The wings weren’t swept back by accident. The horizontal stabiliser was also swept back and it doesn’t have engines hanging on it. The Germans had supersonic wind tunnels and were perfectly aware of the benefit of and pioneered swept back wings. Pilots reported that the 262 had beautiful flying characteristics as well as being 120mph faster than any allied piston aeroplane, confirmed by Capt Eric Brown at the RAE. The allies after the war took a Messerschmitt wing plan off the shelf and applied it to the F86 Sabre, and the Russians did the same with the Mig 15.
Fantastic story regarding the first encounter between the fantastic Mosquito and equally fantastic Me 262. Nice to hear somebody narrate clearly. Thank you John Summerfield.
Despite everything said about other aircraft, Adolph Galland who was in charge of the Luftwaffe said the mosquito was the Allied plane that gave them the most trouble, they came in low & by the time they were detected they had gone.
Both aircraft are so beautifully constructed! Never heard that story of the first encounter of the ME262 by the RAF, the story told very well indeed, thank you Sir!
@War Child Mosquito had the lowest mortality rate of any allied warplane. If the pilot dies, so too must the aircraft, but the pilot may survive at the expense of the plane.
He didn`t claim a victory,he simply asked for the possibility of having a victory claim .He was aware,without witnesses or the Mosquito wreck found it was nearly impossible to get an official confirmed victory.
Excellent presentation. Thank you. Adolph Galland commanded JV44, an Me 262 unit, and spoke of his assignment by Hitler. Galland: "I am sure he had the thoughts, this is better than letting suicide. The chance to be killed in the last ten missions, the last ten missions, was very high. But we didn't pay too much attention to it. In this conditions and in this time, to be killed, was nothing, to us." Johannes Steinhoff was also a member of JV44: "We were going to fight to the very end, having the good feeling that we had done something, we died, being a leader within the frame work of, well, our responsibility as soldiers." These were brave men. No more war.
I had the privilige to meet a canadian pilot who flew photo recon mosquitoes. He was in his 90's. I asked him if he had faced a 262, he did. "So Bill, obviously you survived the encounters. How did you pull it off?" Bill answered, " I would bring her down and fly as close to the ground as I could. The 262 was too fast and it would always overshoot." So I looked at him and said, " Balls to the wall?". All of a sudden Bill looked like he was 19 again and with a huge grin replied, "Balls to the wall." I will never forget this chance encounter for the rest of my life.
Thank you for tell the story. The Wooden Wonder and the Swallow (Swalbe) are my 2 favourite aircraft in WW2, both outstanding and unique in their own way.
F/O Lobban was again flying on 25 March 1945, this time with F/L Stuart Mackay (my father) as pilot. They were flying out of RAF Benson 544 Squadron in Mosquito #MM283 on an operation to photo the area between Lubeck and Stettin. Over Peenemunde they were attacked by a Me 262 and this time the 262 was successful and shot them down.They crash landed 5 miles from the Russian lines. After several days locked up in the local guardhouse they were eventually transferred to Stalag Luft 1. There they shared a hut with the crew of a Canadian Liberator. Their experience in the camp was recounted by the pilot of the Liberator F/O Kennith Blyth in his book Cradle Crew. He recounts" Lobban and Mackay were intercepted by the fast German ME 262. The Mosquito's top speed was only 450 mph. While trying to escape Jock and Mac were hit by the German fighter; their rudder was badly damaged, and their starboard engine caught fire. Mac put the Mosquito into a dive: he felt that by going close to the deck he could evade the fighter and at the same time put out the fire. The German Me followed him down. At a low level the Mosquito was hit again by ground fire from ship defences. Jock and Mac were forced to ditch in the water near Albaek off the coast of Denmark. To their surprise, when they got out of the aircraft, the water was only a few feet deep. Their dinghy inflated but they waded to shore. One of the ships that had shot at them was the famous battleship Lutzow..." " Since both Jock and Mac were uninjured, they decided to set out for the Russian lines. but the isthmus they were on was heavily defended, so they were soon captured." "Jock was Mac's fifth navigator and Mac was Jock's eleventh pilot. Whoever said the PRU (Photographic Reconnaissance Unit) was apiece of cake ?" They were liberated by the Russians in May 1945.
Sorry to say,but Albaek is more than 300 km away from Peenemünde ,the next danish coast 80 km to the west..Swinemünde is locatet 25 km east of Peenemünde.Lützow was send to Swinemünde from Danzig on April 8th.
My grandfather, the late Wing Commander H.A Forbes,flying out of Upwood for 139 Jamaica squadron was shot down in his Mosquito 27 March 1945 by an Me-262. His pilot Andre van Amsterdam parachuted first, and was sadly never seen again. My grandfather was eventually captured and also taken to Stalag Luft 1 so almost certainly would have met your father. Shortly before his death my grandfather was put in touch with the pilot who shot him down and they exchanged correspondence. Incredibly, in 2019 I discovered that pilot was still alive and was able to exchange some emails and letters before making a trip to the site of the POW camp.
Great video and a great story :-) I have been to Cosford many times (yep a bit of an aircraft nut!) and can honestly say its a fantastic museum. It has a wide range of Aircraft from the pre war era right up to modern times. The highlight for me is the TSR2. This aircraft looks futuristic now, you can only imagine what it looked like in the 60's
Great presentation and historical information on both aircraft. I’ve never heard of the first Jet engine versus piston engine shoot down being inaccurate before and with plenty of information to support it. Thanks so much.
First time I hear about why the Messerschmitt has a swept wing, sort of by coincidence. The theory of using a swept wing for drag reduction was already introduced in 1930. Dr. Busemann pioneered the theory in 1935 and was confirmed in Gottingen in 1939. Willy Messerschmitt was informed of the findings in december 1939. Development of the Me262 started in April 1939. First flight was in April 1941 with a conventional engine in the nose. Pictures suggest that it was already equipped with swept back wings. Fascinating stuff.
The fact that the outer wings were swept further back to restore the centre of gravity, is well documented. However, the story told here is simplified for the sake of brevity.
Thank you for your comment. Now the remark makes more sense to me. Could have been solved by choosing better wording. Takes a view seconds not extending the video much.
it's great that you mention not only the names of the Mosquito crew, but also the name of the Me 262 pilot. it gives this talk a humane aspect - you realize that your foe is not an inhuman machine (tank, aircraft etc.), but there's a living, breathing human being inside, and even if he's your military enemy, he still has his own history, his own family etc. it's much harder to hate and kill each other when we realize it, and it's much harder to wage a blood-thirsty war if we realize that we all are for the most part human beings, capable of mutual communication and understanding, not just some tin soldiers sitting inside of a disposable tank or bomber aircraft.
@@davidhipkinsable Nearly two years between first flight of a German Jet and that of a British one. Me-262 flew on Jet power well before the Meteor (Gloster's chief Test Pilot refused to clear the Meteor for full scale flight trials until the engines were powerful enough to allow the aircraft to safely fly on a single engine). Two days between first attempted combat by a Me-262 (25th July 1944) and that of a Meteor (against a V-1) on 27th July 1944.
Thank you for the great presentation of the Me 262 I have visited the beautiful RAF Museum in Cosford many times and it is always interesting to see new exhibits. I have still one question. What happened to the Me 410, and where is it now to visit? In 2017 I saw it in Cosford and in 2019 it disappeared.
You are on the list! Fascinating video and many thanks for bringing this formerly unknown (to myself) encounter to my attention. My nearest air museum is the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, where they used to have a Mosquito FB variant, complete with AI radar aerials, and which moved to the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre in 2017.
Two of the loveliest aircraft of WWII. The mosquito still takes my breathe away. We have one being fully restored just near Melbourne Australia. I will go along to check both it and a Sopwith Camel in full glory.
Thanks for sharing this informative and interesting story. Both the Mosquito and the Me 262 were incredible aircraft. I hope to visit your museum in the future. Cheers from Thailand! 👍😁👍
Very informative video Joe, two extraordinary aircraft and even more extraordinary men in those aircraft. I love to hear more from you guys at Cosford.
Very similar story by a SAAF Mosquito from 60 Squadron: On August 15, 1944, we learned it wasn't. On that day Captain Salomon ("Pi") Pienaar one of South Africa's most brilliant pilots, as he was to prove then and after the war as head of South African Airways, and his navigator, Lieutenant Archie Lockhart-Ross, took off for the Munich area. Both expected this to be a routine job, although opposition was usually hotter over this part of Southern Germany than Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Rumania or any other country in 60 Squadron's field of operations. Airfields, marshalling yards, factories were to be the targets-all pinpoints familiar from previous sorties. They would keep a sharp look-out for fighters, not let the flak upset them, and get away quickly as soon as the job was done. As they approached Gunzberg/Leipheim airfield near Munich at 30,000 feet and 360 m.p.h., Pienaar did a couple of turns to either side to ensure no fighters were creeping up his tail, then turned on to target with Lockhart-Ross over the bombsight. As Pienaar levelled out he had another quick look in his rear-view mirror. A twin-engined aircraft was closing in rapidly. Immediately he slammed both throttles wide open, dropped his wing tanks and began a turn to starboard. Simultaneously the enemy aircraft opened fire from 400 yards and Pienaar saw pieces fly off his aircraft as it flicked into a spin, out of control, with Lockhart-Ross pinned in the nose by gravitational force and the port engine jammed at full throttle. Had he turned to port-as he suspected the enemy would expect him to do-he would have been blown out of the sky. For 11,000 feet Pienaar fought with his wounded aircraft before finally bringing it under control at 450 m.p.h.-to find the pilot of the phenomenal German aircraft poised for another attack and part of his own port wing and tail unit shot away. Pienaar also discovered he could turn only to port and that he would have to fly with the control column hard over to the right. It was a time for great skill and cool nerves. Pienaar had both. With Lockhart-Ross out of the nose and reporting the enemy's position from the top blister hatch, Pienaar outflew the enemy pilot in 11 more attacks in the next 35 minutes, turning inside him off the stern attacks and, on the final head-on attack, trying to ram him. By then both pilot and navigator had identified their foe as a jet-propelled Me. 262, which they had read about in secret reports. It was painted silver with black crosses below the mainplanes, the usual cross on the fuselage and a swastika on the tail. And it had a long nose, clipped wings, underslung engines and a teardrop-type cockpit cover. Its speed was phenomenal. Had the Mosquito been armed "at least twice during the attacks he made the enemy would have been a sitting target for me", said Pienaar. The action had taken the Mosquito some 90 miles to the south of Gunzberg when the engagement was broken off and Pienaar found refuge in a cloud for his juddering aircraft. But the dangers were not yet over for the two South Africans. With the radio and almost all the instruments unserviceable, both throttles jammed and, with 500 feet to spare over the Alps, they limped low over Northern Italy and down the coast to San Severo, where Pienaar put down a perfect belly-landing when the wheels would not go down. They had fuel for only another seven minutes' flying. Pienaar and Lockhart-Ross were given immediate awards of' the Distinguished Flying Cross. Their colleagues were delighted at this honour. They were also apprehensive: the survivors had probably brought back the answer to what had happened to other lone recce aircraft in the area. Those that had not come back.
My Father, Flt Lt. J.W.Rothenbush,DFC,flew Halifax and Lancaster bombers for 434 Sqd RCAF and on March 31 1945 on a mission to Hamburg they were attacked twice by a 262 Jet. I remember as a kid, Harry Saul,his mid upper telling the story of not being able to swing his guns across fast enough to hit this insanely fast aircraft which had no propellers????
I actually sat in a real ME262 at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio about 10 years ago. Back then my dad worked as a volunteer at the museum & once a year they had an employee appreciation day at the museum & opened up several aircraft so I climbed in the ME262. I was surprised how few gauges there were in the cockpit.
The best all around aircraft of ww2 imo, about 6 different roles , and the fastest for about 2 or 3 years The Wooden Wonder , and its little brother first flight 1944 The Hornet was even faster at about 475mph .
They should have SUPPORTED jet engine inventors. That eternal "investing nothing is cheaper" mentality of capitalism, it really is a problem. Men who can finance R&D say no. And we almost lose a war, thank you.
I really enjoyed this bit on the Mosquito even though I was sad to hear that the Lieutenant died during the landing. The gentleman doing the presentation is quite accomplished and does a fine job but I think he would be better served by an investment in quality audio gear. I suspect this piece was shot on an iPhone. Modern cell phones are OK for shooting home movies but for a production shoot such as this one, not optimal. One of the most difficult challenges in making movies is recording good audio. #1 option would be to use a decent shotgun mike on a boom. You can do this with a one man crew by attaching the mike boom to a stand. Secondarily, for most of the shots, the shotgun can be attached to the camera. #2 option would be to get a decent wireless mike and hang it on the announcer. Keep up the good work. You have a marvelous museum!
5:29 They consider us stupid ! The me262 had not only a swept wing but also horizontal and vertical stabilizer even more swept. For CG issues there would not have been a need to design swept tail surfaces. The horizontal stabilizer with a 7 degree pitch up trim range to meet the torque of the n-wave. Every modern airliner has such features. Do they believe we are all stupid ?
Great presentation - my only concern would be to use some noise cancelation or better / other mic. The noise is as loud as the voice - this is somewhat distracting. Besides that - top video! :)
I think the docent is actually in error. When they discovered they had to go with the heavier Jumo engines instead of the BMW engines they had to modify the design. What they did was sweep the wing section outside of the engines backward. This moved the aerodynamic center backwards to maintain stability. The first Me-262 had wings that were straight to the engines and then swept backward. After they built this preproduction version, they decided to sweep in inner wings in line with the outer wings.
i used to volunteer at the museum whilst in train fas photographer for the rafi used to work on the Afro lincoln Rf398 which can be seen in the background
At 00:36 and throughout, Flight Lieutenant Wall is transcribed correctly but narrated as Flight Lieutenant HALL. Got to say that those were two epoch-making aircraft both beautiful as well as brilliantly effective. The ME-262 is elegant and rather eclipses the nearly contemporary Gloster Meteor for looks as it manages to be rakish and svelte around the nose and fuselage whereas the Meteor is more dumpy. One can only speculate how a meeting between to of those might have turned out.
The Russian "copy" Su-9 had straight wings which pretty much confirms that the swept wings on the 262 was not really for anything performance related at the time. The Japanese Kikka also had straight wings. The US P-80 was faster than the 262 and had straight wings. However, if you wanted to fly over about 620 mph you needed swept wings for optimum high speed flight. Due to thrust limitations the 262 was never there. However, there is no question that German swept wing research assisted both the Soviets and the Allies in the late 40's when they developed high enough thrust in their engines to challenge the the straight wing air frames. Note that even when the swept wing F9F Cougar was developed from the straight wing F9F Panther the Cougar was given an additional 1,000 lbs of thrust. When one compares the FJ1 straight wing Fury which was developed into the swept wing FJ-2 Fury and F-86 the FJ1 Fury had 2,000 lbs less thrust than the much higher performing swept wing aircraft.
The principle was well understood. However, the original design had only moderately swept back wings. The wings were further swept back in order to restore the centre of gravity. The story told here is simplified for the sake of brevity.
The PR Mk. 32, a lighter version of the PR Mk. XVI with extended wingtips was designed and built in response to the threat posed by German jet fighters. It could operate regularly at altitudes in the vicinity of 40,000 feet (service ceiling 42,000 feet) which made it somewhat harder to intercept. Only five were built, the first entering service in early December 1944.
Were the black and white pictures of the ME262 taken by the Mosquito in question or is that just a taste of what they must have saw? Were the pictures even taken by allies during the war?
This was so interesting a must see. A lot of people have it wrong about WW2 aircraft because of exaggerations especially the P45 claiming sound barrier in dives that is impossible to pull out from because of the type of tail that would had broken off. As the de Havilland DH 112 Venom test crash proved sadly. We know the Napier Sabre engine was 2500 HP to over 3500HP then the sea fury piston engine Bristol Centaurus engine over 5000HP. very strange claims of many aircraft. de Havilland Vampire Jet fighter First flight 20 September 1943 Introduction 1946 Not used in WW2 even though never used in 1944 with a top speed of 540mph
LOL. the story about the wing sweep gets my goat. I think that it was concocted by Americans who want to steal the credit of being the first to use swept wings. To counter that argument, i would point out that a piston engined prototype of the ME262 was in flying trials before the jet engines were ready. This prototype had swept wings from the start. The Tail plane is swept. The rudder is swept. The nose is extended such that a 45 degree cone with apex at the nose misses the wing tips. Taken as a whole, it is quite clear that Willy Messersmitt had a good understanding of transonic flight and took precautions to delay the effects as far as possible into the performance envelope. Please consider the evidence that the Americans came second in this race by about 3 years.
The principle of swept back wings was well known. However, the Me 262 was originally designed without (much) swept back wings. The outer wings were swept back further to restore the centre of gravity. These facts are all well documented by RAF Museum documentation.
@@RoyalAirForceMuseum In other words you agree that the outer wings were swept from the start. The sweep was extended to the inner wings in a design adjustment. I disagree with your point above. At the time compressibility phenomina was not well understood in the USA or UK but multiple German designs has delta or swept wings.
My brother-in law,Miller lumsden, was a pilot of a Mosquito photo-reconnaissance Mosquito. He was shot down and killed on the 11th of November,1944.I would like to find out where he was shot down, by whom and any further relevant information, for which I would be very grateful .
It doesn't seem likely that the hatch was shot off by cannon fire as the explosion of even one 30 mm shell (the Me 262's MK 108 cannon only used High Explosive Incendiary and mine shell rounds) in that position would have almost certainly riddled the cockpit and crew with shrapnel and shell fragments at a minimum.
The British Gloster Meteor was arguably superior to Me262. A lack of cobalt for high-temperature steel alloys meant the German designs were always at risk of overheating and damaging their turbines. The low-grade alloy production versions of the Junkers Jumo 004, designed by Dr. Anselm Franz and which powered the Messerschmitt Me 262 would typically last only 10-25 hours (longer with an experienced pilot) before burning out; if it was accelerated too quickly, the compressor would stall and power was immediately lost and sometimes it exploded on their first startup. Over 200 German pilots were killed during training. The axial compressor was first demonstrated in England, the Germans were the first to get a production model running. While the Allies used centrifugal compressors because they were more reliable and better understood at the time. That’s part of the reason why the ME262 had to have entirely new engines every few hours. Axial jet technology wasn’t ready. It’s yet another example of the Nazis pouring scarce resources into on paper war-winning weapons using technology that wasn’t ready. The father, as we know it, of the turbo jet was British inventor Frank Whittle. Long story short, the British defense ministry rejected Frank Whittle’s design in part due to reviewing engineers at Armstrong-Whitworth pointing out, correctly as it turns out, that a turbo jet engine would be fundamentally inefficient. Instead Whittle patented the design, and not being top secret, the concept greatly influenced the Nazi design team led by Hans Ohain. Engineers at Armstrong-Whitworth, drawing upon their criticism of the Whittle concept, began development of the first axial-flow turbojets and the first turboprops. And it is this technology family that led directly to today’s turbofan jet engine. The Whittle design proceeded in private development, eventually being taken over by Rolls-Royce. By 1944, the Armstrong-Whitworth design developed higher thrust with superior throttle control, and the Powerjet/ Rolls- Royce centrifugal flow turbojet has proven itself to be far more reliable than the competing Nazi jet projects, the Jumbo 004 and the BMW 003. Steel is the wrong material from which to build jet engines. Given time, steel will always fail. It fails because the iron in steel sublimates out of the alloy, essentially turning the metal to Swiss cheese on a microscopic level. The general term for such long term metal fatigue is “creep.” In the 1940’s, no one knew that steel would inevitably fail given the temperatures and pressures in jet engines. The correct material that makes jet engines actually practical, and not simply impossible, is nickel alloy, which was a British invention, designed by the British jet design teams. There is no indication that the Nazi design teams ever understood that steel was never going to work, no matter how much they modified their design. The fact that nickel alloys were the solution was not at al intuitively obvious and the Nazis weren’t doing much in the way of R&D to discover the problem. The Nazis two major production jet engines never managed to last more than 25 hours. You can’t win a war when you have to replace, not merely one but two engines, the most critical and expensive component of an aircraft, every few hours. The icing on the cake is that the Nazis didn’t have access to sufficient quantities of nickel, courtesy of theRoyal Navy blockade, even if they somehow discovered that steel was never going to work.
WW2, all countries turning out fighters one after another -then upgrade - then a new plane each time the plane gets a little faster then " BAM " one shows up 120 mph faster than your fastest plane & you see it first hand and there are no prop's.................... had to be little disconcerting.
The Me 262 was just 92 mph faster than a Spitfire but since that was a 1943 Spitfire and a late 1944 Me 262 probably less. also the Spitfire had better climb and maneuverability as well as diving speed and the Spitfire was responsible for shooting down a number of Me 262's for no loss.
@@barrierodliffe4155 can you provida a source as as far as i am aware me262 dive speed is much greater than even the last spitfires as well as super high speed manouevrability with swept wings
@@benoregan9016 The Spitfire was limited to a safe mach 0.86 and in high speed dives reached mach 0.89 with no damage. Willy Messerschmitt himself said that the Me 262 could do mach 0.84 but it would go out of control and break up at mach 0.86. I trust that Willy Messerschmitt would know. The Me 262 non swept wings which it was designed with were after they changed to the Jumo engines swept back very slightly to correct the balance but that had no aerodynamic benefit. German research showed that you needed 30 to 35 degrees. As for maneuverability the Me 262 had poor maneuverability at any speed. Why do you think that the Me 262 never shot down a single Spitfire or Tempest? that includes unarmed photo reconnaissance Spitfires which no other German fighter could catch and the earlier Spitfire Mk IX. Both the Tempest and Spitfire shot down a number of Me 262's.
Thank you for the very informative video. I am a military aviation enthusiast and I never knew the history of the design of the 262. Thank goodness they didn't come out with them sooner and that when they did, Hitler insisted on using them as lightning bombers. I would love to visit your fine museum, but being in the US, I must be content with fine videos like yours. Thank you and God Bless from Florida, USA.
Spawn 1960 The British had an operational jet fighter the Gloster Meteor. The German technology wasn’t fully ready. The British Gloster Meteor was arguably superior to Me262. A lack of cobalt for high-temperature steel alloys meant the German designs were always at risk of overheating and damaging their turbines. The low-grade alloy production versions of the Junkers Jumo 004, designed by Dr. Anselm Franz and which powered the Messerschmitt Me 262 would typically last only 10-25 hours (longer with an experienced pilot) before burning out; if it was accelerated too quickly, the compressor would stall and power was immediately lost and sometimes it exploded on their first startup. Over 200 German pilots were killed during training. The axial compressor was first demonstrated in England, the Germans were the first to get a production model running. While the Allies used centrifugal compressors because they were more reliable and better understood at the time. That’s part of the reason why the ME262 had to have entirely new engines every few hours. Axial jet technology wasn’t ready. It’s yet another example of the Nazis pouring scarce resources into on paper war-winning weapons using technology that wasn’t ready. The father, as we know it, of the turbo jet was British inventor Frank Whittle. Long story short, the British defense ministry rejected Frank Whittle’s design in part due to reviewing engineers at Armstrong-Whitworth pointing out, correctly as it turns out, that a turbo jet engine would be fundamentally inefficient. Instead Whittle patented the design, and not being top secret, the concept greatly influenced the Nazi design team led by Hans Ohain. Engineers at Armstrong-Whitworth, drawing upon their criticism of the Whittle concept, began development of the first axial-flow turbojets and the first turboprops. And it is this technology family that led directly to today’s turbofan jet engine. The Whittle design proceeded in private development, eventually being taken over by Rolls-Royce. By 1944, the Armstrong-Whitworth design developed higher thrust with superior throttle control, and the Powerjet/ Rolls- Royce centrifugal flow turbojet has proven itself to be far more reliable than the competing Nazi jet projects, the Jumbo 004 and the BMW 003. Steel is the wrong material from which to build jet engines. Given time, steel will always fail. It fails because the iron in steel sublimates out of the alloy, essentially turning the metal to Swiss cheese on a microscopic level. The general term for such long term metal fatigue is “creep.” In the 1940’s, no one knew that steel would inevitably fail given the temperatures and pressures in jet engines. The correct material that makes jet engines actually practical, and not simply impossible, is nickel alloy, which was a British invention, designed by the British jet design teams. There is no indication that the Nazi design teams ever understood that steel was never going to work, no matter how much they modified their design. The fact that nickel alloys were the solution was not at al intuitively obvious and the Nazis weren’t doing much in the way of R&D to discover the problem. The Nazis two major production jet engines never managed to last more than 25 hours. You can’t win a war when you have to replace, not merely one but two engines, the most critical and expensive component of an aircraft, every few hours. The icing on the cake is that the Nazis didn’t have access to sufficient quantities of nickel, courtesy of theRoyal Navy blockade, even if they somehow discovered that steel was never going to work.
The Mossie looks tiny against those huge engine nacelles yet, like all good designs, it just looks right. The 262 is another that just looks as it should. Not bad for something with a brand new engine type.
She was known as Die Haifiche in German.(Shark) Before they converted to tricycle under-cart was when she looked most elegant and shark like but as a a tail wheel dragger, it was hard to get her off the ground. Galland had to stamp on the brakes to tilt her for'ard and get the tail up-. Then he'd pull back the stick and get her off the ground. Earlier into service would have changed the war....So would the Gloucester Meteor. Did Winkle Brown ever fly one?
Jon, an excellent presentation and one story I had never heard. A question for whoever is responsible for the Royal Air Force museums. When are you going to display and present a history of radar? It was one of the things that helped win the war and some of us were lucky enough to work on the kit in the early 1960s.
