Why Stalin Didn't Want The ME-262 Copied (And What Happened Next)
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- čas přidán 13. 06. 2024
- The Soviet Union made a slow start in the jet age. They did, however, capture several examples of Nazi German jet fighters. This video investigates why they didn't simply copy and then develop the ME-262 and provides an overview of the twin-pod fighters that were developed as competition to the MiG-9.
Sources:
"Soviet Secret Projects - Fighters Since 1945" by Yefim Gordon and Tony Buttler
"OKB Ilyushin: A History of the Design Bureau and its Aircraft" by Sergey Komissarov, Yefim Gordon and Dmitiry Komissarov
"OKB Sukhoi: A History Of The Design Bureau And Its Aircraft" by Vladimir Antonov
Your video on this is a lot saner than mine ;)
I love your noble insanity. How the colonist could ever want to separate themselves from such lunacy I will never know.
Thank you for your content and the brilliant and hilarious way you put it forward. I really enjoyed your series on the bomber program during WW 2.
Is there any thought about discussing how the B52 will become a space bomber before it's retired?
Because he actually knows what he's talking about.
Thrashing @HardThrasher? Bummer. What a drag. 🫤
Having watched your video on the Me 262, it only got the name of wonder weapon because it barely worked before dismantling itself mid-air, leaving the V-2 as the only successful wonder weapon.
I have watched many of your videos and they seem deeply researched as well as being rather entertaining. Was just working my way through your Battle of Britain series again, in addition to the Me-163 recently.
Can we expect to see a collaboration between you and another CZcamsr? I could see you having a highly entertaining and well-researched collaboration with the @TheWarbirdMistress. She is a rare feminine military history CZcamsr and has done excellent work, mostly in the interwar aviation space. She is also Canadian and multilingual. Her most recent work has been a seriea on the Curtiss-Wright CW-21 interceptor, best known for its service over China against Imperial Japan.
The 262, although impressive, was already becoming obsolete, coupled with axial flow engines that couldn’t be manufactured with mature metallurgy, it really wasn’t as good as many people thought it was.
1947, 5 years after the first flight of the 262 and 3 years after its introduction, saw the first flight of both the Sabre and MiG-15. Aviation advancements from 1930 -1960 were bonkers. When a government issues requirements for aircraft to replace those that haven’t even flown yet, you know things are moving quickly.
Max speed clean test 262 624mph in 1944.
@@Eric-kn4yn And both engines would have been toast afterward.
Mig15 = Ta183 copy with a British engine
@@SoloRenegade there's no evidence for it being a copy of the Ta-183 that I've even seen. Tank went elsewhere, hence the Pulqui, which isn't much like a Mig-15.
@@wbertie2604 If Tank had gone to Russia, it wouldn't have been a copy.......
the fact you can't see the obvious resemblance to the Mig15, a dramatic departure from all previous Soviet designs... Soviets are legendary for copying. Even the Mig15 engine was British. It's not a 1-to-1 copy of teh Ta183, but things rarely are that close of a copy anyways, especially when the Ta183 never flew, thus the final form would have been different for Germany as well had they finished it.
The photo at time 1:10 should be very informative for those who refuse to accept the purpose of the wing sweep of the 262. This photo of a prototype clearly shows that at first only the outer panels were swept back from the originally straight design, which was done to change the relationship between the center of gravity and the center of pressure caused by engines that were heavier than planned. You can see the wing inboard of the engine remains straight. The whole point of sweeping the outer panel was to avoid changing the structure of the fuselage to move the wing attach point. The sweep of the inboard panel was added later simply by extending the line of the outer leading edge to add additional surface area at the front of inner panel, and the trailing edge remained straight.
By the way, the 262 wing was swept nowhere near 35 degrees, it was only 17.5, the same as the DC-3. 35 degrees is more like the F-86.
This is entirely correct. The first designs for the 262 in 1939 were straight wing until Messerschmidt got the actual specs for the engines which were more aft heavy than was realized -- they had only dealt with piston engines set way forward on the wings -- and to avoid a major redesign they simply swept the outer wings back a little. Later, when the crank winged prototypes were being landed severe buffeting developed that forced landing speeds to be increased above that desired. Tests of a large scale model in a wind tunnel (sometimes seen in newsreel footage) found that sweeping the inner wing leading edge solved that, thus the swept wing which was only to deal with the above issues, not increase level speed. Takes a lot more wing sweep to do that.
@@gregp6210 Since your information is exactly what I have, I suspect you also have Dan Sharp's very detailed book on development of the 262. I was wondering if you have another source that is anywhere near as thorough, and perhaps gets as much into operations as development.
Unrelated, but are you the same Gort who helped me fix up my Kenwood Ka-7060 on a audio forum?
@@gort8203 A book that discusses a lot of the above is the Smithsonian press (not longer in existence) volume on the 262, part of the series they used to do on aircraft they had restored and put on display. A few years ago Air & Space Magazine had a brief item on the 262 that made the typical mistake of saying the jet was the fastest WW2 fighter and that the swept wing was a major innovation. They ran my LTE noting it was the 363 rocket that was the fastest, and that the institution's own book debunked the myth of the swept wing (same for the 363, its wing sweep was needed for control purposes sans standard elevators etc., not for speed, some straighten wing jets like the last Meteor could do 600 mph). The big wind tunnel test model footage shows up in some programs on the 262. No aircraft designs back then were subjected to model tunnel tests, that started only after the war. Aircraft were designed by formula and by eye, which is a reason they could be designed and flown so fast.
@@gregp6210 Thanks. If that book was Smithsonian Press that means government funded and should be in the public domain now. Maybe I can find a PDF somewhere. I recently discovered a PDF of their "Carl Spaatz and the Air War in Europe", which can't replace my hardcover copy but is easier to search and copy text from.
Small note - in engineering we are taught first thing you do is look at solutions that already exist to avoid reinventing the wheel. And you use them or modify to fit you requirements or design something better. "Copying" something still needs to go trough same tests and validation as something original.
there is lot of advantages to iterative development
Yes I use the same principal in I.T. work. The first thing I do is study why a competitor is ahead then find ways to improve.
"I think" my generation called this "critical thinking"? and "I had" engineers from elect, mech, chem, and rocket scienticts as teachers, bosses, barbor's, neighbors, and friends, or family, in Downey Unified ca Lakewood Blvd or Clark, space shuttle, apollo, gemini, nike, any areo, you name it?
"I Think" Elon is a "Master!" of using old and known, with new and well planed! Tech blending for Max value, to effect, or liability?
No, that's not what is "taught first" in engineering. Apart from basic engineering theory, it is always encouraged to think originally and avoid fixations.
@@GilHezkia When designing or doing a project first thing you do. There, if its clearer now. Or you can disregard those and possibly end up like that Titan sub guy 😁.
I harbored the same question for years. The Soviet Russians pride themselves on being inventors and innovators and proud copyists. The Russians have no compunction about copying foreign technology, unlike the proud Americans, British, and French. But the Russians don't just copy for the sake of copying. They copy just the best. For example, the Soviets had the opportunity to reverse engineer and copy a captured American F-86A in 1952-53. But the Soviet Air Force declined. Their new MiG-17 Fresco was reaching operational status and it was faster and had a higher ceiling than the F-86A.
My opinion is that the Soviet test engineers and scientists adjudged the Me-262 to be an obsolete design by 1946. The Soviets felt they could do better with their own domestic designs, albeit heavily influenced by German aerospace technology. In this they were proved right with the MiG-15. The foolish British Prime Minister Clement Atlee provided the rest, free samples of the British Nene and Durwent jet engines which the Soviets reverse engineered and produced without paying royalties. Stalin thanked the British by calling them fools.
Good points - we should also consider how the soviets did not have to worry about being sued by the original design companies of all the technology they stole!
don't kid yourself.
the US, UK and France (might as well throw Germany in there too) *all* copy technology.
any product really.
freely and without compunction.
it is too expensive for some poor schmo to litigate a patent infringement.
those proceedings can take years.
the only ones who *do* pursue that sort of thing are the corporations with deep pockets.
and they are usually the ones who've bought the patents off of that poor schmo to begin with.
They copied the space shuttle (albeit with huge changes in the overall system design) just for the sake of copying and it was a huge waste of money right as the USSR was on the edge of collapse. They generally sucked at innovating and were always playing catchup to the West.
Oh come on all engineers and designers will start from a proven point. Then they improve on it. Then the politicians make the public believe it's an "all new" design
When Atlee allowed Rolls Royce to sell Nene engines to the Soviet Union they were hardly considered secret or state of the art. These engines and their build licences were not free. Britain was nearly bankrupt and both the Government and Rolls Royce needed foreign sales. Export dollars were at a premium. Argentina, hardly an ally, even acquired these engines. At this time Rolls Royce was working on the Avon, Armstrong Siddeley had the Sapphire and Bristol was working on the Olympus. Centrifugal Flow engines were considered yesterdays technology.
Conservative commentators now tend to criticize Altee due to the success of the Mig15 during the Korean War, but at the time it made economic sense. As for Stalin's reported comments, there is no documentation supporting this.
Meanwhile the B-29/Tu-4 team had to be absolutely faithfull to the B-29, even if they saw problems...
The only difference is that the Tu-4 is armed with 23mm auto-cannons instead of the 50s.
@@swenhtet2861that's the point!
Right down to copying field fitted battle damage patches apparently.
@@alan-sk7ky and bullet holes...
@@swenhtet2861no computer gun stations.
Oh.. Friday evening in Or-straya .. Grabs Whiskey, pours a generous shot.. settles down for some NAPFATG. It's the little things that keep me going.
Scotland, 11:00 AM... to early for whisky, grabs coffee.
An hour later in Northeast Florida, coffee it is.
The only non-German Me 262 that I like is the Kikka which is solely based on the manual of the fighter because the blueprints were sunk in a submarine so they remade almost the whole machine. Some said it handled better in low speeds thatn the 262 and had a smaller silhuette. Its maiden flight was 3 days before the first atomic bomb hit Japan thought
If my memory serves well
If my memory serves the Japanese version was not an exact copy. I think it was smaller in size and they used engines based on the BMW design instead of the jumo engines of the original.
@@daniellarge9784 like I said in my comment. It was based on one or more manuals on how to handle the Me 262. I didn't say it was a copy
An interesting thing was discovered about the shape of the 262 fuselage when one was stripped to make templates to repair others. The individual panels had only simple curves. There were no compound curve so that untrained people could build them. The simple curves gave rise to the fuselage having that odd cross sectional shape.
Thanks for the video. I was at WPAF base in Dayton and they had an engine on display. The ME-262 I was told was a maintenance hog. As much as people are in awe of the ME-262 it was not a credible fighting aircraft for what was needed and day-to-day operations. The numbers on the Spitfire Supermarine posted almost as good of numbers as the ME but didn't require the manpower and logistics to operate. The Soviets went with the British engine for their jets eventually for good reasons including higher reliability.
The Soviets were able to leapfrog aviation technology when proud socialist British Prime Minister Clement Atlee, believing the Soviet Union was a socialist brother-in-arms, freely gave samples of the superlative British Nene and Derwent jet engines to the Russians. The Russian jet fighter and engine programs had stagnated by 1947, unable to get past the German Jumo 004a turbojet engines. The Nene turbojet produced 5,000-lbs thrust compared to Soviet copies of the Jumo 004a producing only 2,100-lbs thrust. The Russians promptly began mass-manufacturing, that is, pirating British Nene jet engines without paying royalties to the British company that invented the Nene.
The result was the superlative MiG-15, utilizing WW2 German aerospace technology - the airframe of the Focke Wulfe Ta-153 - and pirated copies of the British Nene turbojet.
The MiG-15 would have wrested air superiority over northern Korea had it not been for the introduction of the F-86A Sabre, which actually was slightly inferior in performance.
Josef Stalin thanked the British by calling them, fools.
But don't blame the British wholly. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the RAF, the British Army, and the Defense Ministry all vehemently opposed handing samples of the Nene and Derwent jet engines to the Soviet Union. Just after WW2, new British prime minister Clement Atlee convinced the British People that now was the time for Great Britain to transition from a constitutional monarchy democracy to a constitutional monarchy socialist nation, that like the defunct Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, promised just about everything for free to all people.
@@jeffyoung60 Yes, summarized well. A friend who was an Atlee fan or apologist was a good wake-up call for Atlee but too late and at what cost? My uncle was drafted into the US Army and sent to the Korean War there. with a lot of other Allies many of whom died there or were wounded.
Always appreciative of anything featuring the 262 that acknowledges damn near everyone with an aviation industry was dicking around with jets and concepts for years.
You and Drachnifel have restored my faith in the sterling English spoken language along with all of its wonderful attributes such as clever construction of the sentences and some succulent satire and I’m glad to have come across this superb channel and I cheekily encourage you to narrate a few audiobooks if you’re interested and also have the time. Thanks again and best wishes.👏📚☘️
Agreed. I have to listen to the butchery of both English and my own language on a daily basis. It is nice to rest in an oasis of proper grammar and enunciation every once in a while.
I would care to add my admiration for both of these well spoken Brits, a joy to listen to.
Objectivly this is a fairly dry recitation of facts and numbers regarding some obscure, and frankly unimpressive, performance wise, aircraft that never quite made the cut. Subjectively, I could watch for hours, just fascinating. Thanks for the content.
Photos r good.
Detail dives tend to be dry, but insightful.
It's a bit like tax paperwork; boring to wade through but life effecting in result.
The common theme in early jet aircraft design is the lack of reliable engines
I cannot tell you how much I enjoy all your aviation videos. You lay out the facts and history so clearly, concisely, and entertainingly that it makes them compelling even if the chosen subject wasn't about my favorite aircraft. I served 7 years in the USAF and have a pretty good understanding of USAF aircraft history and have found everything you say is accurate. I also love that your videos are narrated by you and not a digital bot which I hate. Keep up the good work. BTW I love your English accent, it so reminds of my English grandmother.
You continue to exceed expectations. Great topic well done. Keep it up
Excellent presentation with so many pictures and diagrams of Soviet aircraft unknown to the 'West' for the length of the USSR's existence and then some. It is fitting you start off with the short films of the tail dragging prototype Me-262. Nice work!
Thank you for this upload!
The United States spend $3 Billion to develop the B-29 Superfortress. That is a full billion more than the Manhattan Project. The Bomber had 1 Million parts and was the most complex flying machine ever created. Stalin was able to "Intern" Four B-29's when they had to make emergency landings during a Missions on Manchuria. One B-29 was allowed to fly home with it's crew at the end of the war. Stalin had a B-29 taken apart completely with every piece laid out for a grand meeting with all of Russia's manufacturing companies required to attend. He assigned a part to every company that was required to copy that exact piece perfectly. The Soviets Debuted it's B-29 Superfortress clone that they called The Tupolev Tu-4 nicknamed by NATO "The Bull" in a soviet airshow.
The Soviet Union invited foreign observers, including Western military attaches, to the event. During the parade, three Tu-4s and a Tu-70 passenger version flew over the airfield at 600 feet. Western observers initially thought the aircraft were B-29 bombers that had been diverted to the Soviet Union during World War II. However, when a fourth Tu-4 appeared, the observers realized that the Soviets had reverse-engineered the B-29. The Tupolev Tu-4 was the USSR's Principal Strategic Bomber until the Mid 50's. The Chinese flew the Tupolev Tu-4 until 1988.
Do you want to recite the story of a bracket with a hole in it, the purpose of which the Soviets could not figure out but faithfully replicated? It turned out to be a cupholder. But I suppose it is just a tale.
Interesting information I did not previously know. Thanks!!
I love this type of content, well done.
This video was a treat. Not only was there a tail sitter version of the Me-262 but multiple examples of the Gigant glider version on the field.
The first prototype was a tail sitter, they switched to tricycle landing gear in the production version to keep the jet exhaust from chewing up the landing fields.
Everything built is based on a previous work then improved on. If examples of the previous work are obtainable. Politicians and the military brass make the public believe it is an all new exclusive design.
Well this was a good thing to wake up to and start my day with!
Man I wish, I haven’t slept yet
This is a wonderful and informative video. Thank you!
Thank you for a very good exploration into this subject. I find the evolution of early military jets to be fascinating.
It is interesting to see how quickly the relatively backward Soviet Union was able to adapt and develop modern technologies. The success of the Soviet space programs is perhaps the best example of this.
They stole a lot of it. During World War II the USSR had hundreds of agents in the UK and the U.S.
They obtained the famous Whitley jet engine developed by the British and had spies in U.S. jet aircraft manufacturing plants who stole blueprints, metallurgy, wind tunnel and other test results.
They got it all from the Germans. An exception is the B-29 they got a hold of and copied it bolt for bolt.
@@hertzair1186 dont know for other things, but the soviet space program was actually almost entirely home made, unlike the american one. the soviets legitimately did just develop rockets faster and better than the americans
The soviets were (are?) a dichotomy. Unable to feed their own people, and backwards in so many categories, yet produced some cutting edge subjects. No doubt massive Lend-lease and plundering Germany catapulted them forward several decades.
@@hertzair1186 Wernher von Braun is American? I guess not
Great video...👍
I was waiting for this notification
algo post, love your vids!
Speaking of Yak-28, would this qualify for its own video? I know it may not be entirely in your wheelhouse, but there are so many interesting variants!
Very cool video, but it would be nice if it used the correct measurement system for plane stats.
Great vid , Well researched an imaged , the Yak 15 " Tadpole " was a good description , the Me 262 is still one of my Favourite Jets Abiet its Short comings which I put down to other Failings within the German mish mash of Top heavy Mis Managment an the loss of gaining required Nickel for the Engines , Great vid .
The 262 acchieved a 5::1 kill ratio nevertheless.
Could ya make an video on the Horten Ho229? I'm still kinda confused about it....
The Gloster Meteor compared to the 262 was in squadron service earlier. Was in action earlier. Was more reliable than the 262. Had better quality. Most 262 never flew in service. The Luftwaffe lacked pilots and fuel. Where the 262 had limited advantage over the Meteor was in speed and the 262 looked better
Interesting you choose the footage of the tail wheel 262.
This example is an early tail dragger variant of the 262.
It was replaced by a tricycle layout for better control during takeoff.
Amazing, what do you think was the ratio of proposed and/or prototype designs to actual production aircraft? 10:1? 20:1?
I mean the czech built some and they still had major problems with them, especially with the engines
Frank Whittle patented both centrifugal and axial flow engines, Ohain in Germany copied Whittle's patents making a centrifugal engine but it went nowhere. Germany adopted axial flow rather than Ohain`s failure. Whittle realized that centrifugal was easier and it worked bringing in a jet engines that outperformed piston planes.
Metropolitan Vickers went ahead with axial flow R&D being well ahead of the Germans. Rolls Royce took on Whittle's design, improving it. The USA were given Whittle's designs. Post war France tried to make the German jet engines work properly and reliably, wasting years while Armstrong Siddeley went ahead with the Metropolitan Vickers design. RR made the Derwent and Nene, with the Nene in 1944 giving twice the thrust of any other engine on the planet. RR then made the excellent axial-flow Avon in 1950 the first reliable axial-flow engine, taking nothing from German failures. The Avon is still used today in ground based use.
The USSR tried to get the German BMW to work properly but gave up when they got the RR Nene. Czechoslovakia had some 262's after WW2, dropping the plane. All modern turbojet engines and planes owe their existence to the British designs not the German failures.
The two most important factors in aircraft design are the wing and the powerplant(s). Structure was a big consideration in the early era, but was more or less standardized by the 1940s.
Amazing research. I'm a true aviation history nerd, but I've never heard of most of these planes.
Thanks
Another banger video. Thanks for the consistently awesome content.
The service speeds of the 262 in combat was around 515 mph while RR Griffon powered Spitfires in 1944 could reach up to 480 mph, only 35 mph less. The 262 had poor maneuverability and control issues at high speeds at around 550 mph resulting in the tail surfaces locking driving the plane into the ground. The pilots were instructed not to go over 450 mph. The engines would stall if the throttles were opened too fast - a major flaw. The minor sweep of the Me 262's wing was never designed with the intention to gain high speed, it was to gain balance when fitting the engines. The inboard wings were almost straight with the outer wings swept.
The Meteor and 262 were major advances in technology at the time, but it's important to know what stood out. The Germans were facing fuel shortages in mid 1944. Their supplies of aviation fuel were cut off by the Soviets in the east. Without an adequate supply of aviation fuel the Luftwaffe's BF109, and FW190's would become useless. Germany had lots of coal mastering the manufacturing of J2 synthetic fuel which was suitable for jet engine use. The Luftwaffe invested in jet fighters and bombers from 1944 onwards as they had little option.
In the UK the advantages of jet engines were well known, yet propeller aircraft made in massive volumes were more than suitable, so the development of jet aircraft was never seen as vital to the war effort. Whittle's design was taken by the government so any other designer or company could use for their own designs leading to centrifugal flow engines by other companies like Rolls Royce, De Haviland as well as Whittle's Power Jets. Metropolitan Vickers were working on axial flow turbojets first running in 1940, with multiple types produced during the war for use in high speed launches and gensets.
There were *five* turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
*1) Centrifugal,* by Whittle (Rover);
*2) Centrifugal,* by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
*3) Axial-flow,* by Metro-Vick;
*4) Axial-flow* by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
*5) Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers.* The ASX by Armstrong Siddeley;
The Metropolitan Vickers designs were test flown in 1942 producing more thrust than anything Germany produced with a longer service life. The axial-flow were more expensive compared to the centrifugal designs with still development problems to solve, so being funded by the government they were never selected for any aircraft with cost being one of the rejection points. Metropolitan Vickers produced the first successful turbofan engines rated double anything Germany ever produced during the war. Also the turboprop engine found large-scale use post war because of its excellent fuel consumption.
I guess the date of the test flight gave Jakovlev high hopes.
What is "thorium radar"?
It's funny how all the planes that were mentioned got ruined by one guy
Good video nice to learn about soviet aircraft.
the reason for the 262 swept wings was down to luck not judgement .-because of the very long axial compressor jets -they needed to move the CG rearwards .It was not done to improve the transonic performance - the Meteor did not have this CG problem with its much shorter centrifugal compressor jets - so got conventional straight wings
But why 262 have sophisticated swept empennage
@@Eric-kn4yn they did it o match the wings 😁
@@malakibluntbut swept wings were not in original design they came later to fix CG problem empennage was swept from the start ? See crude meteor empennage and straight wings.
@@Eric-kn4yn many planes swept the tail (P-40, P-47...). more about aerodynamic efficiency and weight savings.
@@Eric-kn4yn "But why 262 have sophisticated swept empennage?" Probably for the same reason the Grumman F6F had one.
that 1 min and 19 sec dolly shot at the beginning
is pretty impressive for 1945(?).
Ultimately it was not as good as people thought.....and still think to this day
Its not that it wasn't good, it was very good against the aircraft it met in combat. But by 1945 it was already a dated design. Much better designs were already on the drawing boards, so it would have been counterproductive to copy the 262.
That is my piont@@gort8203
Yakovlev: Excellent plane, did you test if it can land on the bottom of the lake?
Have you ever thought of doing a video of the history of the afterburning jet engine?
ME-262 was downed by Kozhedub in La-7 without much effort. Soviets already were working on MiG-9 at that time too. No reason to copy ME-262. Moreover those were produced for a while in Czechoslovakia from leftover parts as mentioned in video, but were not exactly loved.
I saw the bomb under the protoype and thought you were gonna say "and the second protoype was destroyed in an accident..."
I was wondering if you were going to touch on the Beagle and the Firebar. At least there was a picture of the Beagle and a footnote on the Firebar. The Firebar reminded me of .. oh, why don’t you make this light bomber into an interceptor.
It's because they simply didn't have the capability, meaning Soviet production methods simply weren't up to the task. There was a similar situation with the StG-44 assault rifle. It made extensive and particularly ingenious use of stampings, the production of which is a high industrial art and not trivial. It takes quite a bit of finesse to engineer the dies to produce those stampings and to control the process to ensure the necessary quality. The Soviets ATTEMPTED to produce a copy, the Sudayev AS-44, which understandably ran into severe production issues. The project was a complete failure. It wasn't until after the war that the Soviets were able to complete a new assault rifle fit for Soviet production methods with the assistance of Hugo Schmeisser.
centrifugal flow engines were just more mature at the time vs axial flow and easier to integrate
The term "simply copying" in engineering is merely a contradiction because the involved effort is never simple and the final product is never a direct copy. Reverse engineering has become a popular and appealing narrative in modern aircraft histories, often giving the false impression that "copying" someone else's work is simpler, cheaper, faster, and more practical than creating your own design. However, in reality, reverse engineering can prove more costly, less efficient, and more troublesome than straightforward engineering. Generally, it is always better to design and engineer your own product rather than trying to understand the reasoning behind another engineer's designs, especially when that engineer is unavailable for questioning.
What are we looking at here? 17:14 🎉. I live for these drops 🎉.
Looks like the partially unmantled intake section of one of the planes turbojet engines with what I assume might be a small combustion engine starter unit - the 262 had such units housed similarly within its engines' intake cones
Okay I see here. It's the front stage of a centrifugal compressor. The cone covers the pumps on the front.. air goes in around those V-shaped structures . first, I thought it was a radar unit.
The concept of a tail-dragger jet fighter makes my brain itch.
Reverse engineering is not as simple as it looks. The US tried to reverse engineer the MG-42 and botched the job. The Tu-4 was far more complex and the USSR managed to credibly reverse engineer the B-29.
Except the Norden bomb sight...
A tool of questionable utility anyways
@@cheekibreeki4638 The Norden bomb sight was designed to work at 15,000 feet and in clear Midwestern weather. The way the Norden was used by the Army Air Force was as if you mounted a telescopic sight on a Thompson submachine gun and only fired it at distances between 500 yards and 1000 yards. The Navy paid to develop the Norden for its patrol and torpedo bombers--the PBY and the TBD (yes, the Devastator) as did the TBF Avenger--because these two torpedo bombers were employed as high-level (15,000 foot altitude) level bombers.
@@kimvibk9242the norden was an impressive tool from a technical perspective, but from a practical one, it really didn’t provide much of an advantage over other, far cheaper systems. And this fact was born out in German and British evaluations of the sight, both deciding that their own, far cheaper systems provided comparable levels of accuracy in the field.
From all the evaluations of bomber accuracy I have seen, the norden only ever approached its fabled level of accuracy after German interceptors and AA defenses had become all but a non-entity. Until then, the sight was comparable to others, but hardly seemed worth the Manhattan project levels of investment it received.
The M60 is the Americans trying to buy American, knowing that the Germans had the better weapon.
Now they just use the GPMG 😂
The MIG with the engines tucked under the fuselage looks a bit like a scorpion from below.
A pregnant scorpion!
Is the ME262 supposed to catch fire when it lands?
ultimatly, the Soviets made the right decision, the me 262's on-paper superiority over things like the Meteor was not really all it was cracked up to be. However, I must wonder that if they had ever tried to do something along the lines of the Me 262 Hg III with the pods merged with the main body and the swept wings if that would have had a significant impact on aircraft performance, or (more importantly) Soviet aircraft development in relation to twin jet and a potentially earlier adoption of axle compressor jets (though that was gonna happen soon anyway)
I’ll also add that Willy Messerschmitt was an ardent supporter of the single-spar wing and this had both its pros and cons (there were probably more cons)
Even in Nazi Germany ongoing desogns would have made the Me 262 obsolete if the war had somehow continued (and Berlin hadn't won the Nuke sweep stakes from Hiroshima). While the HO (or Go) 229 flying wings are a darling of many but I think the FW Ta 183 (which had won the contest against the Me P1901 for the next fighter) would have replaced the production of Me 262s if time allowed. However at the end of the day it was the lack of critical materials to make lasting and stronger turbo jet engines which was always going to cripple Germany's ability to keep up with the Allies.
Anybody else think those Su designs were influenced by the Bell P-39 and P-63? The Soviets loved their Cobraskis.
Interesting how much of a say Stalin had in the development of aircraft considering he never flew.
10:43 scrapping the prototype in '48 just shows, how much some people can hold a grudge (if squeezing out of the budget wasn't already a clear enough sign)
10:49 what were the afterburning RD-10F used on? MiG-9?
16:58 Yes, that seems perfectly in line with holding such a grudge...
21:08 Proof! See? There! 😂
It looks like the Soviet engineers took the tail design from the Bell P-63 “KingCobra”, and put it on the Su-9 aircraft.
The British sale of Nenes and Derwents comes up in almost every Soviet jet development story until the early 60s in some cases. Has to be one of the most monumentally poor decisions of the Cold War. Have you seen any information on the who and why? Was it a denial of the political situation, an attempt at preventing souring relations, a thumbing of the nose at the Americans, or simply a reflection on the desperation for hard currency at the time?
Britain was broke af and needed any cash it could get to pay back its debts to the US. The USSR was still seen as a friendly enough power, especially by the 1945 elected Labour government under Clement Attlee. The minister handling the sale, Stafford Cripps was left wing even by the standards of Labour at the time, so it's little surprising.
Axial flow was the future so it was assumed it didn't matter - money for stuff you'd never want to put in a modern fighter. Note that sales of axial flow engines -didn't- happen. That it was used successfully was a bit of a surprise.
It's also worth noting that the cold war was a lot colder when it happened and the policy changed completely six months later. And it wasn't as if it was universally supported within government anyway.
@@wbertie2604 excellent points thanks! Perhaps they didn't truly realize how badly behind Soviet jet development was. The Soviets certainly considered it a very large coup. As it happened, it certainly seems from the reading I've done the acquisition of the British technology gave them a 2 or even 3 year advance in capability from what they would've been able to produce domestically. I have a hard time believing they would've had the Mig-15 or an analogue available to have the effect they did on Korea.
@@joshkamp7499 that's also a good point. It was assumed by the UK that USSR jet engine research was further along given access it had to German research and researchers.
We had a Labour govt led by Clem Attlee. They regarded communists as 'friends'.
Whatever Soviets would field as their 0-gen jet fighters, would be made insignificant by MiG-15 anyway.
And all these pod mounted engines would be kind of maintenance nightmare.
262 with a tailwheel?
Early version.
Prototype, then they discovered pointing the burny bits at the ground wasn't such a good idea... Supermarine never got this memo.
@@FallenPhoenix86its a fleet aircraft. They point the nose up so it can take off. Same as their phantom
@@randomuser5443
That'll be why all other early naval jets were also tail sitters... oh... wait...
@@FallenPhoenix86they weren’t tail sitters, but well into the 60s naval aircraft had ridiculously tall front undercarriages
"The Me-262 itself has been endlessly covered elsewhere, so I'm not going to walk back over old ground."
Then proceeds to recite every spec of the Me-262. 🙄
"I don't want the Me262 copied!"
Proceeds to copy the Me262.
Honestly, the Soviet ability to reverse engineer something then improve on it is impressive.
Tossing an instant 🕳 on a competitors runway.😮
The MiG 15 was a German design with a British engine.
0:06 First guess : it sucked, cos the engines sucked, had poor ground clearance, and a bad tailplane
All jet engines suck 🤣.
Strange, they copied loads of other things such as B29s and early RR jet engines.
Mig15 = Ta183 copy with a British engine
One reason to copy the Germans above anyone else is that you're quite likely to end up "borrowing" some of their equipment in wartime. How nice to overrun an airfield and your stuff is magically already compatible.
Yep - and while I'm not sure it was the intent at the time, a lot of German engineering standards for basic equipment (power connectors being a good one, as cited in the video as well) were very likely to end up becoming standards at least in Europe, if not globally. You can also see the shift in ergonomics - Soviet aircraft control columns went from spade grips like the Brits used, to a copy of the Bf 109 stick (and this general form factor was kept for a very long time, occasionally adding or removing buttons as needed and retaining the cool-as-hell flip-up trigger design). There was also the universal colour-coding of gauges and hoses, though I'm not quite sure who developed that idea first. Yellow for fuel, brown for oil, blue for oxygen, red for fire extinguishing/emergency systems, etc. Lucky for them that they didn't end up copying WWII-era US cockpit designs...
The Me 262 was performant yes but not rugged at all! Its engines have a few tens of hours of lifetime at best! soviets always wanted rugged low maintenance stuff.
"I'm Grady and today on Practical Engineering, we're going to reverse engineer the first Jet fighter. [State Anthem of the Soviet Union plays]"
*There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true.* The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German *axial-flow* turbojets never worked as they wanted, being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets.
The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever *turbofan* in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a *centrifugal* design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produce more thrust than an axial-flow in WW2 as the Ne e dud in 2944. Centrifugal was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first _reliable_ axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality alloys unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept failures. The failures were essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheating problems which precluded fuselage installation.
*The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters?* The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine at the time with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures.
The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single-engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane in squadron service. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. *The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262.* The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started _claiming_ kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. *But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was.* The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The nosewheel was unreliable. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors are still used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
👍
Yak-28: Nothing wrong!
LFAX-9: Man...
One of the greatest blinders of all time.. was Britain gifting jet engine tech to Russia.. within a few years the Russians were using them against British pilots over Korea …
That's more like a copy of the Nakajima Kikka than than 262. Or both the Soviets and Japanese looked at the 262 and reached the same conclusions separately.
Definitely separate development. The Soviets had some captured 262s to work from. They had no Nakajima Kikkas to work from. There was only one Kikka prototype, and neither it nor any of the engineering development work that went into it would have been available to the Soviets at all.
@@IsaacKuoI didn't mean that they directly copied it, just that it looks more like that then a 262. The video is about it bring a copy of the 262, not of the copied anything it was the Kikka. Which they might have known the general appearance of, not having any technical data doesn't mean they don't at least know what it looks like. But it's just as easy to assume that they made the same choices the Japanese did for the same reasons.
Copying makes an very big part in the history of flight development everyone did everyone does.
Man I'm here early!
just "think of" any SU 11 with those Huge Cannons! Also used in "ground attack?" think of 57 0r 75mm? auto, nevermind the smaller ones, all with Prox fussed ammo? WHOOOW? ARTY from God?
and not much good hi speed AA at the time.
24 second after upload
Average service life of a 262 engine
Why reinvent the wheel when it has already been invented
only wwii german designs worth copying were submarines and rockets apparently
WOuld have been nice if you would have included metric units into the video. It simply sucks to always pause the video in order to translate that unintelligable gibberish into seomthing that makes sense.
He failed to copy the one thing that was so advanced in Me262, the swept wing?
The aerodynamic advantage of a swept wing for transonic flight wasn't widely understood at the time and at any rate, jets of the era would only reach those speeds in a dive as they had quite poor thrust output. The Me 262 wing sweep had nothing to do with improving its performance, it was because the centre of mass shifted during development and they had to move the centre of pressure accordingly, but moving the wing attachment point further back on the fuselage would necessitate an almost total redesign of the whole aircraft. They instead used a fairly time-honoured trick and just swept the wings back - other aircraft had already done this, usually just by sweeping the leading edge rather than the entire wing.
By the time the 262 was entering service the potential of a swept wing was just starting to be realised, but not because of the 262 - if any major German designer deserves credit for the widespread adoption of swept wings on jet aircraft, it's Alexander Lippisch, not Messerschmitt.
Avia S-92 / CS-92
Modern western fighters are the same: impressive but very maintenance intensive and very expensive.
They also work better for the most part
@@randomuser5443 but in a real war war everything is bombed, you need something simple that can land on a field and be repaired with basic tools.
The US made fighters are only good for the US: a rich country far away from harm that can bring equipment back to repair and which has a huge logistics infrastructure.
@@thelovertunisia US airbases don't get bombed.
Tends to be the case when fighting farmers round the world
Is ot true that they also got Patent rights about Jet engines from rols royce?
a lot of Soviet designs were great...on paper...in reality not so much....for example: T34 was fast, on paper, but there was no Soviet Superman so no one was ever able to get it into 4th gear and a lot of people could not even get it into 3rd gear...
I get fed up of the supposed superiority of the Me 262. In reality it was a dead end and deeply compromised. Its flat out speed and armament were more than let down by it's awful climb rate, lower ceiling, and poor engines that gave it a thrust/weight ratio far worse than any other early jet fighter. Had it faced Meteors or Shooting Stars it would have been lucky to get a shot off without total surprise and its opponents flying low.
4k ft minute for 44/45 was excellent for a/c.
@@Eric-kn4yn Much slower than early P-80s or late war Meteors.