What if the Me-262 was created earlier?

well guys I haven't made a response since the last dis-infranchised member tried to curb my post

I still go back on this what-if of night time ops in 42 which is a huge comparison and in fact cannot even be compared to the more talked / researched about day time operations over the Reich

 

Please read the entire thread first, the arguments pro and against, and THINK !

 

Your ignorance is showing. You really should read the previous discussion before injecting commentary. I'm sorry but, as it is your comments just make you look silly.

 

"German Stuff is freakin sweet!!!" says it all I think T.A.

 

Well, I did curb my first impulse as to a response as it was....shall we say, not suitable for family audiences or any other audience for that matter.....

 

More for the "junk" heap.

 

LOl Thanks for your restraint .

 

Some interesting facts,tips,actual fighter experience of a former member of JV44Interview with Franz Stigler on The 109 Lair

 

This thread died 6 months ago.

 

"Sic transit gloria mundi". Walter Nowotny, German Luftwaffe Ace of WW2

On September 26, 1944, he was appointed CO of Kommando Nowotny, the world's first jet fighter unit, based at Achmer and Hesepe.

Kommando Nowotny became operational on the 3rd of October and claimed their first kill, a B-24, on October 7th. Nowotny began the practice of using prop-driven conventional fighters as cover against the roaming Allied fighters during the takeoffs and landings of the Me 262. The Me 262 was especially vulnerable as the turbojet's relatively low thrust resulted in slow acceleration. It took some time for the jet to get up to speed. But once there, no Allied aircraft could touch it.



Adolf Galland, Luftwaffe General of Fighters, visited Achmer for an inspection. Nowotny was going to give Galland his pilots' flight reports. A flight of B-17 bombers was reported, so the unit took off, about six jets in the first wave, then another. The Fw-190Ds were waiting on the runway cover their return of the jets. Galland was in the operations shack, monitoring the pilots' radio transmissions. Several bombers were called out as shot down, and Nowotny radioed that he was approaching. The flight leader on the ground, Hans Dortenmann, requested permission to take off to assist, but Nowotny said no, to wait. The defensive anti-aircraft battery opened fire on a few P-51 Mustangs that approached the field, but they were chased away. The jets were coming in.

One Me-262 had been shot down, and Nowotny reported an engine failure before making a garbled transmission referring to “burning”. Galland watched Nowi's approach, heard the sound of a jet engine, and saw his Me 262 A-1a (W.Nr. 110 400) “White 8” dive vertically out of the clouds and crash at Epe, 2.5 kilometres east of Hesepe. The explosions rocked the air, and only a column of black smoke rose from behind the trees. The wreckage was Nowotny's plane. After sifting through it, the only salvageable things found were his left hand and pieces of his Diamonds decoration.

The unit was disbanded shortly after Nowotny's death. It had claimed 22 aircraft with a loss of 26 Me 262s, eight of which were due to accidents and mechanical failures.

 

"Look Ma, I have another bright idea!"

 

LOL. I remember reading about this one. They had difficulty in aiming the darn thing. Much like the one bomber that carried a 75mm (I believe) antitank cannon in its nose.

 

HAHA nice pic why would they go through that much trouble

 

The history of the Me-262 is full of misery

 

Just an query over this issue, what would be the impact "what if" had Hitler had not thrown his insistance that the Me-262 was to be a fighter bomber but as a pure fighter interceptor as it was designed for, therefore the whole of the Me-262 fleet were bomber interceptors while the Fw-190 dealt with escorts.

Also after reading some of the posts on this what would happen had Messerschmitt had decided to cancel the Me-109 to allow it's fighter production facilities to produce the Me-262.

v.R

 

You should know by now these threads never die. Just like there's no such thing as an extinct volcano ... only dormant ones...

Think of as proof that the undead really do exist.

 

Right you are, both the British and German jet engine technology were at almost the same level of development and a combined British-American effort would probably have put a comparable, operational jet fighter into the air in less than two years. The ME-262 would probably have delayed but not stopped allied bombing attacks.

The Germans actually had a good prototype jet fighter in 1939, the Heinkel HE-178. Strangely the luftwaffe showed little interest in developing it further, since with more development work it could probably have at least equalled the performance of the ME-262 that came out almost 5 years later. A major factor in this strange decision may have been that Heinkel was not politically in favor with the luftwaffe high command. Also it was said that Luftwaffe Fieldmarshall Erhard Milch personally disliked Heinkel. (You would think people would put aside petty differences during a war for national survival but history shows this often is not the reality!)

 

It also could have been the only 10 minutes of combat time at about 373 MPH or so that that HE-178 was capable of too. It wasn't orginally designed as a fighter but as a test bed for the new type of engines as far as I have read. It was designed just as an aircraft to fly under jet power. The airframe IMO with its wooden wing would not have been suitable as a fighter.

 

Actually if the Me 262A and B would of been brought up earlier in the war it may have stopped or made BC completely think of it's airborne tactics over the Reich at night.

as already been proven the 262 was about the only thing that could match the NF and LSNF Mossies on their play over the Reich at night in 1945, had they been proven tested and operated in 42, well ........... ?

have a great New Year ladies/gents

E ~

 

Actually, if you study the He 178 closely it was really little more than a Henkel publicity stunt. The aircraft itself was miniscule in size. There was no way it could have been developed into a fighter. It carried enough fuel for a few demonstration flybys at low altitude to impress the viewers, nothing more. The flight time total might have been 10 minutes at most. Topping that off was the underdeveloped engine that severely overheated during the flight and wouldn't have lasted much longer than the fuel did.
But, fly it did and it was impressively fast. In 1939 though it was also an impractical waste of time. Junkers, BMW, as well as Henkel were working on jet engines at a lower priority. It would be years before any of them had a workable engine. A large part of the problem was lack of high temperature metals suitable for such engines.
England and the US just happened to develop nickel steels like Inconel and Monel at just the right time. Tungsten carbide and Tungsten steel alloys were also readily available. In Germany Krupp had a monopoly on Tungsten and no one was making high nickel steels like Inconel. Thus, there was no readily available supply of metals like there was in the US and England.
Helping the US tremendously was their massive lead in turbocharging in the late 30's. Westinghouse and GE both had developed very reliable exhaust driven turbochargers using high temperature metals. It was just one step away from having a running jet engine in a sense. Thus, when the British showed the US their working jet engines it didn't take the US much time at all to develop operational models and improve on the foundation the British had provided.