life figures exactly TA (although they certainly weren't consistent) - they apparently got it up to between 15 and 20 hours towards the end and that meant about 6 or so missions including taxiing etc - IIRC the fuel would do about an hour 10 in the air without dogfighting? each time - if no failures - but the engine issues were almost all materials availabilty, pilot training and manufacturing facility problems not basic technology shortcomings - the general opinion of most on all sides was apparently that the late model 262s flew well in the hands of anyone properly trained up, with adequate ground support which rarely happened.

 

The development of the 262 mirrors the development of other so-called Wunderwaffen especially the V-2. Over 800 262s were constructed, less than than 100 saw combat! Fantastic resources expended and wasted, that might have been better devoted to conventional aircraft. And yes 'CAC' development rushed - see the new German-language history of KG 51. Far from 'blasting' anything, the Germans couldn't even get the Me 262 ready for D-Day, despite starting, what, 2, or even 3 years earlier...

KG 51s first jets didn't arrived in Lechfeld until June 1944 where the pilots of I./KG 51 underwent immediate conversion training. Only the very best pilots could be deployed to France because the damn thing was so tricky to master, especially the throttle controls. The dispatch of the first ground echelon of I./KG51 in July from southern Germany was chaotic and took place while most of the pilots were still undergoing their training. The first bombing sorties flown by the Einsatzkommando I./KG 51 (otherwise known as Kommando Schenk) were hit-and-miss affairs against US troop concentrations along the banks of the river Seine from 25 August 1944. There were no sorties flown in July as most sources claim. With no bomb sight worthy of the name and reduced to dropping their ordnance haphazardly from altitude to avoid flak and fighters, the jets were unable to identify targets on the ground. In fact it is doubtful if the Allies were even aware of the 262's arrival in France. The world's first jet bomber unit achieved nothing with the 262. The 262' development as a 'pure' fighter paralled this; the unreliability of the jet engines and the futility of flying combat sorties piecemeal, single machines reduced to fast passes through the bomber stream. What was the 262's best day ?...37 combat sorties ?!! And by the time it was all over (say March 45 for arguments sake..) you have a situation where single 262s were reduced to strafing American road convoys .....work that any conventional type could have carried out. Indeed something worth pointing out is the fact that while attempting to operate the 262 the Germans were also busy establishing new combat units comprising of the elderly Ju87, ancient biplanes and Panzer-faust equipped trainers ...since these types required less fuel, less competent pilots etc etc and could achieve the same if not better results ..!!

" ...on 13 January 1945 Ofhr. Hans Busch taxied out in Me 262 A-1a 9K+1W WNr. 170 049. After running up his engines at the western end of the runway, he released the brakes. Busch reported;

"....halfway down the runway the machine started to veer off to the starboard side - the engine on that side was obviously still not developing full thrust. With my speed now at around 130 km/h and the jet now on the frozen-hard grass, I judged it far too risky to abort my takeoff - especially since there was a farm on the edge of the airfield which I was likely to plough into. My speed was still increasing, albeit far too slowly. At 188 km/h the farm house was so close that I could do nothing but pull back in desperation on the control column in an attempt to pull the aircraft off the ground..luckily the machine responded - we were briefly airborne. I flashed over the farmhouse roof. However the aircraft was hardly flyable - more out of control - as a result of the overly steep rotation. It started to roll - despite my desperate attempts to correct with the rudder - lost height, and the starboard wing gouged into the ground..everything then happened very quickly. The undercarriage shattered into pieces, the starboard wing broke off, the nose was torn away, followed by the port wing and then the tail, so that only the central section and the cockpit was still in one piece. As the rear tanks went up the canopy was blown off and with it my flight helmet and throat mike. I was on the ground - as if I was sitting in a chair - and quickly scrambled clear on all fours. As the ambulance drove up I was already celebrating my 'birthday'. The aircraft was 95% destroyed - I escaped with an injury to my knee, singed hair and burns to my face..I was back in the air on the 31st..."

I'd hate to work out how many pilots the Luftwaffe lost trying to bring the 262 in....more Sturm units flying the Fw 190 could have done just as much damage if not more to the bomber streams

 

Thanks for all the salutes ! I did think some interesting planes were in this mix. glad they were enjoyed. I happened upon a 262 in the Kbely Aviation Museum just outside Prague what stuck me most was it small size, I expected it to be bigger for no good reason. Beautiful lines on the "Shark"

Kbely Airmuseum-Letecke Muzeum-Praha

I highly recommend this museum. It was almost devoid of people when I was there, not terribly modern which I took as a plus, some of the hangers looked WW2 era, hordes of great and rare planes. Many Warsaw Pact planes as well. Plus an 88 sitting outside and one car of an armored train. Well worth the visit. Terezin is about 80K to the west, Terezinstadt Camp is there, more than worth a visit and just outside were 2 T34-85's and a SU 100 all beginning to rust.

Gaines
GB

 

BTW, Go to Google Earth and type in Kbely, CZ. Zoom in and you will see an ariel view of the museum with picture icons of planes displayed outside, including a 262 on the runway...it is usually indoors. A Gloster Meteor is also there.

 

You have to admit the German ones were much more aggressive in design. Most of these are almost comically lame. All the Germans ones were meant to be killers, while all these are testing out every bad idea in sight. Seems like we tested everything that didnt work well, but went someone else had something that worked, we wanted nothing to do with it.

 

Wonder if Hitlers insistence that the 262 be a fighter bomber caused delays in the plane being somewhat delayed in it's development?

 

I do not believe so, that would be an airframe issue, and the 262 was delayed substantially by its engines. "Sad" thing is, it would have only taken a few tons of rare minerals to feed the entire program, but they couldnt even get those. Most of the alloys needed for aircraft use far less than 5% of any rare minerals, but its even more typical to have less than 1% rare minerals. You see a lot of the best alloys having in the area of tenths of a percent.

Dont believe all the hype about the engines though, although they only lasted a few dozen hours on average, that is very typical of all engines of the time. Most engines only ran about 50-100 hours between overhauls, which could be more than the expected lifetime of the aircraft in many theaters. The reliability of the engines was acceptable for the time.
It was the performance of the engines that delayed them. They simply were not making the required power.