Luftwaffe pics to die for...

[ATI_7500]

Simply amazing!

http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/wwii/ ... age_01.htm

[|| Andy ||]

yup, the germans were the best aircraft designers in 1946...  :)

Good job they never used them  :o

[TacitBlue]

Good find. The BV 141 on page 3 simply blows my mind.

[beaky]

Good find. The BV 141 on page 3 simply blows my mind.

There are FS models of that one available... haven't DL'd it yet, but I think there's one here.
I've always been very inmpressed by that era of German aircraft design... how sad that we were all fighting when we could have been collaborating on ushering in the space age a little earlier!

[ozzy72]

Great link! Thanks Bj

[4_Series_Scania]

yup, the germans were the best aircraft designers in 1946...  :)

Good job they never used them  :o

Makes you wonder the outcome of WW2 if Hitler had waited 7 years and, THEN had the Battle of Britain, I don't think we'd have stood a chance. - Sadly.

[Hagar]

Those are very interesting photos.

the germans were the best aircraft designers in 1946...  

Not sure where you get 1946 from. All those projects were designed long before the end of WWII when aircraft production in Germany was stopped. The research data was used by the Allied countries on many of their post-WWII projects, especially jet aircraft.

[C]

Makes you wonder the outcome of WW2 if Hitler had waited 7 years and, THEN had the Battle of Britain, I don't think we'd have stood a chance. - Sadly.

Then again maybe his aircraft designers wouldn't have taken such desperate measures, not to mention the aircraft developed in the west, such as the Meteor, Vampire, Sea Fury (a proven match for even some 1950s fighters), the F-80 in the US, the Hornet, Martin Baker MB 5, not to mention aircraft that appeared in the UK about 1946/47 (DH108...)

[ATI_7500]

All those projects were designed long before the end of WWII when aircraft production in Germany was stopped.

Interestingly, the alliied bombing raids, as intense as the may have been, affected the german aircraft production only to a very small extent. The biggest problem was the lack of pilots, while the mass production continued until the last hour - literally!

If only the 262 had been put into service at the beginning of '44 - the airwar would have been nearly unwinnable for the allied airforces.

[Hagar]

If only the 262 had been put into service at the beginning of '44 - the airwar would have been nearly unwinnable for the allied airforces.

Ifs & buts again. It's very interesting to theorise after the event but who knows what effect this would have had. The engines weren't exactly reliable & their useful life was something like 10 hours or less. It had a very short range like all the early jets & would probably have been most effective as an interceptor against the US daylight raids. This would have made it very vulnerable when taking off & landing & there are instances of some actually being shot down by Allied fighters hanging around their bases for an opportunity to catch them. Others were destroyed on the ground by bombing or strafiing raids. Although designed as a fighter Hitler insisted the Me 262 be converted to carry bombs so it would probably never have been used for its original purpose anyway. Ifs & buts.

PS. There's an excellent article on the Me 262 here. http://www.vectorsite.net/avme262.html

The author's summing up.

The story that the Me-262 could have made a major difference in the war if not for Hitler's insistence that it be built as a fighter-bomber seems to exist in a fuzzy state between myth and fact. Most recent documents on the Me-262 suggest that the teething problems with the Jumo-004 engines were really the critical path for aircraft development, and though Hitler's insistence on development of the aircraft as a Jabo led to an bureaucratic fiasco, it doesn't seem to have made all that much difference in practice.

In fact, some authors have suggested that the idea of using the Me-262 in the "Jabo" role was not stupid at all. Hitler felt, with good reason in November 1943, that existing aircraft types could deal with Allied bombers. His major concern was to be able to deal with Allied amphibious landings on the beachhead where they were most vulnerable, and if there had been substantial quantities of jet bombers available that could have penetrated the thick fighter screen over the Normandy beachhead, they might have made all the difference.

Or maybe not. While I can outline the different possibilities, I have no stake in this particular controversy one way or another. History is not a controlled experiment, and the number of possible options to events is so open-ended that speculating what might have happened otherwise is possibly amusing but not very credible.

[C]

If only the 262 had been put into service at the beginning of '44 - the airwar would have been nearly unwinnable for the allied airforces.

As Doug says, until Jumo production couldn't keep up with engine attrition...

[|| Andy ||]

I would like to see someone attempt to create one of these beasts for airshows

[Hagar]

I would like to see someone attempt to create one of these beasts for airshows

If you mean the Me 262 two have just been rolled out. http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/stormbirdunveiledgw_1.htm

[C]

...and Tango Tango for the Messerschmitt Foundation in Germany is soon to make it's first flight. That's the convertible (two seater or single seater) one. The first has been flying for a while now

Here's the official website:

http://www.stormbirds.com

[|| Andy ||]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Is it comin over to the UK at all..  :'(