The Luftwaffe of 1946 and beyond

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

Discuss the varius aircraft Germany was working on during World War II not the ones everyone knows about but the sercret Luftwaffe aircraft of WWII.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29LKdm_j8fc

http://www.luft46.com/

Both links give a view of a good deal of the secret aircraft Germany was working on during the latter stages of world war ii.

[Malte279]

While there were many plans there were mercifully not the resources to realize them. Even if some of the planes had been built, there was hardly the fuel left to get them into the air. More of the modern Me 262 planes were destroyed before taking of a single time than actually ever flew a mission.
Another thing which is so often overlooked is that Great Britain and the USA were technologically not as far behind as is sometimes suggested. The British had introduced their Gloster Meteor in summer 1944 (a prototype had been tested in 1943) and the American F-80 Shooting Star (which outperformed the Me 262 in about every respect) also had its first flight in January 1944.
There had been many fanciful plans in the desks of offices in Germany, but there were not the means to realize them, nor is it as certain (in spite of what some documentaries claim) that they would have worked as smoothly and quickly with the means of that time as they would have with later methods. It is rarely mentioned that advanced as the German developments that actually were used also came with harsh problems. The Me 262 (though the most thoroughly developed plane of those "secret weapons") did suffer from failing jet engines in 1944 which had the nasty habit of catching fire quickly. Worse even fared the pilots of the Me 163 (the first rocket plane) which were separated from the highly corrosive fuel of their planes through a very thin wall only. In several cases there was nothing left of the pilot to be buried, even after relatively gentle emergency landings, if any of the fuel leaked into the cockpit (you can imagine this gave not exactly a boost to the morale of the pilots).
I think that to some degree the plans and developments of the Germans are being grossly exaggerated while almost no credit is given to the developments of the allied site. Part of this may still be a result from the German WW2 propaganda which kept blurting out about "Geheimwaffen" in order to keep up the morale of the own people. Another factor is of course the pleasant idea of an enemy much more technologically advanced being defeated by the own forces. It really astounds me at times how utterly ignored the British and American developments are in the discussion about the German secret weapons.

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

Still you have to realise if they got the ME-262 into service early enough they would have had the time to get the other aircraft into service.

[F-14 Ace]

Let's not forget that Me-26s were sometimes shot down by pilots in P-51 mustangs.  They figured that if they got above the jet and came at it in a dive, they could get close enough to land a few hits, which was really all it took.  The 262 was not a very tough aircraft, even though video game often portray it as taking a large number of hits to destroy.

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

true but if they had got it into service in late 1942 when the bombing of German industry had just begun the war would have gone on.

[Malte279]

true but if they had got it into service in late 1942 when the bombing of German industry had just begun the war would have gone on.

There are many might have beens. But even if the Me 262 had gone into service in late 1942 it would not have changed the general outcome of the war. It would not have prevented the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad and North Africa. Also under the pressure of need (if the Me 262 had been there that early) it is very likely that there would have been more attention and greater efforts to the allied jet-plane projects (again, the F-80 surpassed the Me 262 in every respect and it was also tested in early 1944). I do not question that it would have prolonged the war with all the consequences (nuclear bomb on Germany etc.) but even if there had never been a single bomb dropped on Germany the industrial capacity of the US was many times that of Germany (which reached its highest production rate in 1944 when the main bombing attacks had already begun.
The Me 262 was also very vulnerable while it was taking of and landing. More of the planes were destroyed in this phase respectively bombed while they were just standing on the ground than were shot down in actual dogfight. They required protection from other planes during take off and landing.
In 1943 already the production of fuel was cut extremely short by the air strikes against Ploesti (Romania). It is very unlikely that Me 262 (even if production had started in 1942) would have been available in sufficient numbers to allow enough of them to be stationed in Romania to thwart the attack on Ploesti.
There had been many plans in the drawers of offices in Germany, but in spite of everything the German propaganda claimed and what sensationalist documentaries are trying to tell (because it is so much more interesting to have barely escaped disaster than to have won without any real chance of loosing)  there was no "Wunderwaffe" in Germany that would have done any more than prolonged the war (which in turn would have been cut short by the use of the atomic bomb through the US).

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

The Ho 229 inspired the builders of the B-2. If you look at both planes there is an errie simularity. And the Ta-183 looks at lot like the Mig-15.

[Malte279]

I would never question the fact that the plans of German technicians influenced planes (and also the space programs) of other nations and it was certainly for good reason that both the US and the Soviet Unions took great efforts to get hold of some of the German engineers.
What I do question however is the (in my opinion) overblown image of Hitler's Germany as a kind of high tech nation that would have totally turned the tides if given a little more time. Germany was somewhat ahead in several respects, but not as far as some sensationalist documentaries try to make us believe. Also that technological head start was shrinking (partly because many great minds (of whom Albert Einstein was but only the most famous) had fled Germany and the for fear of persecution or is some cases disgust about the terror others were subjected to).
Germany did create designs that were with the technology of later years put into practice. In spite of the outward similarities however, the Ho 229 would not have been comparable to the performance of the B-2 (which was build with the technical developments of several more decades). The same is true (though to a lesser degree) for the Mig-15. Your mentioning of the B-2 also makes me think about stealth technique, a field in which the British were ahead. They had figured out different means to disturb the German radar and with the De Havilland Mosquito they had a plane which was not only faster than almost every non-jet plane Germany had, but was also almost impossible to discover on the radar.

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

True but the De Havilland mosquito in technical terms was not a true stealth design though I didn't know it flew too fast to be detected by radar. However most of the aircraft would not be stable in flight such as Bloom and Vost's (am I spelling this right?) design for the Volksyager fighter.

[Malte279]

True but the De Havilland mosquito in technical terms was not a true stealth design though I didn't know it flew too fast to be detected by radar.

The Ho 229 was not designed the way it was because of stealth either. In case of the Mosquito it was not speed that made her hard to detect (in fact I don't think speed matters much to any radar), but mainly the materials that were used. She consisted of wood mostly!
The "Volksj‰ger" He 162 was constructed (in record time) by Heinkel, not by Blohm & Voss but she was everything but stable in flight (was that what you meant to say? The sentence can be read both ways) and the test pilot did not survive the first official presentation flight (four days after the first flight of the plane ever). The He 162 was designed mainly to be easy to produce in large numbers without much material required. The idea was to start a kind of "Volkssturm" in the air, that is to have under 18 and over 60 year old given a few hours of flight training and then send them to be slaughtered. The He 162 was not only much less stable than the Me 262 (and slightly slower), but she was also very poorly armed (2 15mm machine guns vs. the four 30mm canons of the Me 262).

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

I know I meant the design B&V submitted for the competition was not stable in flight. And the mosquito flew too low to be detected by radar.

[Malte279]

And the mosquito flew too low to be detected by radar.

Nope, it was really the material used that made the difference, not the way of flying.
The mosquito was often used for reconnoiter missions (in daylight), or as night-fighters / target marking for bombing attacks (at night). In both cases they often flew at rather high altitudes. The Mosquito flew particularly well at high altitudes but was (unlike smaller fighter planes in daylight missions) rarely used for low altitude / strafing missions which would require low flight altitudes.
A book I read about Operation Chastise (the bombing of German dams in May 1943) mentions that Mosquitoes used to reconnoiter the targets flew high enough not to be within range of the Anti-aircraft guns around these targets. At low altitudes (in the thicker air) the Mosquitoes did not reach their full speed while their large wing surface did not subject them as much to the poor performance at high altitudes which most German fighters had to deal with.

By the way, I really like these history topics F-22. Thanks for bringing them up

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

Thanks but most of them have gone dead which is sad.

I meant the Bomber variet of the mosquito flew low level since there are stories of mosquito's bringing back pieces of trees and even telephone wires back when they came home from a mission.

[Malte279]

I don't know how accurate those stories are though. I would not call them impossible, but a plane must be really extremely low (about 10 meters) to hit trees and telephone wires. At such low altitudes they would have to drop bombs with small parachutes (lest they be damaged by the explosion of the own bombs), which I know had been done by the US airforce in the Pacific theater while I never heard about this practice being used in Europe (just because I never heard about it doesn't mean it didn't happen of course). However I consider it very unlikely that a plane (a wooden plane even) would hit telephone wires or trees so directly as to bring parts of it back. Not only would those parts have to be really sticky, but it is also extremely unlikely that a plane would make such forceful contact with a solid object at a speed of several 100 kilometers per hour, at an altitude of little more than 10 meters at most, and not suffer such extreme damage or unbalancing as to return home.  Just think of the immense force of even smaller objects hitting cars at a much slower speed. The planes would not have hit any telephone wires for sure because in Germany they were under ground back then, same as today. There are some above surface electricity wires in very sparcly settled regions. I guess it might be possible, but something extremely exceptional. Where did you read about it?
In any case flying at low altitude was not the reason why the Mosquito wasn't easily detected by the radar.

[Dima02]

Here's a plane that you guys might be interested in:



The Horten Ho-IX was a flying wing fighter/bomber, the prototype being developed in the latter part of the war. Yes, it was real. Looks like the B-2 Spirit, doesn't it?

[f-22 "raptor" ace]

The B-2 desingers visited the only remaining example of the Ho-229 in the Smithsonian National air and space museum's Paul E. Garber restoration facility in maryland before they built the B-2.

[Dima02]

The B-2 desingers visited the only remaining example of the Ho-229 in the Smithsonian National air and space museum's Paul E. Garber restoration facility in maryland before they built the B-2.

Ahh, so that's why they look so alike. I read that the Ho-229 was to have a 40% less radar detection rate compared to other aircraft because of its shape and the material used to construct it.