Me 262 (or He 162) a waste of resources?

[T. A. Gardner]

"Sonderkommando Elbe" was not the first use of ramming (rammstoss in German). When the Germans attacked the Russians, ramming by Russian aircraft also occurred (taran in Russian).

One problem for the Me 262 was a lack of high temperature metals for the engines. The lower temperature metals meant the engines had a life of 22 hours before needing replacement. There was also the issue of micro-fracture in the turbine blades. This was solved through making them hollow and giving them a ceramic coating.

The coating was more like aluminum metal flame spray than a ceramic coating. That's not an exact analogy, but close enough. I've read about the process used, but can't recall the name of it in German to go find it again.

 

[edwest4]

F. J. Hartwig, B. W. Shelfin, and R. J. Jones, Preliminary investigation of a gas turbine with Sillimanite ceramic rotor blades. Natl. Advisory Comm. Aeronaut. Tech. Note No. 1399 (1947).

 

[T. A. Gardner]

F. J. Hartwig, B. W. Shelfin, and R. J. Jones, Preliminary investigation of a gas turbine with Sillimanite ceramic rotor blades. Natl. Advisory Comm. Aeronaut. Tech. Note No. 1399 (1947).

I'm not saying it could have been done, but the process I read about that was in use on the Jumo 004 was more like an aluminum flame spray using powdered metal.

 

[HoHun]

Hi T. A.,

This is the real rub here. The Me 262 was evolutionary, not revolutionary. It didn't change the dynamic of the air war but rather was simply a faster fighter plane that was going to be harder to counter.

For the record, does that mean you've stealthily given up on defending the untenable "self-defeating" label now?

With regard to the new label ... here's what Eric Brown had to say about German technology (28:24 min):

View: https://youtu.be/8sK0mZnBx94?t=1722


"I have flown almost all the World War TWo aircraft, and I rank it the most formidable aircraft of World War Two".

I don't understand why people some 80 years after the war still feel an emotional need to denigrate "enemy" equipment when that is completely at odds with the historic record of the respect these systems earned among their opponents.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Hood]

With regard to the "bad day", it's not suprising to see KG(J) 54 involved there - as Hajo Hermann in "Bewegtes Leben" points out, these were crewed mostly by bomber pilots who weren't trained as fighter pilots, and thought of attacking the US bombers in the way they had flown their bombers to attack surface ships. The deeper background of this was the opposition of the fighter pilot to Goering, which lead to a dominance of the bomber arm within the Luftwaffe, as guys like Peltz and Hermann were seen as politically more reliable than fighter pilots like Galland or Steinhoff (see Steinhoff, "In letzter Stunde").

Fair enough but III/JG7 were there too, so its not like all of them were bomber pilots. That does sound like an odd tactics, surely the Luftwaffe had fighter affiliation training for its bomber crews so that they knew what tactics fighters used against bombers and how to defend accordingly? Then they should have been able to apply that knowledge in reverse.

With regard to "Sonderkommando Elbe", I'm not sure it's a good idea to use this as a bench mark.

I wasn't using it as a bench mark as such other than an example of where the Me 262s were meant to tackle the fighter escort to allow piston fighters to close on the bombers. It didn't go well for either formation.

I believe there were a total of two YP-80A's in Italy, so they probably wouldn't have done much to calm down the Allies even had they been sent to England! The Meteor in 1944 had quite a few issues with regard to handling and performance that probably made it less than ideal to fight a Me 262.

(See http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/meteor/Meteor-CFE.pdf ... "The Meteor has an instability in yaw ("snaking"), which makes it unsuitable as a gun platform at operational speeds.")

Yes only two YP-80As this side of the pond. In many respects the P-80 was too late to make any contribution to the war. Yes the Meteor was not perfect (none of the early jets on either side were), the Meteor 4 prototype flew the day before VE Day, so again too late for much input into the war. But there was no urgency to press it into combat as a counter to the 262 or lifting the prohibition over flying over enemy-held territory. But again, fighter affiliation exercises with the USAAF in 1944 had led to the formulation of anti-jet tactics, including placing the fighter screen 5,000 ft above the bombers in an attempt to intercept the jets early in the dive. At this time clearly the Allied thinking was that jets would go for the bombers and not the fighters.

As far as the Me 262, the Americans viewed it as a big enough threat that they were compelled to attempt to build their own jet fighter. The Bell P-59 Airacomet was a failure. It was later used only for training. And this was emblematic of the American response to the appearance of significant new weapons fielded by the Germans. The American jet engine was based on the Whittle design, yet their engineers could not match the performance of the Me 262. A fact lost on critics.

The timings don't bare that out. The XP-59 programme began in January 1942 (the prototype flew just 10 months later which is quite impressive), so some 7 months before the 262 flew under jet power. 'Hap' Arnold had been shown Whittle's jet in April 1941 (the same month the piston-powered 262 V1 prototype flew) and by September had arranged examples of the engines and a production licence before the time the US had even entered the war. Hap knew the future was jets, the Tizard Mission offered jets to the US on a plate and they took it. No matter what the Germans developed, the Allies would have jet fighters. But the fact that the UK and USA had jet engines in 1941 still took until 1945-46 before viable jet fighters appeared would show that making the most of the technology was not easy. It's easy for critics to say "oh the RAF should have had Whittle fighters in 1941" or "the Luftwaffe should have had 262s in service in 1943" but actually things take time to develop well. Messerschmitt probably did a good job to get as far ahead as they did with the 163 and 262 at the same time. Given that most clean-sheet piston-engined projects begun in 1942 didn't result in in-service hardware before late 1945 or 1946 shows that the lead time is always the clincher to getting an aircraft into service - remember that the 262 programme began in 1939 so had a 2-year lead on Allied efforts which is why it came into service about a year sooner.
I would agree that the P-59A was a flop. But then Bell probably wasn't the best choice but their piston XP-59 had been cancelled in late 1941 so they had capacity. They wouldn't necessarily be the first choice as they had no real fighter pedigree and the P-39 and P-63 were lacklustre fighters. Same with Gloster, they had been biplane fighter specialists thrust into the jet age as they a good designer and spare capacity.
The RLM kept the jets to their two biggest manufacturers in the early days, Heinkel and Messerscmitt and arguably were wise to do so.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Hood,

Fair enough but III/JG7 were there too, so its not like all of them were bomber pilots. That does sound like an odd tactics, surely the Luftwaffe had fighter affiliation training for its bomber crews so that they knew what tactics fighters used against bombers and how to defend accordingly? Then they should have been able to apply that knowledge in reverse.

Considering that the Luftwaffe hadn't operate in the kind of large, escorted, formations (and in daylight) as typical for the USAAF, I suppose there wasn't much actual knowledge left. Hermann mentions that the bomber pilots weren't interested in manoevring combat, and even if one just wants to evade the escorts, I'd say manoevring was an important skill. Anecdotally, there's an account by Hartmann in Toliver/Constable's "Holt Hartmann vom Himmel" which describes Hartmann flying with an ex-bomber pilot as a wingman. That didn't turn out well, as despite all the tips he had been given before the sortie, the ex-bomber pilot tried to evade a pursuing Russian fighter in a wide, perfectly coordinated turn, which the Russian had no difficulty in following. Different ideas of what "turning hard" really means, I guess.

I wasn't using it as a bench mark as such other than an example of where the Me 262s were meant to tackle the fighter escort to allow piston fighters to close on the bombers. It didn't go well for either formation.

Ah, I see. According to Hajo Hermann, the pilots of the Sonderkommando Elbe were actually selected from the ranks of insufficiently trained pilots, as it was expected that the willingness to sacrifice their lives and their determination to bring down a bomber would make up for their lack of training. I would first have to read up on the specific action though to be able to comment in more detail. Do you happen to have a recommendation for a good source on that? Clearly, relying on Hermann alone is not going to give a full picture

But there was no urgency to press it into combat as a counter to the 262 or lifting the prohibition over flying over enemy-held territory.

I guess this is the kind of development you can't really press, anyway. The production rates of British jet engines were still fairly low, probably because they were still developing new and improved variants. Considering that it was clear that the war was coming to an end, it probably was a good call not to try something that could easily have backfired. I think the optimists expected the war would be over by christmas in 1944 - that was probably more realistic than the optimists in German who expected it to continue through 1946! ;-)

It's easy to say "oh the RAF should have had Whittle fighters in 1941" or "the Luftwaffe should have had 262s in service in 1943" but actually things take time to develop well. Messerschmitt probably did a good job to get as far ahead as they did with the 163 and 262 at the same time. Given that most clean-sheet piston-engined projects begun in 1942 didn't result in in-service hardware before late 1945 or 1946 shows that the lead time is always the clincher to getting an aircraft into service.

I totally agree. The difficulty of getting complex weapons systems into service is often understimated, and aero-engines are certainly among the really tough nuts to crack. I don't believe that any of the nations developing jet engines could have done much to get results significantly earlier than they did, either.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Hi T. A.,



For the record, does that mean you've stealthily given up on defending the untenable "self-defeating" label now?

With regard to the new label ... here's what Eric Brown had to say about German technology (28:24 min):

View: https://youtu.be/8sK0mZnBx94?t=1722


"I have flown almost all the World War TWo aircraft, and I rank it the most formidable aircraft of World War Two".

I don't understand why people some 80 years after the war still feel an emotional need to denigrate "enemy" equipment when that is completely at odds with the historic record of the respect these systems earned among their opponents.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Nope. It was the "most formidable" only until some other plane was put into production that was more formidable. In 1940 there was a "most formidable." In 1941, there was a "most formidable..."

That platitude is an irrelevancy to the Me 262 being a logistical nightmare with a very high accident rate.

 

[edwest4]

Nope. It was the "most formidable" only until some other plane was put into production that was more formidable. In 1940 there was a "most formidable." In 1941, there was a "most formidable..."

That platitude is an irrelevancy to the Me 262 being a logistical nightmare with a very high accident rate.

You are emotional and not prone to doing actual research. I think you have a need to denigrate "enemy" equipment.

 

[HoHun]

Hi T. A.,

In 1940 there was a "most formidable." In 1941, there was a "most formidable..."

Sorry, it's entirely childish to pretend you don't know how a superlative works.

Eric Brown's superlative was, "I rank it the most formidable aircraft of World War Two". His words, not mine. Greatly accomplished pilot too, you should look him up one day when you feel like doing research for a change.

That platitude is an irrelevancy to the Me 262 being a logistical nightmare with a very high accident rate.

Oh, platitudes are bad now? You're cracking me up, you haven't posted anything but platitudes so far! :-D

And coming from Eric Brown, it's not a platitude at all, but a summary. If you're interested in the details, his book "Wings of the Luftwaffe" has a chapter on the Me 262 ... all the stuff that lead to his verdict, "the most formidable aircraft of WW2".

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Me 262 was Wunderbar!

Or, maybe not so much. The Wehrmacht Boys are out in force.

View: https://youtu.be/U7naFflRAkE?si=EjszBlEDhWbHv6Ce

 

[Michel Van]

The Me 262 was not waste of resources.
but it came far to late in War, were literally run out of resources:
no metal, no petrol, no pilots

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Here's one simple proof of how poor the Me 262, as a system, was as deployed by the Germans:

Kommando Nowotny was formed in late November 1944 and assigned about 30 Me 262. Of those, 28 were lost either through enemy action, accidents, or write offs for maintenance issues. They unit shot down 24 planes and existed for just over a month.

If you look at the entire system, you have a plane that is horribly unreliable being flown by pilots with little or no time in training on the aircraft, even if they are very experienced on piston engine planes. The ground crew and maintenance personnel have little experience or training on jet aircraft as well. The result is an astronomical loss rate of aircraft for very little realized gain.

I would characterize it not so much as a waste of resources, but rather criminally poor management of resources.

By comparison, the US by November 1944 had been flying jets in the US--the P-59-- for nearly two years and in squadron strength for about six months. They had pilots training on jets and the differences in their flight characteristics, along with ground crew and maintenance personnel training on how to handle and maintain the planes proficiently. The intent was to give the USAAF a core of trained pilots and ground crew that could then be used to instruct and use future operational jets.

The ad hoc nature of the German attempt to put a jet into service magnified and exacerbated the problems and flaws of the Me 262 while Messerschmitt and Junkers were unable to work all the issues with the plane and engines out in large part due to war conditions.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Me 262, as a system, was as deployed by the Germans

So they weren’t shooting American planes out of the sky like they were target practice with few losses in return?

 

[HoHun]

Hi,

View: https://youtu.be/U7naFflRAkE?si=EjszBlEDhWbHv6Ce

Very interesting video, thanks for sharing the link!

Seems the Me 262's exchange ratio against Allied aircraft was roughly 1:1, if I paid proper attention.

The number I would like to know for comparison would be the exchange ratio of Luftwaffe piston engine fighters under the same circumstances, but it appears while many interesting figures were given in the video, this one wasn't available, or I missed it.

Still, seems like a very thoroughly researched video, judging from the description of the author's efforts and methodology!

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[T. A. Gardner]

So they weren’t shooting American planes out of the sky like they were target practice with few losses in return?

Pretty much. They could get kills, and likely at a higher rate than their piston engine counterparts could, but they weren't immune to being intercepted and shot down. The other problem is the poor reliability of the plane, and it isn't just engines. The hydraulics were poor, the nose wheel often collapsed on landing, etc. All of that adds to losses.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

likely at a higher rate than their piston engine counterparts

Or not

Check above video

 

[Bruno Anthony]

The number I would like to know for comparison would be the exchange ratio of Luftwaffe piston

I don’t remember if he did or didn’t but iirc he brought up how few sorties the Me262 were flying vs piston engine sorties.

There weren’t large numbers of jets up at once.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Hi,



Very interesting video, thanks for sharing the link!

Seems the Me 262's exchange ratio against Allied aircraft was roughly 1:1, if I paid proper attention.

The number I would like to know for comparison would be the exchange ratio of Luftwaffe piston engine fighters under the same circumstances, but it appears while many interesting figures were given in the video, this one wasn't available, or I missed it.

Still, seems like a very thoroughly researched video, judging from the description of the author's efforts and methodology!

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

I had never heard of Missing Aircrew Reports or that the Luftwaffe stopped following its claims rules by Feb 1945

 

[Bruno Anthony]

The video is going to twist a lot of testicles.

 

[Mr.T]

Folks overlook the very important aspect of early jet engines , they were far cheaper and easier to make than high-end piston engines.

A high end piston engine like DB-601 took well over 2000 manhours to make , Jumo 004 took only 375h and of lesser skilled laborers. Even with exotic materials needed jet engines' raw material cost was 1/3 that of piston engines ,

Jets like Jumo 004 were mass produced even with allied bombing , at one point they were looking at 1500 per month

As for Jumo 004 engine life , late war german DB601 engines were guaranteed for barely 100hours by the manufacturer, so jet engine was not that much of an outlier . Note short engine life was not only down to lack of high temp materials but also manufacturing optimisation to make them cheaper and easyer to make with less specialist tools.

Me262 was just too little to late. Whole concept is quite reasonable a heavy enough fighter to pack 4x 30mm cannons to deal with the bombers and fast enough to evade escorts .

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Folks overlook the very important aspect of early jet engines , they were far cheaper and easier to make than high-end piston engines.

A high end piston engine like DB-601 took well over 2000 manhours to make , Jumo 004 took only 375h and of lesser skilled laborers. Even with exotic materials needed jet engines' raw material cost was 1/3 that of piston engines ,

Jets like Jumo 004 were mass produced even with allied bombing , at one point they were looking at 1500 per month

As for Jumo 004 engine life , late war german DB601 engines were guaranteed for barely 100hours by the manufacturer, so jet engine was not that much of an outlier . Note short engine life was not only down to lack of high temp materials but also manufacturing optimisation to make them cheaper and easyer to make with less specialist tools.

Me262 was just too little to late. Whole concept is quite reasonable a heavy enough fighter to pack 4x 30mm cannons to deal with the bombers and fast enough to evade escorts .

A bigger problem than engines was that every flight of an Me 262 took roughly triple the fuel of an Me 109 or FW 190. Even if the fuel was easier to produce, the sheer volume needed with jets couldn't be produced by Germany by the beginning of 1944. The situation was so dire, that pilots were instructed to not start their engines and taxi to the runway but rather have the plane towed to it and start the engines only when in position to take off.

 

[Justo Miranda]

The enormous technological advances made by Germany in the development of swept wings and bipropellants rocket engines were one of the main causes of its failure on the battlefield. While the Allies developed low-quality weapons that were easy to mass-produce, German manufacturers suffered countless military and political interferences in search of the perfect weapon that is never available until the war is over. It was a huge mistake not to continue with the development of the centrifugal turbojet, while Germany spent enormous resources perfecting the axial turbojet and modifying the BMW so that it could run on diesel, the Allies already had operational turbojets powerful enough to power a single engine fighter with an internal engine.

The Me 262 was poorly designed, suffered from such serious compressibility problems that versions equipped with auxiliary rockets had to fly with the nose raised to avoid transonic speeds, the Me 163 killed more German pilots than the Allied fighters, the V-1 could not reach the speed for which it had been designed, due to the low quality of the wing manufacturing, and could be intercepted by Allied fighters, the V-2 was very spectacular but lacked a radio control system capable of attacking the British ports where the invasion force was concentrated, all German missile systems proved useless when Allied electronic technology was able to interfere with their guidance systems, when the Germans tried to use the superpanzers in Sicily they discovered that they were too wide to cross the streets of the Mediterranean villages.

If all these resources had been devoted to manufacturing Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter bombers, armed with Panzerblitz anti-tank rockets and flamethrowers, the Luftwaffe would have been able to stop the Red Army by causing a massacre, if those same planes had faced the Eighth Air Force armed with R4M air-to-air rockets, the American bombers would not have achieved the destruction of German industry and the Werhmatch would have had enough fuel to defend Normandy and to occupy Baku.

The stupid strategy of killing British civilians could only have been maintained to the end in a dictatorship run by a madman, on the contrary, the Allies concentrated as much as possible, manufacturing third-grade equipment, because second-rate equipment is never available in time and first-class equipment never makes it out of the laboratory.

The German defeat was only a matter of bad direction, the people who do not know how to choose their leaders have no future.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

One of the problems the Germans had with jet engines in general was simply lack of experience and technical information on gas turbine blade profiles. This was, in turn, due to a relatively limited internal steam turbine industry. The US and Britain had a big advantage in that field with plenty of experience in building ship turbines.

GE had one of the largest, if not the largest, gas turbine profile libraries in the world by 1940 with Sanford Moss and his team developing turbochargers for the aviation industry. In fact, when Moss was shown the Whittle jet engine he had a Duh! moment. He had been bench testing turbocharges by running hot gas through them. It was a turbojet in reverse if you will. This library made it easy for GE to get into jet engine design and quickly turn out decent working variants. On the other hand, Westinghouse quickly came out with a series of designs and prototypes but managerial incompetence and a quirky industrial set up ruined what could otherwise have been a lucrative field.

The British, likewise, had companies like Vickers with decades of experience in turbine blade design. They too could easily turn to such companies and get excellent results quickly. The British likely could have had a jet operational by the end of 1943 or early 44 if they hadn't handed production to Rover who diddled around with the design rather than fixing it early on and producing. It took a switch to Rolls Royce to get things moving but that lost them more than a year of production time.

For the Germans, the aviation industry had little access to the ship building industry and there really wasn't much crossover between the two. That meant aviation engine manufacturers were starting from nearly scratch to design their jet engine turbines. BMW and their 003 initially met with failure when their early engines were test flown. The Me 262 V1 flew for the first time on these engines. When the plane started making a shallow turn, the air flow shifted and both engines suffered compressor stalls. The prototype nearly crashed.

BMW then spent nearly two years fixing the problem and turned to Brown Boveri in Switzerland, one of the few sources for turbine blade profiles available to them, for help. The compressor had to be completely redesigned to fix the problem. Von Ohan at Henkel had the same issue. He got around it by adding a centrifugal compressor stage ahead of the axial compressor to make things easier. Both the 001 and 011 used this workaround.

 

[HoHun]

Hi,

I had never heard of Missing Aircrew Reports or that the Luftwaffe stopped following its claims rules by Feb 1945

"The Luftwaffe stopped following its claims rules" probably is not accurately phrased - my impression is that the process of confirmation, which even under "normal" wartime circumstances was not actually very quick, just took increasingly longer towards the end of the war, until it was abandoned altogether.

After WW2, historians then tried to fill the gaps in the list of confirmed claims by examing the surviving documentation and talking to surviving Luftwaffe personnel, and that added knowledge about unconfirmed claims to the historic record.

Of course, some of these unconfirmed claims might have been thrown out, some might have been reduced in number (for example if two attacking pilots claimed the same aircraft), yet others might have been recognized as valid kills but attributed to the Flak, etc.

The resulting number of confirmed kills thus almost certainly would have been lower than the number that, lacking this cross-checking process, but that only means the historians are dealing with raw data rather than bureaucratically "confirmed" data and have to do the cross-checking themselves - as the author of the above video has done.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[lastdingo]

The air war over the Reich has to be divided into five phases
- early
- RAF gloves off at night
- B-17 appear (daytime bombing over the Reich)
- P-51s appear, fighter support for B-17/B-24 all the way (Zerstörers fail as daytime interceptors)
- post- Big Week, German gasoline supply crushed by 90%

The Me 262 was available in the last phase when Bf 109 & Fw 190 had great difficulty reaching the bombers without much diversion and attrition by American fighters and gasoline was in short supply. Kerosene was also in short supply, but adding turbojet fighters to the gasoline-powered fighters mitigated the risk that aviation gasoline might become totally unavailable (only 3 factories for the necessary additives!) and it added to the available fuel pool.

This means turbine combat aircraft made much sense, so much that they'd have been a good choice even if their speed had been capped at 700 kph.

----------------------------------
All this being said, an aerodamically clean Bf 109 with DB605ASM engine (B4 fuel) AND R4/m rockets available in quantity (500+ operational) before May 1944 could have crushed the 8th air force bombing campaign.
An early adoption of double fuses for 88 mm (said to triple lethality over time-fused ones a.k.a. 200% increase, lesser multiplier for bigger 105 and 128 mm grenades) would have greatly reduced the 8th AF effectiveness by greatly reducing the bomber sorties quantity that could be flown. That is, unless escort fighters would deal a lot more and better with heavy AAA batteries (which became grand batteries of up to 16 guns for best use of scarce fire control means).

The real waste was thus to not find and apply these three simple technical fixes early IN ADDITION TO MOST OF WHAT WAS DONE

1. point detonation fuse with simple (pyrotechnic) self-destruct fuse for 88 and 105 mm Flak (tripled (88 mm) and doubled (105 mm) lethality of heavy AAA)
2. R4/m rocket and its launcher including the serial firing electric (easy mode hunting against B-17/B-24)
3. DB603 two-stage charger fused to DB605 engine block (full pressure altitude for DB605 raised from IIRC 5.8 km to 7.4 km)

Nothing would have stopped P-51s from dropping 500 lbs bombs on Cologne-Ruhr area and nearby Buna & synthetic oil industries (45° dive, drop from 10,000 ft avoiding 37 mm AAA entirely).

 

[Bruno Anthony]

“Me 262s were only shot down while landing or taking off and were invulnerable to bomber defensive fire.”

Or not.

View: https://youtu.be/prSwmH3Rjas?si=0G7K5X4kCp_mNg6V

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Unreliable Jumo jet engines would have been a problem if most destroyed Me262s actually survived that long. Apparently, they were kaput in combat by about 7 sorties. Figure 1 hr/sortie and the engines good for 20 hrs or 20 sorties.

View: https://youtu.be/prSwmH3Rjas?si=sS3XdZCmaAo68kyT

 

[Justo Miranda]

Unreliable Jumo jet engines would have been a problem if most destroyed Me262s actually survived that long. Apparently, they were kaput in combat by about 7 sorties. Figure 1 hr/sortie and the engines good for 20 hrs or 20 sorties.

View: https://youtu.be/prSwmH3Rjas?si=sS3XdZCmaAo68kyT

In summer 1943, Lyulka started the design of the S-18/VRD-3 eight-stage axial-flow turbojet, with 2.10 m length and 0.75 m of diameter.

The new engine was bench tested in August 1945 giving 1,268 kg static thrust, but their mass production was dismissed because steel turbine blades were not heat-resisting enough for use in operational airplanes, due to technological backwardness of Soviet metallurgy alloys.



In April-May 1945, twelve BMW 003 A turbojets were taken by Soviet troops at Breslau-Lower Silesian, one in Vienna-Hinterbruehl, blueprints and several engines at Basdorf-Zühlsdorf and eleven semi-destroyed turbojets at Heidfield.

Two Heinkel He 162 A-2 jet fighters, powered by BMW 003 A-1 engines, six HeS 8a and nine Jumo 004 B turbojets were captured at Heinkel-Vienna facilities.

Two BMW 003 E engines, along with a complete set of drawings, at Heinkel-Rostock factory.

One Arado Ar 234 C-3 bomber, powered by four BMW 003 A-1 engines, was seized in Damgarten, and their blueprints were found buried in the ground at the Arado-Brandenburg firm.

Several Jumo 004 B turbojets were captured at Brandis-Leipzig and ten at CKD-Prague works.

At Muldenstein Werke AG, Ascherleben FZA, Junkers-Ebersbach, Koethen MZK-Merseburg and Lindenthal-Leipzig underground facilities the Soviets captured enormous stocks of Jumo 004 B components and the technology for manufacturing and testing turbojets.

When some samples of Jumo 004, BMW 003 and HeS 8a engines were bench tested, in August 1945, by the TsIAM scientists, it was discovered that the construction of German turbojets required enormous technical and manufacturing resources that were not available in the USSR.

The high temperatures and high rotation speeds reached by the turbine blades required the use of austenitic steel alloys to withstand stresses caused by centrifugal forces.

The precision machining of these heat-resisting parts could only made possible by sophisticated machine tooling and highly skilled labor force.

Jumo 004 B-1 turbine blades were made of the 580ºC heat-resisting steel alloy Krupp-Essen Tinidur (C, Si, Mn, Ti, Ni, Cr, Fe).

The air compressor casing was made of Electron Magnesium alloy and the turbine discs were built in forged Molibdenum steel.

Other parts of the engine were made of aluminized anti-corrosion mild steel. To obtain this material the Germans had developed the manufacturing process called Aluminitieren.

It was also necessary to develop a new procedure for welding the solid turbine blades, the WMF atomic hydrogen welding process.

To increase the life of the turbine Junkers, they tried making air-cooled hollow blades, but the Tinidur sheet proved unsuitable for welding.

A new manufacturing process was developed by William Prym-Stolberg using Degussa Flussmetal (85% Ag, 15% Mn), Silma solder and Lithium fluoride at 1,000 ºC.

In August 1944 production of hollow blades started at Prym-Zweiffall factory and the whole project was classified secret.

The main Junkers plant at Dessau was heavily bombed in late 1943 and the Jumo 004 B-2 production was taken over by Köthen and Muldenstein satellite factories in August 1944.

When the Nickel became extremely scarce in the Reich, after their supply lines of Finnish ore were cut off, Krupp-Essen developed the heat-resisting alloy known as Cromadur (Mn, Cr, V, Si, C, Fe). It was easy to weld, and it was used for the manufacture of the Jumo 004 B-4 air-cooled hollow blades.

Jumo 004 was developed from the beginning to run on diesel oil, but the BMW 003 availability suffered delays when converted to diesel and the BMW-Bramo’s Spandau plant was bombed in 1943.

By August 1944 it was finally ready for mass production, under SS control, in underground dispersed sites of SS-Kraftfahrttechnischen Versuchsanstalt-Oranienburg, Eisenach, Zühlsdorf, Nordhausen, Wittringen and Stassfurt.

The BMW 003 air compressor forged blades were of Normen Nº 3510 Magnesium alloy and the compressor discs of Normen Nº 3115 Duralumin.

The turbine blades were made of Sicromal 10 heat-resisting steel (Cr, Al, Si, C, Fe), FBD Chrome-Nickel steel (Cr, Ni, Mo, Ta-Nb, Si, C, Fe) and FCMD steel (Cr, Mn, Mo, Nb, Si, V, C, Fe).

The turbine discs were made of steel alloy (Mn, Cr, Mo, Si, C, Fe) and the cooling insert of the blades of WMF Remanit 1880S Chrome-Nickel steel.

Other parts of the engine had undergone an anti-corrosion treatment, based on Aluminum lacquer paint, developed by Zarges-Weilheim.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The Focke-Wulf Fw 190C were never mass produced, with only 12 prototypes ever built.

The initial tests made with the V13, equipped with a DB 603 A and a 10.5 m span wing, showed excellent performance over 33.000 ft, although the turbo-supercharger intended for the C series was not yet fitted at this stage.

The V18/U2, fitted with a new 12.30 m. span wing, four bladed propeller and powered by one of the first Hirth TK 11 turbochargers, was flight tested on November 19, 1944.

The problem the Germans had was two-fold: First, the turbochargers they had were few in number and almost certainly benefited in great part from captured US examples. This along with a lack of suitable high temperature materials made all the exhaust ducting and sealing of systems nearly impossible to manage. It wasn't as if the Germans didn't know about or understand turbocharger technology, but that the US (GE and Sanford Moss) had taken it to a level far beyond anyone else.

https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/100-years-sanford-moss-turbocharging/

Air Born: How A Secret World War I Project Launched GE's Aviation Business | GE News

Air Born: How A Secret World War I Project Launched GE's Aviation Business

www.ge.com

His designs and their military use were obvious to the US military and were classified a secret well into WW 2. For example, when the British purchasing commission ordered Lockheed P-38's as the Model 422, theirs were to be built without turbochargers for that exact reason.

The shortage of raw materials in Germany meant it was not possible to produce a suitably heat-resistant alloy before the war ended. The turbo-superchargers themselves worked well but the pipes of engine-exhaust gases were unable to withstand the high temperatures.

That and the Germans hadn't invented some of them or their manufacture was restricted by allowed monopoly laws. That latter affected many industries in Germany and often had a crippling effect on industry. Some examples:

Only Krupp's subsidiary Hartzmetallzentral was licensed to produce tungsten carbide. They tightly controlled its supply to any other company.
Akkumulatoren Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft Berlin-Hagen was the sole factory in Germany producing U-boat batteries. Imagine if the British (Allies) had actually figured that out and bombed the snot out of it repeatedly. That could have put an end to the whole U-boat campaign! Yes, the company opened additional factories during the war, but remained the sole producer as a monopoly.
Tego glue. One manufacturer and the factory got bombed. No more Ta 154...

The General Electric turbo-supercharger was a product that required enormous technical and manufacturing resources that were not available in Japan. The high temperatures reached by exhaust gas and the high rotation speeds of turbines (26,000 rpm) required the use of austenitic stainless steel chrome-molibdenum alloys and the development of work-hardening techniques that enabled the turbo-charger to withstand stresses caused by centrifugal forces. The precission machining of turbines and impellers could only be made possible by sophisticated machine tools and surplus of raw materials.

It was also the product of roughly two decades of experimentation, testing, and improvement. GE and Sanford Moss kept at developing turbochargers until they got it right. Everybody else, pretty much, were late comers to that game and were trying to duplicate something that would take years and years of work to match.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Flying trials with the Messerschmitt Me 262 V2 prototype were conducted at the end of 1942. The test programme included high-altitude combat revealing unexpected compressibility effects during high-speed dives between 7,600 and 5,500 m. The Me 262 had been designed in 1940, before the aerodynamicists discovered the destructive effects associated with the transonic flux. The turbulent airflow generated in the junction between the engine nacelles and the wing undersurface generated some tailplane buffeting and elevator flutter.

Like its predecessors, Bf 110 and Me 210, the Me 262 proved to be an easy prey in dogfight against the single-engine Allied fighters, demonstrating the correctness of the Latin sentence errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum. It was also expensive, requiring a lot of strategic materials during its construction and thrice man-hours that a standard Bf 109 G required. What the Luftwaffe needed in 1943 was a single-engine air-superiority jet fighter to replace the old ‘0-nine’, the only successful fighter built by the firm, whose basic design dated back to 1934.

Early in 1943, the Technisches Amt (RLM Technical Office) asked Messerschmitt if the Bf 109 G could be adapted to take one Jumo 004 turbojet. The answer was negative.

In fact, the firm had all the necessary resources to comply with the RLM requirement: using the wing of the Me 209 and the nosewheel of the Me 309, it would only have been necessary to design a new central wing section so that the attachment points of the undercarriage would not interfere with the jet exhaust. But the Sofortprogramm (interim solution) proposed by the RLM was contrary to the plans of Messerschmitt who at that time had already decided to continue the development of the Me 262.

 

[Mr.T]

Flying trials with the Messerschmitt Me 262 V2 prototype were conducted at the end of 1942. The test programme included high-altitude combat revealing unexpected compressibility effects during high-speed dives between 7,600 and 5,500 m. The Me 262 had been designed in 1940, before the aerodynamicists discovered the destructive effects associated with the transonic flux. The turbulent airflow generated in the junction between the engine nacelles and the wing undersurface generated some tailplane buffeting and elevator flutter.

Like its predecessors, Bf 110 and Me 210, the Me 262 proved to be an easy prey in dogfight against the single-engine Allied fighters, demonstrating the correctness of the Latin sentence errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum. It was also expensive, requiring a lot of strategic materials during its construction and thrice man-hours that a standard Bf 109 G required. What the Luftwaffe needed in 1943 was a single-engine air-superiority jet fighter to replace the old ‘0-nine’, the only successful fighter built by the firm, whose basic design dated back to 1934.

Early in 1943, the Technisches Amt (RLM Technical Office) asked Messerschmitt if the Bf 109 G could be adapted to take one Jumo 004 turbojet. The answer was negative.

In fact, the firm had all the necessary resources to comply with the RLM requirement: using the wing of the Me 209 and the nosewheel of the Me 309, it would only have been necessary to design a new central wing section so that the attachment points of the undercarriage would not interfere with the jet exhaust. But the Sofortprogramm (interim solution) proposed by the RLM was contrary to the plans of Messerschmitt who at that time had already decided to continue the development of the Me 262.

Dogfights is not where Me-262 was at , it was meant to take down bombers , besides most fighters lost in air combat never saw it coming, dogfight was not as important as movies make it out . Me-262 was killed on the ground or near the ground. Rare occasions its was jumped from higher altitudes are recorded as near mythological happenings. Also Me-262 pilots were target focused on the bombers, cutting into their situational awareness

Germany was running out of trained pilots not just resources and no super jet could make up for that.
Bf-109 might not have been the greatest fighter , particulary given the high accident rates ,but it was kept competitive right to the end.

Just to illustrate the accident part of the war: US which had zero domestic threat and all the time in the world to train pilots and make planes.In all practicality peace time environment.

The U.S.manufactured 300,000 airplanes ,lost 65,164 planes during the war, but only 22,948 in combat. There were 21,583 lost due to accidents in the U.S., and another 20,633 lost in accidents overseas.The U.S. suffered 52,173 aircrew combat losses. But another 25,844 died in accidents.15,000 died in aircrew training in the continental U.S.

Many more planes were lost due to pilot error or mechanical failure than were shot down by the enemy ,dogfights would not even make it into stats , is more or less glorified stat for propaganda purposes at the time .

 

[Bruno Anthony]

Rare occasions its was jumped high are recorded as near mythological happenings

Bull.

View: https://youtu.be/prSwmH3Rjas?si=c62VHhjAN8iRlIXV

 

[Justo Miranda]

Dogfights is not where Me-262 was at , it was meant to take down bombers , besides most fighters lost in air combat never saw it coming, dogfight was not as important as movies make it out . Me-262 was killed on the ground or near the ground. Rare occasions its was jumped high are recorded as near mythological happenings. Germany was running out of trained pilots not just resources and no super jet could make up for that.
Bf-109 might not have been the greatest fighter , particulary given the high accident rates ,but it was kept competitive right to the end.

Just to illustrate the accident part of the war: US which had zero domestic threat and all the time in the world to train pilots and make planes.In all practicality peace time environment.

The U.S.manufactured 300,000 airplanes ,lost 65,164 planes during the war, but only 22,948 in combat. There were 21,583 lost due to accidents in the U.S., and another 20,633 lost in accidents overseas.The U.S. suffered 52,173 aircrew combat losses. But another 25,844 died in accidents.15,000 died in aircrew training in the continental U.S.

Many more planes were lost due to pilot error or mechanical failure than were shot down by the enemy ,dogfights would not even make it into stats , is more or less glorified stat for propaganda purposes at the time .

Your arguments about losses support my theory that the German defeat was mainly caused by the excess quality of its technological products. The large production series of second-class machines, manufactured and developed over a few months, gave the Allies victory. They simply crushed the enemy using large numbers.

 

[Mr.T]

Your arguments about losses support my theory that the German defeat was mainly caused by the excess quality of its technological products. The large production series of second-class machines, manufactured and developed over a few months, gave the Allies victory. They simply crushed the enemy using large numbers.

While in late war they dabled in all sorts of projects ,still two fighters made mayority , and of all late war projects Me-262 was by far the most numerous. Piston twin engine fighters and the Me163 were bigger failures.
Also note that German jets started early Arado Ar-234 prototype was constructed in early 1941long before they got engines for it. It seems just as long as war was going well ,there was not much impetus for accelerated development so mostly political descisions.

Manufacturing capacity of Axis vs Alies was never even remotely close.
The US produced 324,750 aircraft, the Soviet Union 157,261, and the UK 131,549, Germany produced a total of 119,371 aircraft, Japan produced a total of 85,611 aircraft

 

[Nik]

"Me262 was just too little to late"

An analogy with tanks ??
IIRC, the Germans were horrified by encounters with Russian T-34 and KV-1. As I understand it, they expected the Russians to field even bigger and beefier tanks the following year. Hence, 'mad scramble', from which the initially flawed 'Tiger' and superb 'King Tiger' emerged.

Instead, the Russians simply fielded more and yet more T-34 tanks: Quantity has quality all of its own...
Snag was though Tigers easily out-gunned a-T-34, or even four or five, there were simply too few Tigers compared to the swarm of T-34. Worse, Tigers' astonishing thirst meant logistics, logistics, logistics bit them in the butt. Didn't most of the Tiger losses come from throwing a track, running out of fuel / ammunition etc, with being 'mobbed', flanked their Achilles Heel ?

IIRC, there were rueful comparisons with how tropical 'Army Ants' may make a meal of even the most deadly scorpion: Rough on the stung ants, but eventually the scorpion runs out of poison and/or limbs...

The Germans needed 'many' of the 'medium' Panthers, which were individually a match for a T-34, longer ranged than a Tiger, better for infantry support. They got far too few, and those too late...

And, yes, between too few Tigers and too many T-34, the Germans never got to those oil-fields which would have, however temporarily, resolved their 'Gordian Knot' of fuel shortage...

Wrong forum to explore if, instead of Tigers, lots more 'Tank Killers', the small, 'casemate' types, operating beside 'many' Panthers, might have made a significant difference.

Back on topic, I am still amazed how the German aircraft and tank designers 'got so stuck'. Yes, yes, the Allies had a zoo of 'Oopsies', but enough parallel programs to get by...