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BlacktailFA — Warplane Disasters! Ep.6: The Me 163 Komet, Pt.1/2
#163 #blended #blunder #body #bomber #bwb #crash #deathtrap #destroyer #elephant #explosion #failure #flying #fuel #hazard #intercepter #komet #landing #lethal #loser #me #propulsion #rocket #white #wing #messerschmit #rocketplane #hydrazine #tstoff #fire #cstoff
Published: 2015-04-14 20:58:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 1164; Favourites: 8; Downloads: 8
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Description
The Me 163 Komet is world-famous for being the first rocket-powered warplane, the first "Flying Wing", and the fastest aircraft in all of World War 2, among many other incredible accomplishments.Of course, all of that actually counts for nothing, given that they ended up killed more of their own pilots than enemy aircraft. It's something that the Komet's legions of fanboys generally don't like to discuss; the RESULTS.
The Komet featured many other delights, such as a wooden frame (in a ROCKET-PROPELLED airframe) constructed by furniture companies, guns that ran out of bullets in seconds, a flight speed so high that pilots couldn't draw a bead on enemy bombers, the necessity of burning-off all the fuel to attack as a *glider*, no landing gear, an expectation to operate in the stratosphere with no pressurized cockpit, a canopy that bolted the pilot in...
Well, I could go on and on, but I think you have an idea of where this is going. It's another Warplane Disaster, and it such a huge debacle that I had to make this episode a 2-part presentation --- the mere fact that so many people are stupid enough to lionize this lemon demands it! Watch this and see for yourself.
I'll post my sources for this episode in the description of Part 2.
Also, this is one of the presentations that meaninter03 wasn't able to help me with, so there may be spelling and/or grammatical errors.
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Comments: 7
The real reason the Me-262's combat debut was delayed, was not due to Hitler's insistence it be manufactured as a fast bomber, but due to problems manufacturing its engines. See Wikipedia's article on the Junkers Jumo 004.
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Yeah, I found that out some time after I had created this presentation (which was previously posted this to my Youtube channel in a video format).
The Technologist types often lament that the Me 262 is a metaphor for aircraft like the F-22 and F-35, because the Germans "...could have had them sooner, and they would have REALLY changed the course of the war!". However, that notion entails that Germany built fewer aircraft *by choice*, which wasn't the case.
The Me 262's problems made it inevitable that they would take a long time to develop (too much fringe technology), and they would never have enough of them (Titanium, Nickel, Cobalt, Chromium, Tungsten, and Molybdenum were needed for both the airframe and engines, in quantities Germany could never possibly have acquired) to affect the outcome of the war. Though 1400 were completed, only 15% ever became operational. They also managed to shoot-down only 300 Allied aircraft, over something like an 8-month period --- a laughably small figure, compared to the work being done by the Bf 109.
There were also too many Allied aircraft for ANY kind of fighter in those numbers to have possibly made a difference. As noted by Erich Rudolfer in E.H. Simms' Fighter Tactics;
"[The Me 262] was very good, and very fast, but there were too many Allied fighters in the air at that late stage of the war for the number of Me 262s that we had... One day in 1944, I saw about 2,000 Allied aircraft over Germany. On that day I had fourteen Me 262s."
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It's pilots didn't call it "The Devil's Sled" for nothing --- though I would have called it the "Whammy Kablammy". XD
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Oh, boy. This one... disastrous even for a disaster. When I read the first article about the Komet, so many years ago, I got horrified that such a thing would even be allowed to fly!
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It's going to get even crazier, too. I had to split this presentation into two slide-shows.
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