Me 262 query

Was’nt you whizzing around Duxford in a T33 on Sat was it?

Moi???

Moi??????

Me to know and you to surmise 😉

T

Pretending to be a jet pilot 😀

Thanks for the useful info to all esp. JDK. Sorry for delay in responding however have been away on ‘ops’ and not in front of a ‘puter.

Oh to have a crack at one of the replica’s!

Brgds

T

Was’nt you whizzing around Duxford in a T33 on Sat was it? 😀

What a pity, having to play with planes rather than MS boxes. Shame. 😉

Thanks for the useful info to all esp. JDK. Sorry for delay in responding however have been away on ‘ops’ and not in front of a ‘puter.

Oh to have a crack at one of the replica’s!

Brgds

T

Though I normally stear clear of the Luftwaffe mafia subjects, it’s good to help a pilot out of a spot… 😉

I’ve just laid hands on Hugh Morgan’s ‘Me-262 Stormbird Rising’ published by Osprey. (Nice to have the library back! 1855324083, 1994)

In it there’s a report of a RAE interigation of Gerd Lindner, Messerscmitt Test pilot. It’s a great report, but the key bits at a glance seem to be:

12. Maximum speed ever attained…was 1004kmh (600mph) at 4300 metres (13,000 ft) the angle of flight being between 20 and 25 degrees…

“35 Lindner stated that the Machmeter was not sucessful; he said the experiments with high speeds were made with 70 altimeters mounted in the fuselage and photographed automatically every half second. These altimeters were connected to chordwise holes in each mainplane. The true airspeed indicator would (be) checked by flying between two tall chimneys. The interpolation, after a test flight, of the altimeter readings, and those of the TAS indicator, enabled accurate determination to be made of the Mach number attained in flight.

36. Informant made numerous research dives in the Me262 up to a Mach number of 0.83 and a few up to Mach number 0.86…

…39. He thought it was possible to go to a higher Mach number, but he reckoned that it was more than flesh and blood could deliberately stand… (due to buffeting and stick forces)

…40… Pilots were told not to exceed a TAS of 950kph…

Hope that helps. I don’t much like typing book text in!

The conclusion of the US report of the comaritive trials with the P-80 were (in part):

“Despite a difference in gross weight of nearly 2,000lbs, Me262 T-2-711 was superior to the avarage P-80 in accelleration and speed, and aproxamately the same in climb performance…”

‘Cockpit’ by Nijboer & Patterson (Airlife, 184037067X, 1998 has a picture of the cockpit of the USAF Museum’s example. There’s no Machmeter indicated, but there are 6 blanking plates on the panel.

I’m sure someone must have those big fat 262 books that were published a few years ago?

Cheers!

there’s this story of a German pilot named Mutke who claimed to have been the first man to breach the sound barrier while flying a Me-262.
I do, however, regard this story as questionable – Mutke later deserted with a Me-262 and landed in Switzerland (yes – the aircraft now on display in Munich).
Over the years Mutke told so many stories that proved to be untrue, it wouldn’t surprise me if this particular tale would be more fiction than fact, too.

Martin

Hughes wanted to race it but the USAAF denied him permission, apparantly as they didn’t want the German jet to embarrass their own.

Dave

Isn’t the former Hughes Me-262 the one that Paul Allen now owns?

Hey Don,

I got my wires crossed a little. Howard Hughes received an Me-262 and was going to enter it into the air races against the P-80’s but was denied as not being sportsman like. Hughes didn’t actually fly it but this was the same one you mentioned.

TNZ

Tbirdman – about a week ago I picked up the latest Airpower mag which has an interesting article on the development of the 262 – I’ll have a flick through it for you.

As to TNZ’s comment – found this googling …

After the war, Me-262s that had fallen into Allied hands were evaluated by flight test groups, one of the best-known being a USAAF team named “Watson’s Whizzers”, led by Colonel Harold E. “Hal” Watson of USAAF Air Technical Intelligence. Watson’s pilots and ground crew managed to find intact Me-262s at the Lechfeld airstrip in Bavaria, and were assisted in their test flights by German ground crews familiar with the aircraft and even two English-speaking German test pilots, Ludwig Hofmann and Karl Baur.

The Me-262s were then shipped to the US on the Royal Navy “jeep” carrier HMS REAPER for further evaluation at Wright Field in Ohio. The tests there included a competitive fly-off against a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter that demonstrated the general superiority of the Me-262.

Airpower has a photo of an aircraft that was specially set-up for flight testing, including streamlining and a high-gloss finish. Might be the same one, I don’t know.

Didn’t Howard Hughes have one and flew it against the F-80 Shooting Star in the US just after the war ? Apparently it embarrassed the Lockheed aircraft…

TNZ