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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 2366.PDF
526 FLIGHT German Jet Figl Span Approx. 40ft. THE MESSERSCHMITT Me 262 jet-propelled single-seater fighter has two wing-mounted Junkers axial-flow units, and is a clean design, with very slim fuselage. Britain in solving the problems presented by its practical application to aircraft. Three different types of German '' jet fighter'' made their appearance during the past summer. Two of them were among the comparatively few aircraft which the Luftwaffe was sending up against the R.A.F. and the U.S.A.A.F., and it was an American pilot whose report^ of having encountered some of them was first released for publication. Actually there were several German jet- propelled prototypes flying as long ago as 1942, and it is now believed that the famous German '' ace'' of the 1914-18 war, Ernst Udet, was test-flying a "squirt job" when he met his death in 1941. The designs for these German jet-propelled fighters were actually on the drawing board before the outbreak of the present war in 1939. Messerschmitt and Heinkel FROM the moment when the Air Ministry released the first news that Britain was producing fighter aircraft propelled by jet reaction, as a result of the successful development of this type of power uni^ by Group Capt. (as he then was) Frank Whittle, practically the whole of the newspaper publicity given to the subject has dealt, quite naturally, with its progress in Britain and America. One result of this, however, has been that the general public gained the impression that jet propulsion was an exclusively British invention which had put the Allies a very big technical jump ahead of the enemy. It must have come as something of a shock at many a British and American breakfast table, therefore, when news of German jet-propelled fighters in action on the Western front was first mentioned some little time ago. Readers of Flight, however, and particularly those familiar with '' Gas Turbines and Jet Propulsion for Aircraft'' by Flight's managing editor, Mr. G. Geoffrey Smith, will have been aware that German engineers and scientists had also been at work on the same project, and that there was no reason to suppose that they were appreciably behind The three types of German jet fighter already referred to are the Messerschmitt Me 163 and Me 262, and the Heinkel He 280. Other German concerns are also reported to be busy on development work. It should not be forgotten, incidentally, that the very first practical application of the principle of jet propulsion in aerial warfare was the flying bomb, whose official designation is FZG-76, and to which German propaganda refers as V.i. On this side of the English Channel we have less polite names for it! But the flying bomb (frequently referred to in yet another place by the laborious title of " explosive-carrying, reaction- propelled, crewless aeroplane ") is in quite a different cate gory from the jet fighter. Its power unit represents the very crudest possible method of providing propulsion by jet reaction and, though undeniably clever in its stark sim plicity, it is chronically inefficient and, per-se, terribly wasteful of fuel. The two Messerschmitt jet fighters also differ substantially from each other. The Me 262, like the He 280, employs the same general principle as our own Whittle unit and it burns some normal form of liquid fuel with oxygen from the air. The Me 163, on the other hand, employs a special liquid chemical fuel containing its own oxygen for com bustion and may therefore be more conveniently described
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