I saw film and a report/programme on the flying saucer german VTOL. It was also tested by Canada but died a death, probably because it was unstable.
Nice sites 2nd of Foot. 
By any chance do you know the name of the documentary? :?
No but it was mostly about an east German who said the Russians and western nations had stolen his idea and he had managed to get it to fly.
Really… kind of like the Germans with their HO-IX and the American B-2 Spirit? :o
Less than you might think. The V-2 had surprisingly little in common with later rockets (remeber from the V-2 to space took around 13 years and a hell of a lot of work). As for the “Silverbird” aircraft you seem to be referring to, that was never more than a pipe dream and even with modern engineering techniques looks horribly impractical. Back then it was a complete joke.
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Im not sure about how much the V-2 impacted the space program, but after the war the Americans took allot of German scientists with some knowledge in rockets and stuff. Im I wrong to say that they contributed a great deal to the space program?
Those scientists did contribute a lot to the US space programme. However, the US had huge numbers of home-grown engineers working on it too, and without them wouldn’t have got anywhere - the task is just too vast. It is also worth noting that the Russians got very few of the V-2 team - and beat the US into space.
i watch a documtary video about VTOL of german during world war 2. is it true the german did make a prototype but never use it in war?
Well, I’m not going to argue with you for the sake of arguing pdf but I must say you are quite prejudiced against the German aero designers.
1st Tank did not design the Ta 183. Hans Multhopp did and the exact design seen in a hand thrown glider is from the mid 30s. The Pulqui was not abandoned by Argentina because of its performance. It was because they got a huge batch of F-86s from the US for free. Why produce your own costly aircraft when you get free top notch fighters in the Sabre?
Swept wings is by far not the only feature that can be directly attributed to the Germans You must not know that Alexander Lippisch is the father of tail-less aircraft and the delta platform. He designed the Me 163 not Willy Messerschmitt. I’m sorry but every delta of the postwar era is trace-able to his pioneering and many design layouts which have been copied since his first flying craft of 1925.
Most designers of the 1930s figured forward swept wings into designs to correct certain stability issues at certain speeds. The more “modern?” Coke bottle fuselage for airflow was seen in German designs. Ramjet/turbines were tested and used in many designs that led the way for the SR 71. The empannage lifting body used in the forward section of the SR 71 is a direct copy of something Werner von Braun did during the war. The burying of engines and the use of composites by the Germans all led to stealth technology of today. VTOL, STOVL and STOL was all German pioneered in WW 2. Ultra high altitude recon aircraft were developed that achieved altitudes that only the clonish U-2 would later. The same plane pioneered a capsule-type crew module cabin that would separate from the aircraft if needed. Wire-guided air-to-air missiles were used by the Me 262s. Other air-to-ground, anti-shipping missiles, guided bombs, and wire guided anti-armor rockets were used. They invented SAMs. Direct port fuel injection was well proven on German piston engines while the Allies used carbs. The ejection seat was in used in Germany. The list goes on.
The V-2 (actually the A-4 in German designation) was one example of an offensive rocket. Smaller Dornier rockets were fired from U-boats under water- a 1st. Encapsulated A-4s were launched at sea from U-boats in tests. The A-9/A-10 project was a quite feasible an simple multi-stage ICBM that could have reasched the wast coast of the US. Obviously this was far ahead of any Allied thinkers. The concept was directly tested at White Sands in the late 40s using a Wac Corporal and an A-4 rocket. It worked and led the way for multistage rocketry we take for granted today.
Eugene Sangers Silverbird was a prelude to the space shuttle. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t built. What matters is that German’s had an aerospace mindset long before anyone else and they worked with the Allies to that end.
German jets were evolving. While they “only” lasted 20 or less hours a Merlin was overhauled at 200 hours but all engines were pulled immediately if they’d used war emergency power. It didn’t matter anyway since they had enough engines and labor to rebuild them as needed. And when they ran they ran circles around anything with a prop. All the 2nd generation jets from Junkers, Heinkel and BMW were far better than the Jumo 004. No matter what anyone thinks of them they were dierectly copied by the Soviets! They did work! I don’t know where you read or heard they didn’t but the actual Germans that developed the originals continued their development for the Russians in Russia. Their counterparts in the west worked for Pratt & Whitney, General Electric and Rolls Royce.
The NK-12M was probably the most powerful turbo-prop ever and it was based on the Jumo 012/022 and built by BMW turbine engineers in 1946 Russia.
To dismiss all the German turbines out of hand as dead-ends is absurd. They laid the groundwork for many that we have today.
We got back onto the Continent by our fingernails on D-Day. Any small variation to the negative could have spelled disaster. How long would we have needed to regroup and go at France again if we’d be repulsed? A year at least. It’s a very plausible and widely accepted alternative amongst historians.
So why is it seen by you as so impossible that if Me 262 prototypes that were tested in 1941 had been given a green light for production would have not been with units by as early as the end of 1942? As it was when the call came to Willy Messerschmitt from the Reichsluftahrtministerium on June 2, 1943 the plane was delivered to squadrons in August 1944. But most were fitted out as bombers as per Hitler! He gave the go ahead in October 1944 for full fledged fighter production and a total of 1,433 machines were completed by May 1945.
It is very clear that if 262s could have been delivered to squadrons a year earlier. That is not a stretch of the imagination. Very do-able. In September 1943 th Mustang was months away to be seen in numbers. So a minor decision by a madman could have prolonged the war and cost untold lives.
Schweinfurt and other raids in late 1943 cost scores of of B-24 and B-17s and nearly put an end to US daylight bombing. As it was 50% of all bombs missed their targets. How bad would the percentage have been if the yanks had been skulking about in darkness along with the RAF I wonder?
The fact is that many of the German aero desigers and engineers worked for Allied nations, and Russia, after the war and were instrumental in the development of many, many aircraft we all are familiar with. They worked for every aircraft company in BG and the US.
I have personally interviewed General Galland, Rall, Steinhoff and other 262 pilots and know the 262 was a superior combat aircraft. How it would have faired against the Meteor is an interesting question. Galland flew later model Meteors and concluded the 262 was better in manevering but the engines of at the 1950 Meteor was better than the Jumo 004s. Was it really in 1945?
Next is an article I had published some years ago regarding the influence of just some better known planes by the Germans
THE 2ND JETS
The world’s first jets were born from German war technology and stumbled ahead to a run ending up where they are today. There were many designs that came in the second round of jet development after the Me 262, Meteor and P-80 to look at that flew before 1950. Many resemble their ancestors of German design concepts. Many were odd indeed.
(eftu.jpg) “Was the Tu-16 An EF132 Copy?”
FLYING WINGS
Northrup has been in the “flying wing” mode for a long time though we know the first was the Go 229. The B-2 traces back to the YB-49 six-engine jet and the prop-driven XB-35. But the XP-79 was intriguing. It was the first jet aircraft designed for ramming! The pilot lay prone in between two 1,150 lb. thrust Westinghouse J30-WEs in the forward center of the 38’ wingspan. Two vertical stabilizers sprouted aft. The 8,670 lb. fighter was stressed for 12 Gs and with the lay-down position the pilot could handle more g stress too. Leading edges of the airfoil were built of heavy magnesium to withstand the forces of ramming blows. A secondary armament of four .50 calibers was envisioned. The maximum estimated speed was projected to be 510 mph but in the initial test flight, in September of 1945, the aircraft was destroyed. Unbelievably, the Northrup MX-324 rocker-powered fighter preceded it in 1944. Thankfully no further aircraft were built. The Zeppelin company in Germany had a design for a rocket powered “Rammer.”
Flying wing fever spread across the Atlantic in the 1947 Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52. The 90’ foot wing weighing 34,154 loaded was a test bed for a proposed six-engine concept on the order of the YB-49 which had a 172’ span. Two 5,000 lb. thrust Rolls-Royce Nenes mounted in the wing resulted in a climb rate of 4,800 fpm and a 500 mph top speed carrying its two-man crew to its 50,000’ ceiling and 2,130 mile range. But by 1952 the quite superior Avro Vulcan delta wing and Hadley Page Victor bombers were beginning production and further “all-wing” designs were terminated. The Victor’s crescent wing design was developed from the Arado 234C, which had the same, shape and was similar to a Messerschmitt P.1108 jet bomber design except for pure “V” shaped tail. Actually the Victor had a high-mounted horizontal stabilizer that had a positive “V” dihedral. Focke Wulf had a delta wing bomber design with a 620 mph estimated speed.
(Vicp1108.jpg) “Victor Is Too Similar To P.1108”
The Horten brothers in WWII Germany, who had designs for the Ho XVIII Amerika Bomber- a jet wing with a range and speed of 6,835 miles and 528 mph respectively, pursued the flying wing design concept.
RUSSIAN/AMERICAN RIP OFFS
Many Russian designs were commenced before invading Soviet forces lay their hands on German blueprints such as those of the Ta 183 that eventually became the MiG 15. Planes like the YAK 15 (early 1946) and MiG 9 (late 1945) actually performed their maiden flights on Jumo 004Bs as did several French airframes. The YAK 23 was developed during the same time as the MiG 15 but is quite different. Like the YAK 15 and MiG 9 it had non-swept wings of 30’ span. Its engine was developed from the Rolls Royce Derwent of 3,500 lb. thrust acquired from Britain. The pilot sat way back and directly above the engine that had a long intake requiring a long nose resulting in poor visibility. It had a top speed of 610 mph and eventually served Balkan satellite nations. Many similarities coincide with the German Focke Wulf Super TL concept.
If we look at non-swept-wing 1947 American bombers like the North American B-45, Convair XB-46 and the Martin XB-48 we see Arado and Junkers in the wing-mounted engine placement using the pod concepts used. Medium bombers by day’s standards, they all carried about 8,000 lbs. of bombs with top speeds of 500-550 mph. The Martin XB-51 used exactly the Ju 287’s six-engine jet layout in the two forward mounts. Two 5,200 lb. thrust J47-GE-13s clung to the lower port and starboard fuselage side in the exact fashion of the Ju 287’s. A third engine was buried in the aft fuselage making for a top speed of 620 mph. The rear-swept wing spanned 53’ and it could carry 12,000 lbs. of bombs. Its horizontal stabilizer was mounted at the very top of the vertical stabilizer ala the Ta 183 design.
Ilyushin’s IL-28 was the first Soviet jet bomber owing its engines to original Jumo 004H units that it copied. It flew in late 1948 with two 5,950 lb. thrust Klimov VK-1power plants able to propel it to 580 mph. All tail surfaces are swept but the 65’ wing is not. The engines are slung beneath them in Ar 234B style. Range for the 42,500 lb. plane is 2,200 miles with its wing-tip tanks and it has a ceiling of 42,000 feet. Large numbers (about 750) were built and subsequent used in satellite countries including China. Two 23mm cannons in the nose and tail defended it and its bomb load was about 8,800 lbs. Much of what they learned from the captured Ju 287 jet bomber prototype that they finished and flew in 1947 went into the IL-28.
By just 1952 the Tupolev Tu-16 was using two 19,000 lb. thrust engines attaining a speed of 620 mph, a range of 3,800 miles and a bomb load of 20,000 lbs. It utilized the Arado-pioneered wing employing a slight crescent shape in its sweep. The remainder of the aircraft looks much like the Junkers EF 132 that the Russians had a wooden mock up of in the captured Junkers factory. The Tu-16 is not substantially superior in performance to the projected EF 132’s.
JUST STRANGE
The era spawned jets that had no defined role as we know today. It was time when aircraft were constructed more as design exercises almost just to see if they would fly.
In 1947 Sanders-Roe built a the first, and perhaps only, jet flying boat fighter called the S.R.A.I. powered by two 3,850 lb. thrust Beryl 1 M.V.B.2 turbo jets semi-internally mounted in the fuselage. The 16,255 lb. craft could climb on its 46’ wings at 4,000 fpm and had a maximum speed of 516 mph once the wing floats were retracted. Four 20mm cannons was the armament of the three prototypes built. Dornier discounted the idea once discussed of a single-seat flying boat fighter.
The equally strange Convair Sea Dart flew in 1953. Though the near Mach 1 jet had retractable hydro-skis, it came to rest on its hull like a flying boat. Several German design concepts were that of delta wing layout later used in many aircraft designs.
NORDIC CLONES
(Fw21r.jpg) “Too Close For Comfort”
Sweden’s SAAB-21R was the only fighter to have had both piston and jet engines at different times. Originally the 1,475 hp SFA-built DB 605B powered it in 1943 and the 3,000 lb. thrust de Havilland Goblin in was used in1947. The Vampire-ish look with the twin tail had one interesting feature- a detachable gun pod. Though the 37’ wing-spanned plane could make 520 mph and mounted a 20mm Hispano cannon and four 13.2 mm MGs in the nose, it was a forerunner of the 20mm Vulpod on 7.62mm GE mini-gun pods we know. Eight more machine guns could be attached with the pod. Sixty jets were produced. The 21R is a twin for the Fw “Flitzer” concept plane. Did Sweden have some collaboration?
(29fwtl.jpg) “Not Coincidendal”
But SAAB’s next real fighter came in 1948 with the 29 model. It was chubby and Ta 183/MiG-ish looking with it 36’ swept wings. The pilot sat well forward above four 20mm Hispano cannons and above the duct for the single 4,400 lb. thrust Ghost 50 engine. Climb rate was 7,500 fpm with a top speed of 658 mph. The 10,120 lb. plane could climb to a ceiling of 45,000’ and with external tankage could travel 1,677 miles. Later models had a more powerful turbojet and updated missile weapons kept it in Swedish service well into the 1960’s culminating with the 29-F. The 29 looks very much like a Focke Wulf concept called the Super TL.
EVEN THE CANADIANS?
Avro Canada’s two-seat CF-100 Canuck Mk.1 flew in 1950 looking like a T-33 with two engine nacelles strapped onto the fuselage sides. But smooth lines or not, the same-year’s, Mk.3 34,000 lb. all weather interceptor was potent with its climb rate of 10,000 fpm and speed of 640 mph coming from the 6,000 lb. thrust Orenda 2 engines. It was small for a two-seater with a 52’ wingspan able to climb to 40,000 feet. Eight .50 calibers were built-in and a variety of missiles were used. With upgraded engines and weapons the type evolved through the Mk.5 and was in service into the 1960’s. The engine layout is quite extremely akin to a Heinkel design called the P.1080
(avhe.jpg) “Not The Canadians Too!”
LARGE & LITTLE
When too big isn’t big enough we can look at the Convair YB-60 of 1952. Though it doesn’t meet our time criteria of post WWII/pre-Korean War, its 1946 predecessor, the B-36, does. These planes hark back to the Luftwaffe desire for a New York bomber of super long range. The YB-60 was pretty much a B-36 with 35 degree swept wings and eight jet engines mounted two to a pod like the B-52. They were P & W J57-P-3s of 8,800 lbs. thrust each. Where the B-36 had a 230’ wingspan the YB-60 flew on 206’ though it loaded weight was much higher at 380,000 lbs.! It had a range of 8,000 miles and could reach 55,000 feet high and fly at 550 mph at that altitude. It could haul 10,000 lbs. of bombs at long range and for close-in target a whopping 72,000 lbs could be accommodated. The 1952 Boeing B-52 was chosen over B-60 to be the USAF heavy bomber and is still in service forty-nine years later! The proposed Junkers EF 101 was to have a 230’ wingspan with a 10,500 mile carrying a Bf 109H to be launched and retrieved like the XF-85. The Junker EF 100 was to have a 213’ wingspan and be able to tote 11,000 lbs. of bombs 5,600 miles on six piston engines.
(ef101gob.jpg) “German Parasite Bomber-US Parasite Fighter”
And when too small isn’t small enough there was the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin of 1948. Someone was dreaming about airships with airplane hooks when they dreamed this up. The little lump measured just under 15’ in length with a 21’ wingspan and weighed in at 4,835 lbs. loaded. Powered by a J-24-WE-22 of 3,000 lbs. thrust, the craft was designed as a parasite fighter to be launched and retrieved by B-36’s! It reached 520 mph though estimates of 664 mph were foreseen. It had a combat endurance of thirty minutes. Four faired over gun ports are evident on the prototype but armament was unspecified. Probably four .50s or two 20mms would have been the thinking of the time. It had no landing gear. If it did not hook up to the trapeze when returning to the mother aircraft emergency landing skids were used. This thing is quite reminiscent of the Bachem Natter of Germany in part of its concept. But the proposed piston powered Junkers EF 101 was to have a 230’ wingspan with a 10,500 mile carrying a Bf 109H to be launched and retrieved like the Goblin and B-36.
We must remember that beside the liberation of many blueprints, models, mock-ups and prototypes the Allies later had the very people responsible for those items who continued in aeronautical engineering in the Soviet Union and in the West. And we will save for another time the scant details about the German flying disc!
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Colby, C.B.
Bomber Parade
Coward-McCann, Inc., NY, 1960
Colby, C.B.
Jets of the World
Coward-McCann, Inc., NY, 1952
Green, William & Swanborough, Gordon
The Complete Book of Fighters
Salamander Books, London 1994
Green, William
The World Guide to Combat Planes Vol. 1
Doubleday & Co. NY, 1967
Green, William
Jets Aircraft of the World
Macdonald, London, 1955
Myhra, David
Secret Aircraft Designs of the Third Reich
Schiffer Publishing, 1998
Don’t know about the rest, but this is very harsh considering the losses that Bomber Command suffered in WW2.
By ‘skulking about in darkness’, I believe you mean precision navigating over large distances at night directly into the heart of enemy territory regardless of personal risk as their contribution to the allied war effort? I’d hate to think you meant anything else.
Its just like those B2 and F-117, skulking about in the dark, also skulking from RADAR eh?
It’s possibly something to do with the degree (well, technically pair of degrees) I did in Aero engineering at a fairly reasonable university which mean I actually understand what they were up to.
Not entirely relevant - it was his design bureau, and he was the team leader for the Pulqui II.
Countries all over the place do just that. And considering that of the four flying prototypes of the Pulqui built, three were lost in accidents (two of which killed pilots, Manuwal and Behrens) I have grave doubts that it can plausibly be argued that the Pulqui did not have performance problems. It is also notable that I can find no record of the aircraft exceeding 300 m/s - bang on the speed of sound at 10,000m. Since it was only attaining this speed in a dive, it is unlikely ever to have exceeded the speed of sound. The F-86 was supersonic-capable in a dive.
Which is why I seperated out German prewar and wartime work. Delta wings got concatonated in my mind with swept wings (both are clearly prewar work, and were well known in the west during the war), but I should have specifically mentioned them. Tailless I’m less sure about - Lillienthal for instance was flying tailless aircraft in 1894 - see photo below.
Where? Every source I’ve ever come across states that Area Ruling was discovered by Richard Whitcomb at NACA in 1952. If you have evidence that area ruling predates this, post it.
Engine burying was for completely different reasons and done in different ways (and in any case was something the British were already doing too). Use of composites was nothing new either - De Haviland had been doing it since at least the 1930s.
Which aircraft was that? I’m not familiar with any aircraft with anything vaguely like that performance.
It’s worth noting that the guidance system on these SAMs (Wasserfall) was awful and it requires quite some imagination to come up with a worse one.
Ejection seats were a case of parallell evolution, with all sides facing exactly the same problem at roughly the same time - air speeds too high for successful unaided escape. The Germans were forced to do something a few months earlier due to building the Do-335 where escape would be impossible rather than difficult without mechanical aids.
The rocket itself would not however have had anything like the performance to reach the US - von Braun spent the next 10 years finding out exactly why.
They weren’t evolving into anything better - the final designs were less reliable than the early ones, and most likely wouldn’t even have worked.
Remind me not to fly in any aircraft you have had anything to do with. From a flight safety (let alone combat readiness) point of view that level of reliability is completely unacceptable.
Most of the information comes (unfortunately indirectly - I haven’t had the chance to get my paws on a copy yet) from Yefim Gordon’s history of the MiG-15. Which includes such useful information as the Soviets deciding to buy in UK jet engine technology as neither their tech nor the captured German tech was capable of the powers needed.
Because I’m an aero engineer, work in developing pretty complex machines in industry and have a good idea of the problems involved. There was a hell of a lot of development work needed on the Me-262 to get it fit for squadron service, and even the early ones in service in 1944 had major problems.
Oh, and will you give over the “MiG-15 is a Ta-183 in disguise” rant. The designers of the Ta-183 had no clue about the existence of spanwise drift and designed the Ta-183 accordingly. It was of no use to the Soviets whatsoever.[/img]
Bombing at night is inherently inaccurate. If the USAF missed with 50% of their ordnance in daylight what would it have dropped to at night? There is no insult implied to the RAF but their accuracy was certainly no better than 50% in the dark either. There were no pinpoint pickle barrel hits with the factors such as the pathfinder aircraft marking the wrong area of a target complex or wind taking their flares off course and myriad other issues involved.
Comparing B-2s and F-117s with Lancasters and B-24s just doesn’t make sense does it? The 60+ years since heavies slipped into Germany at night has absolutely no reference point of similar technology with today’s strike aircraft.
pdf You know simply because someone “re-invents” something decades later doesn’t mean they originated it. With any design or invention we have 3 possible stages- 1. a design, a technical drawing made by an engineer 2. an tangible invention of some thing 3. a culmination of refinement into a marketable product from something that was not before.
Simply because someone pens a design that he imagines is his does not preclude the fact that someone before him came up with the same vision. Often the time and technological know-how is not evolved enough for the original idea but has been when the design is “re-invented.”
To discount every German aero innovation simply because it was not a perfected end product is folly as much as saying the Wright flyer was not a catalyst for subsequent aircraft. Most of the layouts and innovations were built upon by later engineers and aircraft companies. For example there is simply no no way to say that Lippisch’s deltas were not the first and were not copied later. The whole aviation world acknowledges him as the father of the delta and tail-less designs in general.
He made the tabgible invention of it. A tail-less glider from 1894 has absolutely nothing in common with a powered aircraft. So if in fact Lippisch saw a glider in 1894 and he subsequently produced a series of deltas and tail-less designs some of which became real aircraft, he is still the originator of powered craft of those types.
I’m not talking about a tail-less glider from 1894 not being similar in aerodynamic theory from an Me 163 but that is the only commonality the two have. They have nothing similar visually. There are legions of later aircraft that closely resemble German ones.
When American and British firms refined deltas decades later they can be acknowledged for that culmination of design but not for the original concept.
That is where it all comes from- building upon past designs and aircraft. There is nothing new that wasn’t originated before. And many were designed and developed by German aero engineers. Simply because Honda or some car company applies a multi-valve head or DOHC on an auto doesn’t mean they invented the technology. It is important to note not only who originated the design but who used it in autos before. Honda can’t say they invented it. They can say they refined the original concept. Both features were applied to cars in at least the teens.
It’s the same thing with aircraft. If one can’t give credit to those with the original concept when it is blatantly obvious trademark and patent infringement suits arise.
It is splitting hairs to say that since Multhopp worked for Tank that Tank was responsible for the Ta 183. He wasn’t working for Focke Wulf when he built the swept wing model. Hans Multhopp designed it and the Pulqui was modified by Tank. I can’t say to what degree but perhaps his meddling with it was the actual cause of what you seem to allude to as being unsafe since some were lost to accidents.
Multhopp had no intention of going to the post-war Nazi stronghold Argentina no matter how much Tank cajoled him. Whatever mods were done to the basic design were Tank’s. So if the plane was bad it was Tank’s fault. As Multhopp later is quoted as saying regarding his aloofness to Tank, “Well, what the hell did you expect would happen? Look how you screwed up my perfect design. All you had to do was follow the plans.”
I would like to see the Dehavillands that flew with jet power in the 1930s prior to the 1944 Horten brothers Ho IX and a good many other German designs with turbines buried. At any rate nothing they built produced a dramatically reduced radar signature as the Ho 9 did. Again the rest of the aviation world acknowledges this aircraft design as being the 1st stealthy one.
No one but the Germans operationally used and/or pioneered guided missiles. Forget whether the Wasserfall was an operational success. It was the 1st. To say that subsequent designs by later designers were not influenced by it is just incorrect. German guided ordnance was successful enough to sink ships. Wire guided air-to-air rockets that the me 262 had late in the war were real and were the 1st.
You state about the ejection seat that the “Germans were forced to…” Why does that make their research and development null and void? Necessity is the mother of invention.
What about von Brauns SR 71 empannage used in his wartime designs long before Lockheed did?
The Deutches Forschungsinstitut fur Segelflug’s DFS 228 was the U2’s father. It is so obvious a 2 year old could see it. With a projected ceiling of 75,000 feet and a pressurized, detachable crew cabin there is no doubt that it was the forerunner of high altitude recon.
The A-9/A-10 had little to do with the original A-4 or V-2 in concept. With a cluster six 56,000 lb thrust motors from the A-4 it had ample power. The power of the much later Atlas was something like 365,000 lbs. The 56,000 lb. thrust engine could be boosted to 67,000 lbs. thrust using Visol-nitric acid burners of the type intended for an improved V-2. It was calculated in 1941 that around 400,000 lbs. thrust was needed to push an A-9/A-10 weighing 85-tons. Von Braun was totally on track.
Can’t see how anyone can imagine that the evolving jet turbines were worse that the 1st. Think that if you want. And by the way turbines are rebuilt all the time and you have no doubt flown on a craft with them. Why is a rebuilt engine bad?
Sure the Brits sent a RR Nene to Russia that was copied, dumb as that was, but christ many of the Germans that designed and built the turbines were in Russia continuing their basic designs. Every aircraft before the MiG 15 flew quite well with those cobbled up German turbines. Just what esle were they allegedly using if not further-developed German designs?
If anyone wishes to discount early Russian jet designs as being completely original they are welcome to their delusion. Just remember that all the German aero engineers were working in other country’s aero industries after the war. Sure this or that design came from GB or the USA. They were done by the same men that did them originally in Germany. The Sovs captured more blueprints, technical drawings, actual aircraft and the men that engineered them and took it all back to Russia.
Why the hell does the MiG 15 look like it does? Think the German materials and people did not make the rounds of the Soviet design bureaus? Come on! Same deal in the US. Why is the MiG 17 and MiG 19 a near clone of the Ta 183? Designers don’t create in a vacuum they have stimulus and the German material and men were it. Something does not need to be a bolt by bolt copy (though the Sovs have done that on occassion- B-29 morphed into TU-2) to be an inspiration.
If later aircraft designs have no heritage to some original idea, drawing or prototype we can conclude that the computers we are using bear no evolutionary connection to the original transistor either.
If anyone wishes to, in my opinion, ignore blatant tangible familiarity of later aircraft designs to earlier German ones that fine with me. But if you have the reference material and actually compared our jets from the postwar to at least 1960 it would be apparent. 
Bombing at night is inherently inaccurate. If the USAF missed with 50% of their ordnance in daylight what would it have dropped to at night? There is no insult implied to the RAF but their accuracy was certainly no better than 50% in the dark either. There were no pinpoint pickle barrel hits with the factors such as the pathfinder aircraft marking the wrong area of a target complex or wind taking their flares off course and myriad other issues involved.
You are confusing the start of the war with the middle and the end. At the start the RAF bomber had difficulty finding the right country let-alone the target. In one case they bombed Liverpool. Ones targets could be found accurately and them marked individual targets within the target area could be marked as primary and secondary.
When American and British firms refined deltas decades later they can be acknowledged for that culmination of design but not for the original concept.
To say that the delta did not fly for decades is a bit woolly;
The Gloster Type GA.5 Javelin was designed by Glosters to specification F.4/48 for an all-weather fighter capable of a maximum speed of 600mph at 40,000ft. The solution was a large, twin-engined, delta, the first of its kind in the world. The Javelin was also the first fighter to introduce guided weapon armament into the RAF. The first prototype (WD804) flew from Moreton Valence on 26 November 1951; it was followed by four further prototypes. The type was evaluated by an American delegation and the Javelin was ordered in quantity applying much of the £37m funding from the US under the Mutual Defence Aid Plan. The aircraft replaced the Meteor NF Mks 11/12 and Venom NF Mk 3 in service. Its top speed was some 45 mph better than that of the Meteor and its ceiling 12,500ft higher at 52,500ft.
http://www.vflintham.demon.co.uk/aircraft/javelin/javelin.htm
If you are going to attribute invention to some guy who had an idea and did a nice drawing then most of the aero advances would go to SiFi writers.
http://aerostories.free.fr/constructeurs/horten/page2.html
Again the rest of the aviation world acknowledges this aircraft design as being the 1st stealthy one.
Retrospectively possibly but not designed that way.
Sure the Brits sent a RR Nene to Russia that was copied, dumb as that was, but christ many of the Germans that designed and built the turbines were in Russia continuing their basic designs. Every aircraft before the MiG 15 flew quite well with those cobbled up German turbines. Just what esle were they allegedly using if not further-developed German designs?
You could say the same about the ones sent to the US as according to another they had no need of them.
I’m not actually doing that - I’m stating that the wartime German designs that you seem to be claiming were revolutionary were in fact dead end designs based on prewar concepts.
I can. The Germans didn’t have the first clue about the existence of spanwise drift - an absolute killer in swept wing aircraft. Neither Multhopp or Tank knew it existed, so neither can feasibly blame the other.
As for “some” being lost in accidents, four flying aircraft were built and of these three were lost, killing two pilots. That’s hardly “some”.
Except he had no way of showing it was perfect, and postwar knowledge of aerodynamics has shown it was savagely flawed.
The DH designs of the 1930s were referring to the use of composites, rather than buried jet engines.
Umm… I’ve seen very few people outside yourself and a few other Luftwaffe fanboys make this claim. Not least because AIUI the radar frequencies required for these aircraft to be stealthy do weren’t even in use in the WW2 era. Some other aircraft were documented at the time as having a very low radar signature however, and a good example of this is the DH Mosquito.
Not looked into it, so no comments yet. Might do so if I have time at the weekend.
Here I’m beginning to see where your fundamental misunderstandings of aerodynamics come from. Because it has a cylindrical body and vaguely long wings, you assume that all subsequent vaguely similar aircraft are based on it. The fact that it itself is based on a Glider (the fact that it was developed by the German Sailplane Institute should have given you a hint) and shares the same basic configuration as much earlier aircraft like the Fafnir should have given you a hint. As for high altitude reconnaisance, that’s actually pretty funny. It was a rocket powered research aircraft, with far more in common with the Bell X-1!
Please, please go away and read some proper books on high speed aerodynamics before coming out with more of this tripe. There really is very little similarity between the two aircraft either aerodynamically or in configuration, and what similarity there is was dictated by the need for a high aspect ratio in both sailplanes and the U-2 (for different reasons). The DFS 228 only had a relatively high aspect ratio for legacy reasons - that’s what they were used to using.
So much on track that with the resources given to him by the USA it took him another 10 years? They had ideas, but the technology (particularly in materials and electronics) to build them simply didn’t yet exist.
Simple - the first engines worked, the later ones didn’t. As for the rebuilt issue, you’re throwing in a strawman there. The issue (as I stated last time in fact) isn’t in the requirement to rebuild them regularly, it is in the fact that the MTBF which drives this rebuild requirement means that you are likely to lose engines on a regular basis. In an aircraft that has tricky handling and is barely able to sustain flight on one engine, this is a major problem.
The Russians? Developing the Nene as fast as they could, as well as working on some indigenous turboprop designs. They realised very rapidly the German jets were a dead end, and only used them until they could figure out something better (not based on them).
You’re starting to buy into the myth of the Aryan Superman (or in this case SuperEngineer) here. If you actually look up who designed what, when the designs were started and who worked on them you’ll find very little German involvement. At most it was people looking at what they had done and either deciding to have a play with some similar ideas (Avro Vulcan wing) or wincing and dropping any thoughts of trying the same thing themselves (German aero engines).
The only similarities they share are swept wings and a nose air inlet. Even some of the details you’ve quoted from the Ta-183 (tee tail for instance) were explicitly NOT used on the MiG-15 because they were lethal. The MiG-15 tail is high but it is NOT a T shape. The wing has been manufactured in a completely different way and has been subjected to a large number of aerodynamic fixes to get it to work (most notably wing fences - something you never see in German swept wing drawings). The nose inlet is simply because that gives good airflow for all alphas and doesn’t have boundary layer ingestion problems.
I have read a great deal of it. I also have the technical education to understand it. This is where you seem to be greatly lacking.
Nice discution in here guys. 
If want more information about the Pulqui you can check this site.
http://www.choiquehobbies.com.ar/revista/notas/pulqui2/pulqui2e.htm
Now this is what I think this site is about. A nice learned discussion, where I actually get to learn something, as opposed to a rant fest. Well done guys, keep it up.
Hey Firefly- I can’t inderstand why people can’t be courteous on the web. It seems that the anonymity of it provokes people to be A-holes and call others names and degrade people’s points of view. They don’t do that in the brick and mortar world so why turn into freakin Mr. Hyde on the internet?
:?
The thing that life and history have in common is decisions. Variations of decisions lead to alternate outcomes. If the USAF had gone to nightime activities there are so many open possibilities. I find that interesting.
As far as actual bonifide night bombing accuracy I am simply stating that if USAF daylight cativities yeilded a 50% on target accuracy there is no question that doing the same thing at night would have a lower hit rate. You don’t fly tight box formations in the dark. That’s all. I can’t see why that is so hard to believe.
The alternatives are many. Imagime the bomber stream only in darkness. The heavies had no way to detect the Wilde Sau aircraft hunting them. There would have been no goodnight use for the P-51 when it arrived. Without detection equipment there would have been no way to escort and defend from radar-equiped interceptors. Perhaps a greater diversity of Wilde Sau aircraft would have evolved. Certainly their tallys would have grown since the night sky would have been far more target rich.
The heavies probably would have ultimately used some sort of detection equipment also. Would have been a much busier time of it in a B-17 incoming to target, evading blips and seeking IPs.
Anyhow, lots of different things could have occurred if the USAF had withdrawn from daylight ops. Interesting possibilities.
The whole deal about the Sovs and German jet turbines is the well-known fact. EVERY, Yak, MiG, Lavochkin, Sukhoi- every Russ jet in the postwar era before the cloning of the Nene used BMW 003s, Jumo 004s and He 011s. This very clearly stated in every publication of the times which I own. And the very sane turbine engineers from the companies of origin in Germany were upgrading them in Russia. They took whole aircraft to Russia and continued their development and evolved them into Soviet ones. If all those planes were flawed in basic concept how did they fly with the Red AF?
If Sov jets that flew from 1946-48, before the VK-1 and VK-2 of 1950 were stuck into the MiG 15, what were they using for power? The original plane was never intended to use the engine it ended up with and was extensively modified to accept it. The MiG 15 was designed to use the 4,400 lb thrust Jumo 004H derivitive.
In this area I maintain that later development of the original German jets was happening in the Soviet Union by the German originator and Russians and that they were better powerplants that the 1st of the series. I’m astounded that anyone can say that anything engineered to the 2nd generation is worse than the 1st. The original Jumo put out just under 2,000 lbs. thrust and the H had 4,400 lbs. How its that a step back?
Sorry but when you say EVERY German design was a dead end is just wrong. How was wing sweep a dead end? Were deltas dead ends? If just these 2 fature were dead ends how were they used by others later? Just doesn’t make sense.
The Horten IX was never designed with the idea to lower radar signatures folk. It was a happy by product that was discovered during flight tests. Does the fact that it wasn’t planned for make it impossible for acknowledgement as the originator?
If the T tail is so unstable why was it ever seen again? The Czech L-29 trainer has it. The An 72 has it. Lockheed must be crazy since the F-104 and the C-141 have T-tails. The Kawasaki C-1 does. The IL 76 does. The BAC One-Eleven is T-tailed as id the BAe 146. Hell even the C-5 Galaxy has a T-tail. I reject any theory that the T-tails does not work.
Sorry but he DFS 228 actually flew. It was not a research aircraft. It was developed as a recon ship. What you are not understanding from me is that the CONCEPT of the craft that was the essence of later U-2. Why do you reject that a sailplane-looking ship was had with the DFS and U-2? They were both developed for the same role as well. Has noting to do with aspect ratios or anything mechanical. The essence of the High altitude sailplane U-2 concept is clearly the DFS forerunner. And even the U-2 didn’t have a detachable, ejectable cabin.
Just because von Braun wasn’t able to immediately develop a fantastic Uber rocket in the US given the the red tape and time needed to start a completely new program and project and staff it, then begin with a clean sheet of paper for design does not mean that the A-9/A-10 concept was bad. It was a sound enough vehicle given the technology of the times.
And by the way it did not depend on electronics not yet invented. A plan for a piloted final stage existed if other guidance had been faulty.
There were many designs and layouts that can be found in the 50s that are pretty much duplicates of earlier German design. They can be found in publications of the times if anyone would like to look. I am certainly no fan of Nazis. But I am a fan of innovation from any country. I remember how surprised our aero engineer hot shots were when they disected the MiG 25 that Viktor Belenko flew to Japan. The plane was on one hand so primative by our Western lofty standards but deadly effective nevertheless.
I learned to never underestimate my enemies. This was sure true in Vietnam. And both the Japs and Germans surprised the hell out of us on many occassions during the war. To be totally negative and completely reject any “non- Allied” country’s achievments relative to the times is just too closed-minded for me. I am not insulting PDF but simply stating my feelings. Most assuredly he is not going to modify his ideas and I am not either so I can’t see any point of further posts about esoteric aspects of aircraft layouts.
Anyhow adios on this. But see, no one has to get nasty simply because other have differing points of view.