(ANDREW ROBERT BREEN) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
Pilot's Handbooks is the number of Red/Boldface items on the 262
vs. the F-80. The 262 has 2 pages of big red "Thou Shalt Not"
entries. Everything from Mach limits to slow rolls, to fiddling with
the throttles. The F-80SA has 2 - If aileron buzz develops above Mach
0.8, slow down (Easily done with the Speed Brakes), and don't point it
much downhill below 10,000' until you get a feel for how fast the
airplane accelerates. We could have pushed the F-80 into service
sooner, if we had needed to, but we didn't need to.

Galland, who flew the 262 _and_ the Meteor extensively (probably
one of very few who did) rated the Meteor as the better aeroplane,
though he did qualify this by claiming that a 262 with Derwents
(an interesting thought..) would have been best of all.

I think Galland was being a diplomat towards his old collegues in the
German aerospace insudustry. (His letter head described himself as an
aerospace consultant) and his British hosts and a few respecting
admirers on the allied side.

The British double sided impellor engines while light and rubust (at
least when the controls were sorted) were of a very large diameter.
Apart from some drag this meant that the Meteor I suffered extensive
development delays in integration of the engines into the
wings/fueselage. The solution was to actualy forge a semi-circular
bend in the wing spar at considerable expense. The British never did
flinch from a preponderance of curves and this method seems to have
become favoured technique in Britain.

One of the reasons the Germans decided to focus on axial designes was
to avoid this problem so that the engines are narrow enough to suspend
under the wings.

To fit Derwents to a Me 262 would thus probably have meant bending the
spars to accomodate them.

Of course in a single engine designe this is not so much a problem.


ex-pilots I've spoken to who flew the Meat-box were unanmious that
while not spectacular, the old beast was pretty agile, accelerated
well and had no major vices. Sounds, from that, as if it might
have had the edge in the hands of anyone less than an expert even
if the 262 had had engines which worked..

Provisio: All of these comments apply to the F4 Meteor and onwards!
Never spoken to anyone who flew a F1 (few did!) or F3, and Galland
flew F4s in the Argentine.

The Me 262 was following its own development progression. Apart from
more reliable engines (duplex injectors to counter thin air flameout
and throttle limiting to prevent destructive turbine inlet temperature
excursions) there were proposals to return the engines to the
originaly propose armpit position between wing and fueselage as well
as versions with considerably increased wing sweep (45 degrees). The
Meteor itself went through what appears completely revised wings.

I have quite a lot of respect for the approach of thin straight flat
wings to achieve high speed flight.

I am unaware of any problems of the Meteor I,III which were
contemporaries of the Me 262A series. The Me 262 handelled well apart
from a little snaking at high speed and a Mach limit at about 0.85 so
on balance of probabilities the Meteor might have handled better with
the Me 262 faster in the early versions when both had weak engines due
to its lower drag. Modifications of the Me 262 such as the Me 262 HG
IV were supposed to be supersonic.