G-loads in WW2

In article ,
Cub Driver writes:

Why does everyone get so bent out of shape over the Me-262? Its
contemporary, the P-80 in its two-seat trainer version, is still in
service as a recce and light-attack aircraft with several air forces
around the world, 60 years of continuous service after its first
flight. If that's not the better aircraft, or indeed the best turbojet
ever built, I scratch my head as to what standards are being applied.

Note - more on the various turbojets later tonight - I'm checking
references and lining up ducks.

I don't think there's a single reason. I'll throw out some that popped
into my head, though.

Novelty - the Me 262 was the first jet fighter to engage in combat.
The difference in the performance envelopes of any jet vs. any
piston-propeller pwered fighter are such that on that day, Air Combat
changed. If the Meteor had engaged airplanes first, we'd be talking
about it the same way.

Mysticism/Mythology/Psychology - However you want to put it.
This works on several levels. The Germans themselves had an almost
pathological belief that they could pull off some kind of "Hammer
Blow" that would psychologically paralyze their enemies, and allow
them to win at the last second. Some of this was manifested in
weapons development - pursuing rediculous projects on the vain hope of
their succeeding, such as th Maus and E.100 tanks, or the hopes placed
on the employment of the V-1 and V-2, or, for that matter, pushing the
Me 262 into service long before it was ready. It was also strategic -
the Ardennes Offensive, or Galland's husbanding the Luftwaffe's
strength in the Autumn of 1944, hoping to strike a single strong blow
that would stop the Eighth Air Force in its tracks. Of course, by the
time he'd managed to scrape up a sizable number of pilots, the Eighth
wa flying raids where the number of escort fighters alone exceeded the
strength of Luftflotte Reich. These carefully husbanded, and, for the
most part, half-trained forces were squandered in Operation
Bodenplatte over the turn of the New Year into 1945. (Another
Mystical Hammer Blow)

This wasn't a recent phenomenon - they went through the same process
in World War One, culminating in the Kaiserschlacht of 1918, which
finished the Imperial German Army as a fighting force.

You'd think that after 3 years of constantly backpedalling against the
Soviets. Brits and Commenwealth, and Americans, who all absorbed these
"Hammer Blows" as they were struck, they'd get to thinking that they
wouldn't work. The didn't learn the lesson.
(Too much Wagner, I think. Or perhaps Wagner touched on somehing in
the German culture up through that time.)

Esthetics - it just plain looks cool.

Promise - this sort of ties in with Novelty and Mysticism. The advent
of teh jet fighter was a watershed in air combat. Properly developed,
with properly prepared pilots, and all of that occuring in a timely
manner, the Me 262, or any jet, would have had far-sweeping
consequences. For various reasons, the Germans were unable to get
things together before their entire system started falling apart.
They couldn't produce engines, they couldn't tranistion pilots, and
they couldn't support airplanes in the field by the time the 262
became operational. The Germans were, on the best day they ever had
(for jets) able to put about 60 jets in the air. These were facing
over 3000 Allied bombers and fighters.

And for some, it's just plain racism/nationalism - It was German, and
therefore it had to be better/more advanced/superduper.

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

In article ,
Jack writes:
Cub Driver wrote:

Why does everyone get so bent out of shape over the Me-262? Its
contemporary, the P-80 in its two-seat trainer version, is still in
service....

If the -262 had survived this long it probably would have been a bit
better than it was in 1945, too. The last time a flew a T-33 was 1971,
and there were no -262s available to me for comparison.

The question is, was the P-80 better than the ME-262 in 45? We'll never
know, but we can say that the -262 was operational in '45, and that the
-80 was not.

The Germans were deparate in 1945, and we weren't for one thing. I've
also flown a T-33, and, while I haven't flown an F-80A, or an Me 262,
I do have the -1s for both, and a number of comparison studies. At a
first glance, the biggest thing that pops out in a comparison of the
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.

One bit of source material that has some bearing is Technical Report
F-TR-1133-ND, "Evaluation of the Me 262, (Project Number NAD-29)",
Headquarters Air Materiel Command, Technical Intelligence, Wright
Field, released February 1947, declassified and released under FOIA in
1994. It's the results of teh stateside evaluations of the Me 262
conducted at Freeman Field, after V-E Day.

The gist of the pilot's comments, discounting their experience in
single-engine handling (9 engine failures in 15.5 flight hours)
are these - handling was poor at speeds over 350 mph. Snaking was
severe enough to prevent effective gun aiming at speeds above 400 mph
IAS. Trim chages with power were objectionable. Stalling behavior was
good. Cockpit visibility was poor. Excessive trim changes at low
speeds when lowering/raising the gear and flaps required a lot of
attention during approach and landiing.
The gneral maintenace load, given enough spare parts, wasn't
considered excessive, with the exception of constantly needing to pull
engines.

The final conclustions were that the Me 262 was about the same as an
F-80A, with slightly better acceleration and speed, and comparable
climb rates. The handling characteristics of the F-80A were much
superior, and the F-80 was a superior gun platform. (Albeit not as
hard hitting) It pretty much sounds like a wash.

Were German Generals better than American Generals? At least we have
some basis for comparison.

I've read quite a number of the Memoirs of German Generals. The
General Staff School apparently had an exceptionally good class in
finger-pointing. The constant running theme is that it's Always
Somebody Else's Fault. It's not at all unlike reading the memoirs of
Robert S. MacNamara or McGeorge Bundy.

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

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.
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 hadd 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.

--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
"Time has stopped, says the Black Lion clock
and eternity has begun" (Dylan Thomas)

(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.

(Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Cub Driver writes:

Why does everyone get so bent out of shape over the Me-262? Its
contemporary, the P-80 in its two-seat trainer version, is still in
service as a recce and light-attack aircraft with several air forces
around the world, 60 years of continuous service after its first
flight. If that's not the better aircraft, or indeed the best turbojet
ever built, I scratch my head as to what standards are being applied.

Note - more on the various turbojets later tonight - I'm checking
references and lining up ducks.

I don't think there's a single reason. I'll throw out some that popped
into my head, though.

Novelty - the Me 262 was the first jet fighter to engage in combat.
The difference in the performance envelopes of any jet vs. any
piston-propeller pwered fighter are such that on that day, Air Combat
changed. If the Meteor had engaged airplanes first, we'd be talking
about it the same way.

And quite rightly.


Mysticism/Mythology/Psychology - However you want to put it.
This works on several levels. The Germans themselves had an almost
pathological belief that they could pull off some kind of "Hammer
Blow" that would psychologically paralyze their enemies, and allow
them to win at the last second.

When you are outnumbered by 4:1 the possibility of hard hiting blows
inflicted by new weapons and tactics is the only real hope and so it
is a tactic you follow.


Some of this was manifested in
weapons development - pursuing rediculous projects on the vain hope of
their succeeding, such as th Maus and E.100 tanks, or the hopes placed
on the employment of the V-1 and V-2, or, for that matter, pushing the
Me 262 into service long before it was ready. It was also strategic -
the Ardennes Offensive, or Galland's husbanding the Luftwaffe's
strength in the Autumn of 1944, hoping to strike a single strong blow
that would stop the Eighth Air Force in its tracks. Of course, by the
time he'd managed to scrape up a sizable number of pilots, the Eighth
wa flying raids where the number of escort fighters alone exceeded the
strength of Luftflotte Reich. These carefully husbanded, and, for the
most part, half-trained forces were squandered in Operation
Bodenplatte over the turn of the New Year into 1945. (Another
Mystical Hammer Blow)

This wasn't a recent phenomenon - they went through the same process
in World War One, culminating in the Kaiserschlacht of 1918, which
finished the Imperial German Army as a fighting force.

The end of the war for Germany in WW1 was the entry of the USA. They
managed to defeat the Russians.


You'd think that after 3 years of constantly backpedalling against the
Soviets. Brits and Commenwealth, and Americans, who all absorbed these
"Hammer Blows" as they were struck, they'd get to thinking that they
wouldn't work. The didn't learn the lesson.

In 9AD Herman/Armenious ambushed and slaughtered 3 legions and 6
cohorts of 20,000 Roman soldiers led by Varsus who were marching
through to the Baltic to meet up with a Roman fleet sailed from Roman
Britain. This was the end of Roman attempts to conquer Northern
Europe and ensured the ascendancy of English becuase Armenious was a
Cherusci: ancestors of the Saxons who settled in Britain from about
400AD. (although they had been there at a lower level preceding the
romans)

(Too much Wagner, I think. Or perhaps Wagner touched on somehing in
the German culture up through that time.)

Its clear you are expressing biggoted opinions based on ignorance.

There was an natural emergence nationalism in Bismarks Germany:
afterall the 16 'Germanic states' were finaly being allowed to unite
after having defeated France. NOTE it was a war France declared on
Germany under the vainglorious Napoleon IV.

Prior to the Franco Prussian war France had attacked Prussia and the
German states over 25 times begining with Louis XIV who smashed them
to keep them seperate and poor and divided.

Under Napoleon and the Jocobins they invaded Germany on the pretext
of "liberating" it while plundering, raping and murdering their way
through the German states. (Beethoven removed the dedication of the
9th Symphony when he found out what they were really like). The wars
actualy started by Bismarck
killed only around 1000 people.

Even Bismarck was more bark than bite. In all the wars (and he had
some real threats to deal with) that he started perhaps only 800 to at
most 2000 people died. (I've read his Biography). Indeed he
blustered to AVOID war.

Here is a proof:
Dealing in Hate: The development of anti-German propaganda

http://64.143.9.197/books/connors/dealinginhate.html

It has been estimated that there were "about twenty-six hundred
important battles involving European states" in the 460 years between
1480 and 1940. Of these, France participated in forty-seven percent,
"Germany (Prussia)" in twenty-five percent, and England and Russia in
twenty-two percent each.6 The Prussian record can hardly be described
as uniquely warlike on the basis of such evidence! It might also be
added that geographic factors, like Britain's insular position and
Russia's remoteness from the mainstream of European history during the
period, doubtless helped considerably to reduce their percentage of
involvement.

Professor Quincy Wright offers this further statistical evidence for
the same period, that is, 1480-1940:

Of the 278 wars involving European states during this period, the
percentage of participation by the principal states was: England, 28;
France, 26; Spain, 23; Russia, 22; Austria, 19; Turkey, 15; Poland,
11; Sweden, 9; Netherlands, 8; Germany (Prussia), 8; Italy
(Savoy-Sardinia), 9; and Denmark, 7.7

In the circumstances, one is compelled to assent to Dr. Wright's
conclusion that "attribution of a persistently warlike character to
certain states ... seems not to have been based upon a comparison of
any objective criteria of warlikeness."8

It should also be noted that Fredrick II followed for most of his life
a policy of neutrality and enlightenment.


Esthetics - it just plain looks cool.

Promise - this sort of ties in with Novelty and Mysticism. The advent
of teh jet fighter was a watershed in air combat. Properly developed,
with properly prepared pilots, and all of that occuring in a timely
manner, the Me 262, or any jet, would have had far-sweeping
consequences. For various reasons, the Germans were unable to get
things together before their entire system started falling apart.
They couldn't produce engines, they couldn't tranistion pilots, and
they couldn't support airplanes in the field by the time the 262
became operational. The Germans were, on the best day they ever had
(for jets) able to put about 60 jets in the air. These were facing
over 3000 Allied bombers and fighters.

And for some, it's just plain racism/nationalism - It was German, and
therefore it had to be better/more advanced/superduper.


I think you've gotten carried away with anti german stereotypes and a
bit of ' "Honi Soit" i.e. my triumphalism and nationalism good, yours
bad.'

"Eunometic" wrote in message
om...
(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 werent his hosts, he was flying Meteors for
Argentina at the time.

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.


Hence the Vampire, Mig-15 etc


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.

Not a hope without a complete redesign. The Me-262 had
severe problems with compressibility.

Keith




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If the -262 had survived this long it probably would have been a bit
better than it was in 1945, too. The last time a flew a T-33 was 1971,

Ah, but it didn't survive, and the P-80/T-33 did. Given that the
Russians could and did build an exact copy of the B-29, why didn't
they replicate the 262 if it was so exceptional (as opposed to looking
great)?

That the P-80/T-33 is *still operational* with several air forces
suggests that it was a truly remarkable airplane. Never mind
turbojets--how many airplanes are operational 60 years after first
flight? I believe that the last Super Cubs were surplussed a year or
two ago by the Israelis. I suppose a few air forces are still flying
the DC-3/C-47?


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:58:52 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

We could have pushed the F-80 into service
sooner, if we had needed to, but we didn't need to.

It was also completely useless to a nation on the offense, given the
range of 1945 turbojets. The British found employment for the Meteor
shooting down V-1s. They based a few in France toward the end of the
war, but I suspect that was mostly anxiety to get it deployed
"overseas".

The role of any of these planes in 1945 had to be as a bomber
interceptor. The U.S. didn't need a bomber interceptor in 1945; it
needed escort fighters, and that was a role the P-80 couldn't have
filled.

(Crikey, even now when turbojets/fans are more reliable than recips
ever were, I read of jet fighters being refueled over the base they
just took off from, in order to proceed toward the target. Aerial
refueling didn't exist as a practical matter during WWII.)

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:58:52 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

Snaking was
severe enough to prevent effective gun aiming at speeds above 400 mph
IAS.

Interesting. A major reason why the Bell P-59A (first flight August?
1942 wasn't developed as a fighter was its instability as a gun
platform.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:34:10 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

Esthetics - it just plain looks cool.

Surely the big item. I think it's fascinating that in order to get the
P-80 program off the ground, the USAAF toured air shows with the
Me-262. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel says that people were
just bowled over by the sight of a jet.

Yet the USAAF had plenty of P-59As to put on air shows! The added kick
of this being war booty doesn't in my mind suffice to explain the
difference between a P-59A and a Me-262, if all you want is the thang
to come whining over and trailing the stink of kerosene.

Nichts! It's the *look* of the thing! It's gorgeous. Apart from the
Zero, I can't think of a WWII fighter that looks the role better than
the 262. It looks like it was designed by an Italian design shop that
was tasked with creating the best-selling interceptor of all time:

THE 1945 STORMBIRD!
ALL NEW!
ALL OVER AGAIN!

It's industrial design at its very best--or Madison Avenue, whichever
you prefer.


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com