#1 Jet of World War II

Hi the Meteor was used to shoot down V1 missiles it was quite good at it!
too so it was band from front line service i think until the end of the war.
"Gordon" wrote in message
...
They were so confident
in the Meteor that they wouldn't put it in combat against the 262.
I have read that the British were afraid the Germans might gain the
advanced technology if one was shot down. I've alway wonder what
advanced technology was being referred to.

Agree, Walt! The Me 262 A-1a with 24 R4Ms and an EZ42 revi installed was
a
monster in comparison to the Mk 1 Meteors. No RAF pilot I have spoken
with has
expressed doubts in this regard, including men who flew both.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

"Got anything on your radar, SENSO?"
"Nothing but my forehead, sir."

On 29 Jun 2003 15:59:14 GMT, nt (Gordon) wrote:

They were so confident
in the Meteor that they wouldn't put it in combat against the 262.
I have read that the British were afraid the Germans might gain the
advanced technology if one was shot down. I've alway wonder what
advanced technology was being referred to.

Agree, Walt! The Me 262 A-1a with 24 R4Ms and an EZ42 revi installed was a
monster in comparison to the Mk 1 Meteors. No RAF pilot I have spoken with has
expressed doubts in this regard, including men who flew both.

Did the Mk III's with 616 Squadron in Belgium in 1945 have Wellands or
Derwents? (I know the first few Mk IIIs had Wellands, but some of them
were re-engined later). It's not really a fair comparison to use the
Mk 1 (20 produced, only ever used for anti-V1 patrols operationally)
against the 262. The RAF were prepared to use the Mk III over German
territory in April 1945, so there was a point at which they were
prepared to risk contact with the 262. It might, just, possibly have
been an engine issue (why give the Germans engines with the compressor
blades and rare alloys they needed when the inevitable losses took
place?), but that's speculation on my part.

The war was almost over whatever happened with one or at most two
squadrons of Meteors amongst the hundreds of allied piston-engined
fighters roaming over German territory. In that respect, I personally
believe blue-on-blue was a bigger risk than the 262 or anything else.
The one time 616 Squadron did move into position to attack some 190's,
they attracted unwelcome attention from some Spitfires doing the the
same thing.

Nobody could guarantee meeting the 262 in combat: the RAF didn't see
much of them in general, so the real risks to the Meteor were from
German piston-engined fighters and most of all, flak. It certainly
didn't have the range to go beyond the normal Spitfire operational
radius, so I don't think it would have met anything other than what
the other conventional fighters of 2 TAF encountered. On those
grounds, I doubt the British restricted it's use on the grounds of
prestige, but it's a possibility.

On another subject, you couldn't give me a realistic cruising speed
for B.IX/B.XVI mossies in '44'45, could you? I mean a real one,
including bombload, etc? Many thanks if you can, if not don't worry
about it.

Gavin Bailey
--

"...this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be
avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."
- 'Poll shows errors in beliefs on Iraq, 9/11'
The Charlotte Observer, 20th June 2003

Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised)
Date: 7/4/03 6:57 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Nobody could guarantee meeting the 262 in combat: the RAF didn't see
much of them in general, so the r

We damn well did see them. They weren't exactly invisible.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

"ArtKramr" skrev i melding
...
Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised)
Date: 7/4/03 6:57 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Nobody could guarantee meeting the 262 in combat: the RAF didn't see
much of them in general, so the r

We damn well did see them. They weren't exactly invisible.

I just read "War in the air" by Stephen Coonts,in it is a chapter where
Adolf Galland describes his last sortie of the war - leading 6 Me-262s
against a formation of Mauraders on April 26.

Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: "Peter Glasø" pgglaso@ broadpark.no
Date: 7/4/03 9:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time

just read "War in the air" by Stephen Coonts,in it is a chapter where
Adolf Galland describes his last sortie of the war - leading 6 Me-262s
against a formation of Mauraders on April 26.

Thanks. I read that account in Galland's "The First and the Last". Good book
by. Glad it wasn't our group he hit that day.(sigh)

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

On another subject, you couldn't give me a realistic cruising speed
for B.IX/B.XVI mossies in '44'45, could you? I mean a real one,
including bombload, etc? Many thanks if you can, if not don't worry
about it.

If you give me some time to pull it off GEE mission logs, surely. Other choice
to ask Mark Huxtable at Mossie.org - he is building an overly large-scale Mk IX
and is quite the expert.

v/r
Gordon

In article ,
(The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) writes:
On 29 Jun 2003 15:59:14 GMT, nt (Gordon) wrote:
On another subject, you couldn't give me a realistic cruising speed
for B.IX/B.XVI mossies in '44'45, could you? I mean a real one,
including bombload, etc? Many thanks if you can, if not don't worry
about it.

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS. At 20,000' that would be a bit over 266 mph TAS, at
25,000', it would be 290 IAS, and at 30,000' it would be 320 mph TAS.
At a slight cost in range, you could bump these speeds by about 15-20
mph - the Mossie had a fairly flat L/D curve.

Best cruise speed is largely independant of the engine power
installed. What's most important is the drag on the airframe, and the
point on the Drag Polar plot that shows the point of minumum drag.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (Peter Stickney)
Date: 7/14/03 6:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS.

That is a very interesting number. I can't help but compare it to the B-26
which got its best range at 180 IAS loaded with steel plate armor and bristling
with machine guns and carrying a crew of 6. Take off the armor, take off the
guns and top turret and cut the crew to two and the B-26 may well have
outperformed the Mosquito by a large margin..

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In article ,
(ArtKramr) writes:
Subject: #1 Jet of World War II
From: (Peter Stickney)
Date: 7/14/03 6:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Best range cruise speed fpr any type of Mosquito would be 'bout 170
kts/196 mph IAS.

That is a very interesting number. I can't help but compare it to the B-26
which got its best range at 180 IAS loaded with steel plate armor and bristling
with machine guns and carrying a crew of 6. Take off the armor, take off the
guns and top turret and cut the crew to two and the B-26 may well have
outperformed the Mosquito by a large margin..

Well, not quite, perhaps.
To a certain extent, best economical cruise speed was independant of
the top speed. Best economical cruise is the airspeed that gives the
minumum power required to maintain level flight at that altitude. Max
Speed depends on the total power available. That being said, a
cleaned-up B-26 would go pretty danged fast. According to the USAAF
Characteristics Summary for teh B-26C, which is derived from flight
test data, a combat-equipped 'C' topped out at 282 mph TAS at
15,000', or about 225 IAS. That's quite a bit over the 180 IAS cruise
that you guys used. As I remember it, one pf the postwar Bendix
Racers was a cleaned-up Martin B-26C (For you kids, the Bendix was an
Unlimited Transcontinental Air Race. ) I don't recall how it fared.
Given the way things went at that time, the winner that year would
have been either Paul Mantz in his slicked-up P-51 (No pylons, no drop
tanks, and the gun and ammunition bays in the wings sealed and used
fro more fuel, allowing a non-stop trancontinental flight at Maximum
Continuous Power). But for an old lady (A prewar design, after all,
the B-26 could really move, when it needed to.

I just double checked, he numbers I gave are a bit muddied-up, too.
I've two Pilot's Handbooks for the Mosquito, one for the FB.6
(Fighter-Bomber) from 1950, and one for the various single-stage
Merlin Night Fighters, published in 1945. The numbers I quoted were
from the FB.6 handbook, and the NF.12 handbook is different. The NF.12
book lists best cruise as 220 mph IAS, which is nudging 330 TAS at
25,000'. and 360 TAS at 30,000'. It's possible that the FB.6 numbers
are for an airplane carrying external bombs and rockets, but it
doesn't say.
Of course, these a Brit P.O.H.s, and the philosopy there is a bit
different. The sum total of cruise instructions are "Try to fly at
this airspeed, withoug exceeding that power setting. Yo should get
thus fuel consumption." The equivalent American -1 would have an
entire chapter of graphs, charts, formulae, and tables to precisely
duplicate every condition. (You'd asked about differences in Aircrew
Training. It could well be we've stumbled onto one). Which method is
better? Who knows. The U.S.Anian one is certainly more exact, but
the natural variation between aircraft, especially after they've been
bashed around for a while, makes that level of precision a bit
dubious.

And just what is Max Speed for a bomber, anyway? 5 Minutes of War
Emergency Power doesn't make too much sense, or even 15 minutes at
Military Power. You can get some amazing numbers that way, that will
never show up in real life.
An example would be the Italian Breda 88 Attac Bomber. It was a
damned serious looking twin engine light bomber that went into service
with a fantastic reputation. The prototype set quite a number of
speed/load/distance records, and it sure seemed fierce. When they
were finally issued to the Regia Aeronautica units in North Africa,
they discovered that they had an airplane that couldn't climb out of
ground effect on takeoff with a full fuel load, and was in danger of
colliding with the Libyan sand dunes.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Peter Stickney wrote:

snip

I just double checked, he numbers I gave are a bit muddied-up, too.
I've two Pilot's Handbooks for the Mosquito, one for the FB.6
(Fighter-Bomber) from 1950, and one for the various single-stage
Merlin Night Fighters, published in 1945. The numbers I quoted were
from the FB.6 handbook, and the NF.12 handbook is different. The NF.12
book lists best cruise as 220 mph IAS, which is nudging 330 TAS at
25,000'. and 360 TAS at 30,000'. It's possible that the FB.6 numbers
are for an airplane carrying external bombs and rockets, but it
doesn't say.

This site should clear up some of the confusion (you need to scroll down quite a
ways):

http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bfillery/mossie02.htm

"Recommended" cruise is 220 IAS outbound, 210 IAS return, for both single and
two-stage a/c. The post-war limits (weight etc.) seem to have been dialed back
considerably from wartime.

Guy