Meteor F.III or Me262- Which is better?

[venomvixen]

I'd rather the Vampire to the Meteor (my DeH bias aside)

The Goblin was a very solid little engine especially compared to the Whittle unit in the meatbox

(Derwents didnt show up untill the post war Mk3 me thinks)

[Procopius]

Would the Meteor, P 80 and even Vampire stand against an Ta 183?

I think it's pretty facile to assume the allies would just blithely develop the same postwar aircraft they built during a time of financial stringency as the wartime industry was wrapped up, instead of working on fighters to counter any German follow-ons to the Me262 had the war continued.

[Chris Thomas]

I'd rather the Vampire to the Meteor (my DeH bias aside)

The Goblin was a very solid little engine especially compared to the Whittle unit in the meatbox

(Derwents didnt show up untill the post war Mk3 me thinks)

The 616 Sqn Meteors which saw operational use in April/May 1945 were Derwent-powered Mk.IIIs.

CT

[Niles]

An interesting topic. Several months ago I acquired a copy of Axel Urbanke's book Green Hearts - First in Combat with the Dora 9 published in the late 1990s about III/JG54 from the time it was re-equipped with the Fw-190D-9 in September 1944 to the end of the war. This book is a thoroughly researched day by day account of the operations of III/JG54. One of the chapters covers the assignment of two squadrons of the group as airfield cover for the Me-262s of Kommando Nowtny in October and November of 1944. Kommando Nowotny was the first operational unit to take the Me-262 into combat other than the test unit at Lechfeld that operated a small number of Me-262s during the summer of 1944. A number of interesting insights regarding the Me-262 operations come out of Herr Urbanke's research shedding light on the Me-262 unit's operational failure.

The idea that the Me-262s were flown by Germany's best pilots does not appear to be true. While the last Me-262 unit, Galland's JV44 was composed mostly of very experienced pilots, that is not the case for Kommando Nowotny. There was a core of experienced pilots from the Lechfeld test unit in Kommando Nowotny, but the majority of the pilots were just ordinary fighter pilots who had volunteered to fly the jets.

The aircraft losses due to mechanical failure and accidents was very high. Although I didn't try to take a count of each type of loss, it appears that the unit's losses due to mechanical failure and accidents was at least as high as the losses in combat. Nosewheel failures stand out in my memory. My impression is that the Me-262 when deployed in late 1944 was as technically immature as the airframe was advanced.

Kommando Nowotny was never able to put any significant number of its Me-262s into the air at the same time. Typical sorties were around four aircraft at best. With the complete American and British air superiority in their airspace, the Me-262s were like guerilla fighters snapping at the periphery of the Allied air armadas operating over Germany and could achieve little. Although I didn't go paragraph by paragraph through the chapter on these operations and count victories and losses in combat it appears that it was about one to one. Not impressive at all, but not surprising when you consider the number of Me-262s in the air at any one time and the numbers of their opponents.

The choice of the airfields at Achmer and Hesepe for Kommando Nowotny by the Luftwaffe planning staff was a huge mistake that contributed to the failure of the unit to achieve any significant results. These airfields were right under the approach routes for the Allied aircraft flying into Germany making them vulnerable to constant airfield attacks by American fighters.

There was a lack of sufficient tactical planning and doctrine for the employment of the aircraft. They were figuring things out as they went along.

The Me-262 was simply too late and there were too few of them to have any useful role in the air war. It is a reminder of the German proverb: "Too many hounds are the death of the hare."

Edited June 6, 2014 by Niles

[venomvixen]

The 616 Sqn Meteors which saw operational use in April/May 1945 were Derwent-powered Mk.IIIs.

CT

So me thinked wrong! (thanks for the correction)

That would put the Meteor streets ahead in the engine reliability department.

I have a copy of the pilots notes for the Derwent engined Mark 3 and other than the usual "avoid frequent rapid throttle changes"

there is no warnings etc that stand out regarding engine management when compared to some.

(Reading the start procedure for the Supermarine Attacker one would be forgiven thinking the pilot needed a cup of tea and a lie down after

wrestling that brute)

I wonder how many Meteor engine failures were due to rough handling the engines V engines self detonating.

[Edgar]

Tempests were credited with more than 800 V1s destroyed. If the resources put into developing and deploying the Meteor I and III had been put into building and fielding more Tempests, the odds are that not only would these 9 V1s have been shot down anyway but so might the others that got through due to jammed guns on the jet.

1/. You can't switch production at the drop of a hat; the Tempest production line was flat out, and you can't build Tempests from Meteor jigs.

2/. 4-8-44 there were 6 Meteors in service, and on 11-1-45 616 Squadron had only 9; on 28-2-45 total Meteor production reached 45, of which 20 were Mk.I, and 10 of the Mk.III had Derwent engines. Difficult to see how cancelling those numbers would have made much difference.

3/. The Air Ministry placed emphasis on the Meteor because they needed something that at least had a chance of intercepting jet bombers, which no prop-driven aircraft could; they were looking beyond the V1.

4/. The Derwent was cleared for operations 21-2-45, but the Meteor was not cleared for offensive operational use until 28-3-44, since the authorities didn't want to risk our better-quality engines falling into German hands, so they were kept back for defensive use only.

It's easy to be wise after the event; the Air Ministry was always trying to think ahead, using a "best guess" method.

Edgar

[Giorgio N]

Personally I can't consider the shooting down of 9 V-1s as a proof of the usefulness of the Meteor. Had the Meteor not been in service, these would have been intercepted by something else, maybe with even better chances of a good interception. The potential victims of these weapons would have had to thank something else, but I'm pretty sure that the RAF would have responded well to those attacks even without the Meteor.

At the same time I'm convinced that a choice of not developing the Meteor in favour of more conventional types would have been a big mistake ! It was clear at least to some that the jet age was dawning, the RAF could simply not overlook a jet powered fighter and such a type had to be developed. Not only there was the risk of not being able to intercept the future jet bombers, but there was the risk of being left behind in the overall technological capability of the country.

There's another extremely positive impact the Meteor has had that I feel worth mentioning: the type was exported in good numbers after the war and this brought much needed money (and raw materials) into the British economy in the immediate postwar years. I know, many will not give much importance to this, but I believe that this contribution to reconstruction of the Nation economy is probably even more important than the results of the military actions the aircraft was involved in.

[wellsprop]

It does seem the greatest advantage the Meteor had was it's reliability. Had some decent firepoqer and reasonable performance too!