"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


MichaelJP wrote:
I always think flying an Me-163 in combat must have been one of the most
crazy experiences in wartime aviation, firstly you have all the explosive
fuel around you, secondly you are shortly to be boosted at tremendous
climb rates into the middle of a heavily armed B-17 formation, thirdly if
you survive all that and manage to get a shot in before the couple of
minutes before the motor dies, you have to glide back like a brick to a
tiny airfield and land on a skid!


As a glider it was superb, thanks to Lippisch's background as a glider
designer.
Although the pilots tended to dive away at high speed to escape enemy
fighters once their fuel was gone (and to get back to base ASAP for the
same reason), it had a really good gliding performance, and the pilots who
flew it said its handling qualities were superior to any other German
aircraft.
It's only drawback in gliding flight was that it was _too_ good at it -
once it got down in ground effect near landing, it had a tendency to just
float along above the ground till speed bled off and it would settle down.
Even the addition of underwing extensible spoilers didn't completely solve
the problem, and a lot of pilots were injured or killed by the aircraft
remaining stubbornly airborne down the whole length of the landing field
(they landed on grass generally) and not touching down till it arrived on
the rough ground outside the field's boundaries.

Pat

Thanks Pat - the ME-163 is modelled in the superb combat flight sim IL-2,
trying it last night they must have modelled this aircraft quite nicely as I
found it very difficult to bleed off enough speed in the hold-off, exactly
as you said above. Landing on the grass the skid dug in and certainly a real
aircraft would have been destroyed.

Difference is I could reset for another go

Doing some other testing I found it impossible to recover from a spin
entered from a slow-speed stall. Wonder if that's correct?