Russian Lend lease museum

[wilhelm]

Yes that was very generous of you chaps, everyone was having such difficulty getting the rubbish ex-German jets to work.

Of course you also gave the tech to the US...

Just a correction.

The German turbojets were not rubbish. They were indeed conceptually more advanced than the British centrifugal turbojets, as witnessed by the layout of engines today.


What the Germans did have a problem with was supply of adequate metal alloys and certain steel supplies in the second part of the war, which forced them to use less suitable materials in some of the "hot-stream" components. The production versions had to use mild steel protected by an aluminium alloy coating, instead of alloys which incorporated nickel, cobalt, and molybdenum.
Some interesting side effects of being forced to use inferior materials was pioneering interesting things such as hollow turbine blades cooled by air bled from the engine.

[TheKiwi]

No-one post war was able to make German jets work - not even when they had access to better quality materials. See for example both the Czech and Soviet attempts which failed miserably.

There is a difference between having some interesting concepts that can lead to something better and actually making something that was good. The British were perfectly aware of the theoretical benefits of the German layout but went for the smarter "get it working and reliable today" approach that characterised Allied war machines. You will note that post war the Mk.III Meteor with a very slight airframe adjustment and modified versions of its wartime jets was doing over 100 km/h faster than the Me-262!

[wilhelm]

No-one post war was able to make German jets work - not even when they had access to better quality materials. See for example both the Czech and Soviet attempts which failed miserably.

There is a difference between having some interesting concepts that can lead to something better and actually making something that was good. The British were perfectly aware of the theoretical benefits of the German layout but went for the smarter "get it working and reliable today" approach that characterised Allied war machines. You will note that post war the Mk.III Meteor with a very slight airframe adjustment and modified versions of its wartime jets was doing over 100 km/h faster than the Me-262!

Again, to correct some misconceptions.

The BMW 003 was produced postwar by the Soviets at the GAZ 466 factory as the RD-20. These were placed in a twin-installation in the Mig-9, of which over 600 were built.
The Jumo 004 was produced postwar as the RD-10, and was used to power the Yak-15 fighter, of which 280 were produced.
It was also used in the Yak-17, of which 430 were built.

The HeS 30 was an early German centrifugal engine from 1939, which ran in 1942 due to moving production, that exceeded British centrifugal engines that came later. It had a better thrust to weight ratio and specific fuel consumption, figures indeed that were not exceeded anywhere until 1947. It was decided to concentrate on axial engines. This decision was the technically correct one at the time, as nobody could see the future, and predict materials shortages.

The French ATAR series of engines, used to this day in fighters, is firmly derived from Herman Ostrich's BMW 003.

It's not helpful to use a postwar Meteor doing 100km/h faster than an operational ME-262 from a few years earlier produced in a chaotic environment as an example.

In 1946, Meteor EE549 went at 991km/h. This was specially prepared and cleaned up.
As a fair comparison, the 560mph (900km/h) speed for operational Me-262's was a service speed limitation.
There were tweaked and cleaned up Me-262's that went well beyond this, with V9 acheiving around 975km/h a few years before that postwar Meteor speed.

[TheKiwi]

Production does not equal success. Note (again) that it was the Nene engine (British) that went into the Mig-15, most certainly and far and away the best of the post war Soviet early jets. A run of just 600 for the Mig-9 (which was regarded as having crappy engines) shows just how poorly the engines performed- especially compared to the Mig-15 which had over 10,000 produced.


Frankly the "ZOMFG Nazi Super Science men are our superiors" gets a little tedious.

[wilhelm]

Production does not equal success. Note (again) that it was the Nene engine (British) that went into the Mig-15, most certainly and far and away the best of the post war Soviet early jets. A run of just 600 for the Mig-9 (which was regarded as having crappy engines) shows just how poorly the engines performed- especially compared to the Mig-15 which had over 10,000 produced.


Frankly the "ZOMFG Nazi Super Science men are our superiors" gets a little tedious.

Your last sentence makes no sense. Why would you introduce that into this discussion? It doesn't help at all, and smacks of deflection.

You are being selective in your replies.
Just taking the production of the Soviets into the equation, you are looking at 2000+ German engines produced post-war.
The French ATAR is an enlarged BMW 003, using the latter as it's origin, with added tweaks as jet engine technology developed. It's father is in fact the same designer. This powered a host of aircraft, some of which are still in frontline service today. It was produced to the tune of thousands.
Naturally the Nene was produced in massive numbers - it was utilized by the victors, and had a stable and continuous development path.

You claimed that nobody could get the German jet engines to work. You claimed they were rubbish.
You were wrong.

The circumstances behind their production, and examples posted in my replies above illustrate this.

[TakeIt]

Production does not equal success. Note (again) that it was the Nene engine (British) that went into the Mig-15, most certainly and far and away the best of the post war Soviet early jets.

A really strange logical chain. MiG-9 as well as Yak-15 were tested and accepted as military fighters. And as such were successfull designes, of course with limitations imposed by contemporary technology. MiG-15 represented a leap forward, thus needed other engine with higher thrust.

A run of just 600 for the Mig-9 (which was regarded as having crappy engines) shows just how poorly the engines performed- especially compared to the Mig-15 which had over 10,000 produced.

You are making incorrect conclusion from a singled out numbers excluding all other circumstances. Development at that time was proggressing at a very high pace thus things were getting obsolete very fast . MiG-9 and Mig-15 were only 8 month apart. Considering higher perfomance achieved by MiG-15 in was natural to limit MiG-9 production. But in no way numbers of planes built supports the argument about poor engines.

[LineDoggie]

"It is now said that the Allies never helped us . . . However, one cannot deny that the Americans gave us so much material, without which we could not have formed our reserves and could not have continued the war . . . we had no explosives and powder. There was none to equip rifle bullets. The Americans actually came to our assistance with powder and explosives. And how much sheet steel did they give us. We really could not have quickly put right our production of tanks if the Americans had not helped with steel. And today it seems as though we had all this ourselves in abundance."

Marshall Zhukov quoted from :

'The Role of Lend-Lease in Soviet Military
Efforts, 1941-1945' by BORIS V. SOKOLOV

[LineDoggie]

Besides Lend lease the US and Commonwealth tractor and rail supply allowed USSR utility industry to focus on plugging it's truck gap. There was very little acknowledgment of the human element of lend lease which basically took over the management of Soviet factories in same areas and got them producing.

AMO vehicles - Moscow plant - assistance through Brandt.
GAZ vehicles - Molotov Nr. 1, Gorky plant - assistance through Austin and Ford.
GAZ vehicles - Nizhni-Novgorod plant - assistance through Austin and Ford.
YAZ vehicles - Yaroslav plant - assistance through Hercules.
ZIS vehicles - Kuznetsk plant - assistance through Autocar and Brandt.

92% of the Rolling stock, Locomotives and Track used by the Soviets during the war was US and UK provided

Machine tools, specifically finishing tools accounted for upwards of 40% the USSR used.