British v. German jet engines (Pete Stickeny)

In article ,
Cub Driver writes:
On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 06:44:27 -0400, Cub Driver
wrote:

two Arado Blitzs

Make that four. Two of them went to the navy.

It seems they almost never flew the Blitz. The tires were so bad they
blew at inopportune moments.

The other continual problem with all the German war trophies was the
brakes. One pilot wrecked an Me-262 at Philadelphia? when he came in a
bit hot, landed long, and couldn't brake to a stop before running off
the end into the ditch.

One of the things the Americans loved about the 262 was its modular
construction. Most bad landings could be salvaged by bringing in a new
nose or wing. (The front landing gear was weak, evidently, and they
collapsed a couple of them.) The Philadelphia? (it was in PA anyhow)
crash couldn't be salvaged, however.

Dan, you might want to check out the Defence Technical Information
Center site at:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/

Documant ADA800524.PDF is the final report of the flight evaluation of
Me 262s conducted by the USAAF Air Technical Intelligence Branch.

Some of the high points: 2 aircraft tested (T-2-711 and T-2-4012)
711 flew 12 flights for a total of 10 Hrs 40 Min, 4012 made 8 flights
for 4 Hrs 40 Min. Five engine changes were required for 711, and four
on 4012. A double engine failure resulted in the loss of 711 (Sp, I
guess, you _could_ make a case for 7 engine changes being required),
with the pilot bailing out successfully. Testing was halted on 4012
after 2 single-engine landings due to engine failure in flight.
It was determined that the benefits of further testing did not justify
the risks. (And they were running out of engines.) I quoted the
comparative handling characteristics and performance with the F-80A
last night. The systems abard teh aircraft were considered generally
satisfactory, with the exception of dismal brakes.

Note that they felt no need to conduct specific single-engine testing
- they ended up with plenty of single-engine flight time anyway.

And yes, the engine failure rate was a tad high. This was due in
large part to teh USAAF not recovering the engine logs with the
engines. (They tended to get lost in the Surrender Shuffle or
detroyed) This meant they had no way of knowing how close a
particular engine was to being close to a critical point in its
lifetime.

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