Thickness isn’t all that much to do with that particular problem, although it is related. Thin wings do tend to stall much more sharply than thicker wings, and at a lower angle of attack. A much bigger problem with the Starfighters was simply that the wing was too small for the task the German Starfighters were trying to do - indeed the aircraft wasn’t really suited to it. It was always intended to be a short range, point defence interceptor much like the English-Electric Lightning (indeed, the two are similar in many ways - although the Starfighter is a much better design as a fighter). The Germans were trying to use them as a low-level all weather fighter-bomber. It really didn’t work very well.
India still use their MiG-21s, at least for a little longer, as do rather a lot of other nations. Personally I think the demise of the Starfighter had a great deal more to do with the fact that the USAF and ANG were being reequipped with much more capable aircraft at the time. The shortcomings of the Starfighter were in no way limited to performance/handling.
Doesn’t matter, I never intended it to be. Rather, it was intended as a demonstration that swept wings are in no way required to fly at the speeds the Me-262 did.
First I’ve heard of it. My understanding was rather that the resources were switched to the manned rocketry programme. Note the names of some of the X-15 pilots. You may for instance recognise the gentleman in this photo.
I’m not ignoring your arguaments. I’m going out of my way to demolish them because I think they’re a load of rubbish.
And I am aware of the various Me-262 modifications proposed. Personally I think they’re a load of rubbish.
The first one doesn’t solve some of the more fundamental problems relating to the fuselage, while the engines are massively underpowered for the job (they appear to be the same ones). This would probably make the tip stall problems worse, although the aircraft may be a whisker better behaved in a dive due to (I assume they’re not total retards) a thinner wing.
The second one looks like a nightmare with wings. If the pilot lives long enough to find out (doubtful - the only aircraft I’m aware of that looks vaguely like that relies on a LOT of computers to make it controllable) then the Germans are going to discover exactly why Area Ruling was invented. It’s meant to fly right in the heart of the flow regime where you need area ruling, and is shaped in about the worst possible way for it.
that’s right it didn’t work very well.
And it was resault of death a lot of experience pilots.
I’m agree the thinkness is not a all that much to do with flow stability of air near the surface of wing but it very importaint.
India still use their MiG-21s, at least for a little longer, as do rather a lot of other nations. Personally I think the demise of the Starfighter had a great deal more to do with the fact that the USAF and ANG were being reequipped with much more capable aircraft at the time. The shortcomings of the Starfighter were in no way limited to performance/handling.
But why it needs to requipe the good aircraft ( the most easy way the simply modernized it with new electronic ,wearpons and engines)
The MiG-21 ws used succefully til the end 80yy in the soviet block.
Another example the 60-years carier of grenfather B-52. Which even today used in USAAF.
Indeed the F-104 was a lck aircraft and USAAF simply got rid of it selling for the good price to the Germans this “flying coffin”/
Doesn’t matter, I never intended it to be. Rather, it was intended as a demonstration that swept wings are in no way required to fly at the speeds the Me-262 did.
And what do you think was the speed of operative of the Me-262 ?This arcraft could reach teh 850-900 km in the 1944 already in the dive.
And its strange if you think in those subsonic speed the swept wings was unnesesarry so why in the Mig-15 and in the Sabre it was nessisary?
First I’ve heard of it. My understanding was rather that the resources were switched to the manned rocketry programme. Note the names of some of the X-15 pilots. You may for instance recognise the gentleman in this photo.
The catastrophe of X-15 15 nov of 1967 was resault of death pilot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Adams
The exact reason is unknown today but with great relativenes this could be the wing of the trapezoidal form. Later the Bell suggested to reequip the X-15 with delta-wing for the increasing the stability but the program was closed.
I’m not ignoring your arguaments. I’m going out of my way to demolish them because I think they’re a load of rubbish.
And I am aware of the various Me-262 modifications proposed. Personally I think they’re a load of rubbish.
You my friend too self-confident in this subject.
Personaly i though the V-2 was a deadline for the rocketry while i nave learned the interesting fact that the first Soviet and US ballistic rocket were copy of the V-2. Even the rockets of 1950yy took a lot of disigns from the V-2.
Personaly i though the Ho- 229 could fly but it did
The first one doesn’t solve some of the more fundamental problems relating to the fuselage, while the engines are massively underpowered for the job (they appear to be the same ones). This would probably make the tip stall problems worse, although the aircraft may be a whisker better behaved in a dive due to (I assume they’re not total retards) a thinner wing.
The second one looks like a nightmare with wings. If the pilot lives long enough to find out (doubtful - the only aircraft I’m aware of that looks vaguely like that relies on a LOT of computers to make it controllable) then the Germans are going to discover exactly why Area Ruling was invented. It’s meant to fly right in the heart of the flow regime where you need area ruling, and is shaped in about the worst possible way for it.
Those modification of Me-262 is not finished and it just proved the Garmans know the next level of jet aviation was for the swept wings. There is no any doubts they was leaders on jet aviation til the end of war.
BTW first serial modification of Meteor Mk.1 was far form Me-262
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor
On 12 January 1944, the first Meteor F 1, serial EE210/G, took to the air from Moreton Valence. It was essentially identical to the F9/40 prototypes except for the addition of four nose-mounted 20 mm Hispano cannon and some tweaks to the canopy to improve all-round visibility.
For the production Meteor F 1, the engine was switched to the Whittle W.2 design, by then taken over by Rolls-Royce. The contemporary W.2B/23C turbojet engines produced 7.56 kN of thrust each, giving the aircraft a maximum speed of 417 mph (670 km/h) at 3,000 m and a range of 1,610 km. The Meteor Mk I was 12.5 m long with a span of 13.1 m, with an empty weight of 3,690 kg and a maximum takeoff weight of 6,260 kg.
The first W.2 engines were too weak. For the comparition the Me-262 on with Jumo004 could accelerate in this altitude till the 800 km/h
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me-262
Despite its deficiencies, the Me 262 was clearly signalling the beginning of the end of piston-engined aircraft as efficient fighting machines. Once airborne, it accelerated to speeds well over 800 km/h (500 mph), over 150 km/h (93 mph) faster than any Allied fighter operational in the European Theater of Operations
Not bad for the Germany whith its “deadline jet engines” which furthermore had shortage of Nickel
If they had enought Nickel - where were those Meteors could be?
The difference in speed was so great that the Britains prefered to hide the first Meteors in the Brutain to hunt for the V-1 ( Meteor was not much succesfull in this role).
Just when the Meteore in desember of 1944 war has get the new Rolls Roys engines it could the much better. But still not so good like last flying modification Me-262.
Many people also forget that in 1937 the Japanese tried several times to expand northwards from Mandchuria into Siberia. In all cases they got their noses bloodied by Soviet troops commanded by a general who later would become quite famous as the conqueror of Berlin: Chukov.
After these misadventures the Japanese were reluctant to attack Russia again. Even when Hitler asked them in 1941 to open a second front against Russia in Asia, the Japanese refused, thus allowing Stalin (who got the information through his German spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge) to move Siberian divisions west to reinforce the battered Russian troops in the west.
One of the problems with modernising aircraft like the Starfighter and MiG-21 is that there simply isn’t the internal volume required for the various electronics, and the radome is too small in diameter for a decent radar. This doesn’t apply to the B-52 (which in any case never goes into high threat environments - it sits a couple of hundred miles away and drops cruise missiles if up against a decent air defence system).
Things change very rapidly in the transonic region. There is an entire world of difference between an aircraft capable of Mach 0.85 and one capable of Mach 0.9. The Critical Mach number for the Me-262 is about 0.86, while that for the MiG-15 is 0.93 - a hell of a big difference when you go deeply into the aerodynamics.
Incidentally, the Spitfire had a critical Mach of 0.89. Not bad for a late 1930s design of aircraft.
So did everybody else - the initial work on swept wings was done before WW2 (largely by German universities) and widely published. The problems with controllability were also well known.
The problem the Germans were about to find is related to Area Ruling. This wasn’t discovered until shortly postwar when people had engines big enough to explore the transonic flight regime, but would have come as a VERY nasty surprise with most of the “advanced” German designs.
Why go get some land if there is your motherland to be protected? Bsides, I think that the Soviets thought the US would drop the bomb on Nazy Germany if they knew that the US had or was developing such a device.
Japan is poor in natural resources. That, together with its inability to accommodate and sustain its expanding population, is one of the main reasons it went into China and southwards.
Japan would have been more of a burden than a benefit to the USSR.
Truman never told Stalin anything about the A bomb. All he said, at the Potsdam Conference on July 24 1945, was that America had developed a weapon of immense power.
Any Soviet knowledge of the atom bomb came from spying on the Manhattan Project.
What about the huge Russian advance into Manchuria in August 1945?
Germany’s fatal flaw was fighting a war on two fronts. The USSR was smart enough not to make the same mistake.
Because they were still fighting on two fronts. Three, if you include Italy.
Whether or not land forces were actively fighting on the Western Front, Germany still had to divert troops, materiel and LOC to defend that front from the anticipated invasion.
The Soviets didn’t face the same problem in Manchuria because there wasn’t any action there after Nomonhan in 1939 which resulted in a 1941 treaty http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/s2.htm which was observed by both parties until the USSR attacked in August 1945.
The Soviet defeat of Japan in 1939 was sufficiently crushing that Japan decided not to try it again, unlike the situation on the Western Front where Germany could see the Allies massing for an invasion while engaged in heavy sea and air actions against Germany.
I think you very right mate about Japans in 1939.
They actually had not tend to underestimate the ability of Red Army to fight.
To the contrast of Germans , who looked at the Winter War of 1940 as at the “evidence” of the weakness of Red Army ( till the end of the 1941 when they faced the same troubles near the Moscow)
But there were also an importaint political moment, that i told above.
The Japanes have changed its direction of military agression ( South direction- attack of allies colonies).
Right after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pack of 1939. They thought Hitler betrayed them:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Comintern_Pact
The Anti-Comintern Pact was concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan (later to be joined by Italy) on November 25, 1936 and was directed against the Communist International (Comintern) in general, and the Soviet Union in particular.
So the Molotov-Ribbentrov pack was a DIRECT violation of the German-Japane pack…
Japanes was pissed on Hitler:)
This is might oddly sound for you, but the Soviet -German agreement was a big victory of soviet diplomacy.
It saved the russian Far East from the very possible Japanes agression in 1941 , when the Germans were near the Moscow.
Well they did helped after Berlin Capitulation but they had agree with americans and brits that they would merge parts of Europe and japan colonies into american-france-soviet-english zones
in these agreement (of japanese land) Russians did not took part they pressed to European front but still they supplied the chinese garrison till 1941 and then started again till 1946 they helped as they could and then they invaded korea and wanted to invade japan but the agreement and then the bombs came first
Good thoughts BearMgk.
However i just wish to add that the USSR never stopped the military help between 1941-46 for Chinas.
Even the Gomindant ( the enemy of communists but still fighting agains japanes alongside them) received the part of soviet help in this time.
BTW is this s Georgy Gukov in your awatar?
