Reply With QuoteAgreed. Although quantity has a quality of its own..Originally Posted by Kunal Biswas
The Germans had superior weapons in the most of the fields but the numbers were quite a few.
So late in the war, all these 'wonder weapons' amounted to zilch anyway. Germany had lost access to Romanian oil fields and so had to rely absolutely on synthetic oils. I've seen an interview with Adolf Galland stating that it was much cheaper to simply walk into a new 262 after a sortie, than attempt to repair any damage on them incurred during a previous sortie.
In any case, they are cool concepts. I love looking at new pics of the 262 from the era. There used to be an art site somewhere on the net which featured concept art, renditions, of the planes that never made it to the skies. Brilliant art work.
Agreed. Although quantity has a quality of its own..
Another problem was that Me 163 pilots had to be highly skilled.
While the plane itself was a great design and very easy to fly, it required gliding skills that only professional glider pilots have.
You had to conserve energy and be able to judge how far you could go with your remaining altitude and obviously you had only one attempt for landing.
Such a set of skills was hard to find in the 1944 Luftwaffe.
While glider flying was (and still is) a very popular sport in Germany, it had of course languished since the beginning of the war.
And even a normal glider pilot was not used to a plane with such a bad glide ratio as the 163.
There was a special training glider with very short wings to get pilots used to how little time they would have to make decisions.
The "Stummelhabicht"
Do you thought about "Luftwaffe 46" ?
http://www.luft46.com/luftart.html
My flight instructor was a Me 163 pilot with one hot start. He came from the cargo gliders and had to undergo full fighter training before training on the Komet. He and his colleagues had some good stories to tell.
There is a functional glider only Me163 around these days.
If Germany had standardised on fighters and tanks for that matter instead of always going for the wonder weapons, things might indeed have turned out different.
The Me262 WOULD have been effective had it entered service 2 yrs earlier instead of Hitler insisting on it being a bomber, the axial flow engines though slightly more advanced then the British centrifugal flows were crippled by lack of quality alloys, meaning service life was measured in a few hours.
These are from Cosford, apparently this 163 shot down an RAF Lancaster.
You think the Me163 was a death trap how about the Ohka.
Last edited by Eoin666; 07-30-2012 at 07:27 AM.
There's a lot of argument for the fact that the "bomber only" decision didn't contribute much to the delay.
The 262s produced between the "bomber" decision and its reverse in Summer 1944 were not ready for combat.
The main reason for delay was a chroncial lack of resources in the early development between 1942 and 43.
Yes! Thank you!
There was one more,I think, too, but this was the one I was referring to.
Thanks again!
The bloody thing was more dangerous to the Germans than it was to the Allies.
You are welcome, Bauer_CTU!
Some pilots were exited about the options of the Me 163, like Rudolf Opitz:
“One day, our project officer’s Komet 163 was fueled up and ready to fly when three Me 109s came over the field in a single line formation. I was among 30 pilots watching from the ground. Späte took off and was immediately upon them; we all saw that he easily could have picked them off. They tried to come behind him, but with his extra power and agility, he was soon behind each of them. Everybody was terribly excited to see what you could do with the new plane.”
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew....ht/flight1.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p42t_lGht8M
The other reason being that all jet research was on the cutting edge of what could be done. Many delays were due to never-before-seen issues having to be overcome.
Lookie here, the original GoPro!
Last edited by He219; 07-31-2012 at 07:32 PM.
Posting Permissions
