Fun fact neglected in the video: The test pilot for the XP-59 wore a gorilla mask with a bowler hat and cigar, just in case any trainees from the nearby airbase caught a glimpse of the propellerless fighter in the air. PS: Muroc is NOT spelled with a "D" in it.
test pilot was Jack Woolam. He started doing so because the P38 pilots from the base kept getting close to the plane, and the previous expedient of glueing a propeller to the nose fooled exactly nobody
@@DonPatrono A P-38 pilot reporting a propellorless aircraft flown by a cigar smoking gorilla would presumably have no credibility and realising that would just shut up.
fun story about the development process of the XP59: while the plane was being tested at what would become Edwards, the P38 pilots of the nearby base would often try and get close to the plane since (being a jet) left behind a noticeable trail of smoke, only to find a propeller-less plane. To try and keep things under the radar, the R&D folks initially attached a fake propeller to the nose, but that fooled almost nobody and was also kinda dangerous...so one of the test pilots, mr. Jack Woolams, bought from a Hollywood prop store a realistic gorilla mask and wore it while flying...the reasoning was that once a P38 pilot would have intercepted him, he would have been more reluctant to talk about a plane flying at high speed without a propeller, and piloted by a gorilla The story was reported by the Edwards AFB historian, Dr. James Young, and added in the Annie Jacobsen book on Area 51
The Americans were provided with drawings of Frank Whittle's jet engine by the 1940 Tizard mission before the Gloster jet even flew - it was nothing to do with Hap Arnold
It's one thing to see the plans, and quite another to see a working engine. I say this an engineer, plans are a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional object, and there are many, many people who can not make heads,or tails out them.
@@jefferyindorf699 Brits sent over a sample engine. They were desperate and needed help with research, development and production, the mission of the Tizard mission !!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 I don't know whether they were desperate, at one stage it was that Churchill sent a lot of British technology to the USA as there was a [possibility that Britain might go under and he wanted backup. Anyhow, the British also sent over the second ever flight certified de Havilland H1 Turbine (later called the Goblin) to power the P-80 prototype. They warned Lockheed about the low pressure in the intake ducts and the need to reinforce them. Lockheed apparently did not heed this advice and ran the engine up to full thrust in ground testing, the ducts collapsed, and debris went through the turbine destroying it. de havilland then took the only other flight certified jet engine in England out of the Vampire prototype and sent that over to the USA as a replacement.
Fun continuation for the Airacomet: Bell tried several redesigns for the P-59, before eventually just doubling down with the heavier XP-83. One of those attempted redesigns was a concept with a single engine placed in the base of the tail - the pattern that was used in the P-80, the plane that beat the XP-83 and replaced the P-59.
@@allangibson8494 ...and it's still causing headaches for people to this very day. Honestly, I did try and find info on the original P-59 once upon a time, (the prop project that is,) and it was really hard to find anything at all.
@@cumulonimbusapothecary1079 look up the P-52. The original P-59 was a development of the P-52. It was like the SAAB 21 (that actually morphed into the jet powered SAAB 21R).
I did not know there were this many jet aircraft so early in history. I thought the Me 262 was the first for the longest time. Looked up the amount of jets during this time and it was startling. Maybe because a lot of these were prototypes and not fully deployed, that could explain why I've never heard of these. Also, 7:47 I've never heard anyone say "zero point five inch" instead of "Fifty Cal".
It indicates that the person saying it has little if any understanding of the Imperial (feet and inches) system and problably isn't to hot with the metric system either. A typical desk jockey with little experience at measuring anything in the real world.
As early as 1922 it was known the jet engine was theoretically possible. The idea had to wait until air-frames capable of using such an engine had been developed. Test bed engines had been built and run in a number of countries before WW2. The UK, Germany, USA, USSR had all done this but air-force commanders saw no practical use for this new engine. Both the Luftwaffe and RAF could have had basic jets in service when the war began had the money been made available and the project supported by air force commanders. The USA despite its technological advantages was probably the furthest behind in jet development amongst the developed nations. A USAAF officer sent to Britain to investigate British technology asked if the UK was working on turbine engines and was amazed when they showed him am actual Gloster jet powered aircraft in flight.
Requesting videos on the following: -switchblade aircraft designs such as the FA-37 Talon from the ‘05 movie “Stealth” or the X-02 Wyvern from the Ace Combat franchise (the concept, not the actual fighters I mentioned) -Super Tomcat-21 and ASF-14 -the NATF program as a whole -early ATF proposals -Sea Apache -F-20 Tigershark -Bae SABA -Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Bomber proposal -Northrop’s proposal for what would become the F-117 Nighthawk -Interstate TDR -JSF proposals OTHER THAN the X-32 and X-35 -XFV-12 -Gloster Meteor
@@def90cars he actually is responsible for both he took out a TurboJet Patent in 1930 and the first TurboFan engine was the No 1 Thrust Augmentor, the patent for the turbofan by Whittle was patent 471368 in 1936. His main competitor the German Han Von Ohain said "If you had been given the money you would have been six years ahead of us. If Hitler or Goering had heard that there is a man in England who flies 500 mph in a small experimental plane and that it is coming into development, it is likely that World War II would not have come into being
it doesn't matter much who invented what. You can have the greates idea that could actually work. If you don't get the funding for it it is useless. The brits didn't really want it nor need it. They had 150 octane fuel for their piston engines. The germans had shitty fuel and needed it for their aircraft, since these engines don't care about the octane count.
Speaking of early WW2 jets, any chance this channel could also cover the German Heinkel He 280 and the British Gloster Meteor jet fighters? I'm often curious about why it failed to make the cut and wish to learn more about its important role in pilot ejection seat development. Plus, I don't think the British Gloster Meteor ever got the same level attention as the Me 262. Nor the Meteor got attention for its role against the V-1 weapons.
The Allies didn't want any Gloster Meteors shot down over Germany, lest their technology fall into their hands. This is very much like the BAR weapon in WWI being held back out of fear the Germans would copy it if they captured one, so it ends up barely getting used despite being a very decent weapon.
@@Edax_Royeaux I still don't understand why they didn't use it late war after learning of germany's almost superior me 262, why would the germans ever copy the gloster after the 262 was already better?
@@igameidoresearchtoo6511 The engines on the ME 262 had a service life as a low as 10 hours. The engines on the Gloster were Type-tested to 500 hours, only needing an overhaul every 150 hours. I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to use the ME 262 that used up jet engines like no tomorrow, and in fact the only other airforce willing to use the ME 262 was Czechoslovakia while the Gloster was used by 17 countries.
Frank Whittle filed the patent for his jet engine design in January 1930. In Germany, Han von Ohain developed a highly interesting and independent turbojet design, but this was a dead-end, as it could run for about 20 minutes before needing to be shut down and 80% rebuilt. The Germans had to revert to the Whittle design: the German Embassy in London had arranged for copies of the patent to be widely distributed shortly after it was published.
When Whittle and von Ohain met after the war, von Ohain told Frank Whittle that he had seen his patents before he started developing his engine. Whether this was true or whether he was humouring Frank Whittle, no one knows. In any case, the von Ohain design was a dead end and none of its technology was used in the later German production turbines, all of which (BMW and Junkers Jumo) used axial compressors. The Germans did not revert to Frank Whittle's design as it too was centrifugal. Unfortunately, for the Germans, they soon learned that although technically superior, the axial turbines were a step too far, especially given their lack of advanced materials, although they came up with some very interesting and innovative ways of getting around some of the materials issues. The whole story is very complex and has been distorted by pretty much everyone. The British sent Frank Whittle on a tour of the USA, for two main reasons, firstly he needed a break from the turbine program and the MAP needed a break from him. Secondly, the British had received word that a certain manufacturer was claiming that they had developed the turbo jet. The same thing had previously happened with radar and the magnetron. Again, we need to be careful with these stories as it is hard to get a straight account these days. At the same time that the Whittle engine was being developed, Frank Halford at de Havilland was designing the H1 turbine (later called the Goblin) using straight-through combustion chambers (previously Whittle has looked at straight-through but had too many other things to worry about, Rover had also been secretly working on one as well, keeping Whittle in the dark, this caused a major schism between the two). Also, Metrovick and the RAE had been developing an axial turbine based on A.A. Griffith's theoretical work under the auspices of Hayne Constant - thank God it was not Griffith's contraflow turbine, a brilliant idea but the devil was very evident in the detail. The Gloster Meteor first flew on the 5th of March 1943 using two de Havilland H1 jets, later flights used Powerjets engines. On the 29th of June 1943 (a mere 3 months or so after the Meteor's first flight), a Meteor flew using two Metrovick F2 axial turbojets in pods under the wings, not too dissimilar to the mounting of the engines on the M E 262 (M E not me). The F2 powered meteor flight was about a year after the first jet-engined flight of the ME 262. The F2 was a very advanced design, more advanced than the German engines, unfortunately, like the German engines, it too was considered unreliable. How reliable it was compared to the German engines, I do not know. The thing that many people do not understand is that the development of all these wonderful things was very much tied to the progress of the war. If it was determined that the British did not absolutely need it, then it was either abandoned or put on the back burner. For instance, the Roll-Royce Crecy two stroke sprint engine was developed to power a very short-range interceptor aircraft with a very high rate of climb. This project was started when the British mistook some intelligence reports and overflights by German PR aircraft as a prelude to a high altitude bombing offensive, when it became clear that this was not going to happen, the Crecy and the Sprint interceptor were abandoned. Similarly, the Bristol Centaurus radial that was to power the Tempest 2 was put on the back burner to concentrate Bristol's efforts on producing more variants of the smaller, very much-in-demand, Hercules. The Centaurus was only designated for one aircraft type, and the Tempest V powered by the Napier Sabre was considered sufficient to see the war out, despite its unreliability and the subsequent loss of aircrew. Indeed, as the Sabre became more reliable and more available, the MAP, dug out all the stored Typhoons they could find, upgraded them, and put them into service. This was easier and faster than developing and putting into service a new aircraft with a new jet engine, the Typhoons and Tempest Vs could do the job and they did. The F2 axial turbine was not developed as the MAP considered the Whittle turbine was sufficient to see the war out, the F2 project ended up at Armstrong Siddeley and the engine was put into production after the war as the Sapphire. As to the de Havilland Goblin, they sent the spare engine for the Vampire prototype to America to be used in the XP-80 prototype. The de Havilland engineers warned the boys at Lockheed about the possibility of low pressure in the jet intake ducts causing them to collapse, but they would not listen, "hey, what does this Limey engineer know, it's obvious what is needed". As a side note, the whole thing was so secret, that the de Havilland engineer who delivered the engine was detained as he had no papers and no one at Lockheed could vouch for him The H1 was fitted to the prototype XP-80 and during ground testing, the air intake duct of the aircraft (not the engine, it does not have one) collapsed destroying one of the two only flight-certified engines in existence. As requested, de Havilland took the remaining flight-certified engine out of the Vampire prototype and sent it over to the USA as a replacement. The production XP-80 was powered by the GE "designed" I-40 or as made by Allison the J33. GE said it was an improved version of the Whittle inspired J31, however, it looks remarkably similar to the de Havilland H1, amazing how these things happen.
In German, both are pronounced „Meh“ and „Heh“, respectively. Btw. all those German abbreviations eg. „Me“, „He“, „Ta“, „Ba“ spell without dots in between.
The M E-262 was NOT super Sonic lol. It’s also not pronounced “me”. You pronounce each letter. How do you think you can teach anyone anything about a subject without even knowing how to pronounce the most basic of things on the subject?
I think it's safe to say the p-59 wasn't bad, it just wasn't better. I could have stood toe to toe with most piston engines of the time. But what's the point? Ok, you have a more complicated, less reliable version of what we have. Let's just build more P-51, P-47, Spitfires...whatever
The P-59A was underpowered with its first generation engines (the predecessor to the Derwent). As a note - the XP-59 was a completely different aircraft to the XP-59A - zero shared design drawings. It was a cover name for the project.
Main difference between the British "Whittle" design and the German Jumo jets were that the Whittle was a centrifugal type, and the German was axial. The centrifugal type was easier to build with the technology and materials of the day, but to make them more powerful they had to get bigger in cross section. Counter productive as the extra frontal area and drag negated nearly all the extra power they could find at the time. The Axial design was superior in that to make it more powerful you could add more "stages" along the axial plane... so it just got longer, not bigger in cross section. But it was much harder to build with the materials and tools of the day, which is why the Arado's and ME262's were so unreliable and needed an engine rebuild every few hours. (That and an alleged healthy dose of sabotage in the building of them)
One has to remember , that the eary jets , were really not all that good . They were fast , but the late war prop fighters could , and did , shoot them down . This was still the era , where a good pilot made up the difference . At that point in the war , they really didnt need them for victory . German fuel and pilots were fast running out .
The American Aerocomet was basically a piston plane design with jet engines. The P-59 looks kind of like the P-51 Mustang. Even the P-80 Shooting Star was a similar type of design. Not until the F-86 Sabre do we get a design expressly for the jet engine.
The British (like the Germans) didn’t want to risk their jets being captured or shot down in territory they didn’t control. The Germans didn’t fly their jets over allied controlled areas either.
4:14 No more squares on display. 5:55 Hold on there, "Dark Skies," did you say MURDOCK Army airfield? Check your facts, HAL 9000, MUROC Army airfield was the test facility's name.
"electronically powered gear". Yeah, right.! (it's electrical. the two are not the same.) Also, don't use big aviation words like 'empennage' if you can't pronounce them.
The US had a different purpose than Germany. US fighter’s primary roles were bomber escorting and strafing. And it was cheaper and quicker to improve existing designs. Germany had to find ways to either intercept bombers without getting shot down or bombing missions without being intercepted.
6:55 No, tail dragging landing gear was the "typical style of the era". Jets could make the switch to the new tricycle fashion as it allows for easier takeoff and landing. This is because theres no need for leave clearance for a propeller
One reason was Happ Arnold. He had decided to keep the USAAF knowledge of the Jet Engine away from the NACA. Unfortunately Bell Aircraft like Curtiss had poor knowledge of transonic aerodynamics. The person that knew was Eastman Jacobs at the NACA who had developed the laminar flow technology that went into the P-51 Mustang. Eastman Jacobs was developing an motor jet powered aircraft intended to achieve 550mph called jakes jeep which developed into the X-1. Had the NACA been involved and told of the turbojet the US would have had a world beating aircraft. Just putting laminar flow wings on the CO-59 would have worked as laminar flow wings have about 20% higher Mach limit.
NACA was told of turbojets. That’s why they had the NACA axial compressor in 1942 and Westinghouse based the first American jet engine on it-the j30-first run in early 1943. NACA and Westinghouse just werent told of how the British did it as it was hoped they would find a different solution (axial vs centrifugal flow, annular vs can combustion chambers). The P-59 also used NACA 6 series laminar flow airfoils. The problem was that the US needed quick and dirty ways to get jet power.. which is why GE which had extensive experience in turbocharging was contracted to make versions of early British engines… and Bell simply did not have a grasp of how to correctly make an efficient jet propelled aircraft. With such low thrust… the P-59 was never going to be a performer. The P-80 was much more aerodynamic and simple with more thrust from a single large engine.
The FJ-1 Fury was a Jet version of the P-51 Mustang. The XP-86 was the Airforce version of this that then got swept wings which were folded back into the FJ-3 & 4 for the navy. The Ryan FR-1 Fireball was however the first jet fighter the US Navy used operationally.
@@calvinnickel9995 Either way Happ Arnold failed to inform the NACA of the British progress and supply of British engines under reverse lend lease. Thus Americas best transonic aerodynamics experts were out of the loop, couldn’t contribute and wasted time on motorjets.
@@allangibson8494 The first 7 P-86 Sabres used slat hardware salvaged from scrapped captured Me 262. Slats were essential on swept wing aircraft. Late model F-86 received leading edge “droop snoot” flaps, these had been developed by the Germans for swept wings as well.
4 P-80s went to Europe for operational tests. 2 w/ for the 1st Fighter on Lesima Airfield Italy. They were tasked w/ interception of Arado 234 photo planes.
The Me-262 had a higher wing sweep and more advanced engines, respectively, the assertion that "faster", "higher", "more advanced" is groundless speculation. Author, try to rely on academic sources when making a video.
The Me262 had crap engines that barely ran. They are only “advanced” in the sense they were axial flow compressor engines - which also shed blades with extreme regularity (and that was after the 1943 redesign to fix vibration issues). The Me262 was barely faster than the Meteor’s and that only because the pilots were willing to risk the aircraft coming apart around them (which it did regularly).
The P-59 had a longer, more successful career then either the first British or German Jet aircraft. Being used as a trainer until a dedicated training version of the second generation Jet fighter (T-33) became available.
Bell engineers suspected the GE/Whittle engines were not delivering the promised thrust. They took the expedient of attaching a fish type scale and measured the pull. They were correct. Low performance engines and a high drag airframe caused poor performance.
I understand why Germany didn't go forward with mass producing jets in the 1930s but it still would be pretty cool if they did. That would've been quite the "Wunderwaffe".
Interesting, but it's a stretch to say that a pre-Gen 1 jet aircraft 'sucks'. People were still learning the most basic rules of transonic flight. One could reasonably say that 'everything sucked' at the time. The P-80 was the first US 'combat' jet, and was deployed to Italy, though it didn't actually fly any combat missions.
Our best WWII American air ace, Richard Bong, (40 victories) was killed after the war when test flying one of these F-80s. From what I heard, he forgot to turn the fuel selector switch to 'ON' and suffered a low-altitude 'flameout' that killed him in 1947.
My father was ATO during the second war American theater of operations and he was at Millrock airfield Edwards Air Force Base when these jets were being tested he remembers the crash and he told me when he went out there with a crew to do cleanup it was the first time he actually saw a human brains terrible
The P-80 by contrast, did very nearly get entered into the war. In fact, it KINDA did, in the form of 4 prototype P-80s sent on tour around Europe to try and boost morale of airmen having to face off against ME-262s (basically, make the point we have jets too, and soon you'll be flying them). I think I also read somewhere about a small batch of P-80s rushed into service in Italy to try and shoot down Arados (but never caught any). The P-80 almost made it to service for another reason too. There are actually TWO different P-80 prototypes that, while looking practically the same, are actually two totally different airframes. Lockheed had set an insane record of developing the first P-80 prototype in only like 5.5 months. According to the test pilots, this first prototype was practically flawless, with the only real complaint was it was a tad underpowered (but still plenty fast enough to be a real threat to ME-262s). Heres the problem. The P-80 was reliant on a British jet engine... And as it turned out, the type of jet engine planned for the P-80 had massively delayed supply... And it was already pretty much obsolete by larger, more powerful jet engines. Unfortunately, this first P-80 didnt have the room in its fuselage to cram in a bigger engine... I reiterate, this would have been a basically perfect fighter from the getgo, had it been properly supplied with jet engines... Instead, Lockheed were told to make the prototype fit bigger engines. So Lockheed repeated their previous feat, and came out with a second prototype in only like 6 months... Again, that's a very short development period for a plane... But when combined with the development time for the first plane, that actually meant the plane as a whole took more like a year, twice as long as it COULD have taken if only the engines were available for the first prototype. And with the end of the war coming up rapidly, 6 months makes a big difference in whether or not the plane will make it into the war before its over. This second prototype looked almost exactly like the first... But it was in a way, also exactly nothing like the first. This is because it was basically the same design, except scaled up to accomodate the larger engines. So you'd think it shouldnt have taken that long to adapt prototype 1 into prototype 2, but the change in scale effectively meant going right back to the drawing board as if it were a new plane. And, not only did this second version of the P-80 delay the planes entry into the war by 6 months of development time, worse... It was NOT the pleasing and ready for action plane that the first version was praised for being. Instead, it had a lot of cantankerous faults, such as noise and vibration that would eventually be tracked down to strange aerodynamic effects in the engine inlet. Ahout the only good thing about this plane was having a larger more powerful engine for better performance... Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the plane happened to ALSO be the new fangled jet engines, he engines this whole redesign revolved around... They tended to frag out the impeller or turbine. The result was the tail beinf cut off midflight, loss of controls, or outright explosions. It took a while to track this down as the problem. Unfortunately, this version of the plane killed a few test pilots including a very important one, the US's top scoring ace of the war. Identifying these issues took a long time, and despite attempts to start full production and put these planes in service, the services werent going to accept a plane that likes to kill its own pilots that badly. The result is that, that original engine issue essentially took all the way till the end of the war to fully solve (about 1 year if I recall correctly). So yeah, had the first prototype gotten approved instead, and had been properly supported with its jet engines, we probably could have seen P-80s fighting ME-262s over the skies of europe. Instead, they just missed the party.
A British pilot also designed the whittle engine before ww2 but the goverment didn’t take notice for more info read Britain’s Cold War fighters which starts in late 1930s to 1990
By the end of the war, Germany was grasping at straws. The 262 was impressive but what resources did it take away from other German projects. How many reliable P-51 or P-47 fighters could be built for the cost of a jet fighter. I would rather have 10 good P-51's than one fighter at the infancy of that tech.
The Me262 was cheaper to build than a FW190 and used less refined fuel. The engine design was however crap and unreliable. The Germans had 400 Me262’s at the end of WW2 but fuel for twenty of them.
@@michaelpielorz9283 Actual Me262’s capable of flight never exceeded forty. That was a combination of no engines (because of the extremely short service life) and no fuel (strategic bombing’s one very real success). A plane on the ground is simply a target.
I was at a museum last month and i saw one of these. There was a field trip there and a employee was talking about the plane and said "This plane was slower than a propeller plane, it was just not good". The funny part was that he said "i know i hurt the plane's feelings ,but that's just the truth"
Adolf Galland said the best jet would be the Me 262 powered by the jet engines of the Meteor. The German engines wore out by 25 hours on paper, but 12 hours in use.
Snaking was pretty common in most early jets but appears it was somewhat less understood by the US design team at that point than it was by the English and Germans.
For all the good it did us. We would have been 1st to break the sound barrier with the Miles M52 and the best pilot the World had ever seen, Lt Cmdr Eric Brown RN when the government was pressured by America to cancel the project and hand everything over to the USAF and Bell Aircraft from which they copied the all flying tail from the Miles to the X1 and bingo, We remember Chuck Yeager and not 'Winkle' Brown. Sadly we didnt learn from that mistake they pressured us again to cancel the incredible TSR 2, a generation ahead of any other tactical supersonic aircraft around or on the boards, in favour of the F 111, which ended up costing us more and in the end never taking delivery of the bloody thing. Then have to make do with Buccaneer, a naval strike aircraft of note instead of a world beating, supersonic, dedicated advanced land attack aeroplane that TSR 2 would and should have been.
@@gryph01 Yes, Arrow was a world beating Interceptor, TSR 2 an attack/reconnaissance aeroplane. JD sold out the Canadian people and aircraft industry under US pressure too.
The amount of whining and crying I hear from that FORMER superpower from across the pond is reaching absurd levels. The U.S. clearly lives rent free in the heads of all you snobby Brits. (Canada doesnt matter, no one cares about them, they have zero clout on the world stage) Keep crying Brits, we love to see it.
I'm pretty sure the Versailles Treaty did NOT prohibit Germany from developing and manufacturing PISTON aircraft engines and therefore allow Germany to develop jet engines by omission. The treaty did ban the production of aircraft engines for the 1st 6 months and limit military aircraft ... but NO ban on aircraft engines in general or piston engines in particular. Not even close. The Treaty is boring as crap, but give Part V (Military, Naval, and Air Clauses) a look.
First time hearing someone call the 50cal actually just state the inch of the gun lol make sense since the cannons are called by their bore diameter lol
Correction: It was the Italians in 1940 that shocked the world with their Motorjet aircraft, not the Germans with their Jet Turbine one, The German maiden flight of their first jet aircraft was done in secrecy, and wouldn't be revealed until after the Italians unveiled their own!
Germany was desperate and put their jets straight into combat despite their many flaws and dangers which included very poor engine reliability. The Allies could afford to be more cautious and conduct more testing, the British Meteor and Vampire fighter jets were flying in 1944 as was the American P-80 Shooting Star. All eclipsed the Me262 and were flown with great success from 1945 to the mid-1950s. The XP59 Aeracomet like the Gloster Whittle and Heinkel 178 were more technology demonstrators than combat designs. All early American jets flew on British engines or derivatives produced under license.
@@billballbuster7186 No - that’s where the secrecy kicks in. The original XP-59 was a development of the XP-52. The XP-59A was a clean sheet design for jet power. Basically it was a misdirection for any axis spies as the details of the original XP-59 had already been made public with the intention that they would ASSUME that is was a minor redesign / reengining of the XP-59. The USAAF typically assigned entire new project numbers to the replacement of piston engines with jet engines or even less extreme redesigns such as the C-47 vs C-49 vs C-53 vs CG-17. The F-117 was numbered the same way for misdirection, the YF-112 was a MiG-17 in USAF service. The YF-113 was the MiG-23. YF-110 was used for the MiG-21. Anyone hearing a F-117 call at the time would assume it was a Russian or Chinese aircraft operated by one of the secret aggressor squadrons out of Groom Lake (secrecy as a cover for secrecy). The IAI Kfir was operated by the US navy as the F-21A for similar reasons.
1:09 - the Germans didn't shock the world with the first flight of the He 178. The world didn't even find out about it until years later. 2:02 - the German jet development didn't "wake up" the Italians and British. They had both been developing jet engines independently and in ignorance of the German technology, using fundamentally different systems. Frank Whittle's design pre-dated the German's by a decade. 2:39 - "Hap" Arnold didn't "happen to be in the crowd" to watch the taxi test of the Gloster jet - details of the jet programme had been revealed to the US by the UK Government's Tizard Mission the year before, and Arnold came over specifically to take an engine and drawings back to the US.
As a potential combat aircraft. At that it was a failure. But the P-59 provided valuable service to the USAAF (and the USN) in the issues involved in using a jet powered aircraft in squadron service.
Instead of this monstrosity, why didn't Bell just put a jet engine in the p-39 airacobra. It would have been smaller, faster, and lighter as well as more manueverable.
The Bell XP-52 (and the subsequent XP-59, not NOT the XP-59A) were pusher propeller aircraft. The two engines in the P-59A’s put out half the single Derwent derived P-80’s engine of a year later. (2,400 pound thrust vs 4,500 pounds thrust). The piston engines of the same era had the same power output as the P-59A’s engines.
@@Mmjk_12 Redesigning the fusalage was what i was thinking, it would not have been that hard and the test data would have given them more knowledge for a new aircraft. Even though the present jet engine was underpowered later engines came in to use from the Britis h. The P-80 was using a British engine when first built.
@@allangibson8494 Even an underpwered engine would have given data on future designes and provided a good test platform to work from, even when swept wing technology came into use, a swept wing P-39 with a British jet engine would be like the difference between the F9F Panther and Cougar.
@@robertsanders5355 There was a swept wing version of the P-63 as the L-39 in early 1946 used for low speed flight investigations in parallel with the X-1 development and swept wing X-2. Bell’s priority was however getting something into the air soonest - and the first P-59A flew a month before the P-63. The GE J31 engines produced less than expected thrust so made good trainers but lousy fighters.
My understanding is the Lockheed jet was quite Superior even to the me-262 there was some sort of political maneuverings to prevent it from being built.
I'm no historian but why did they give the project to Bell after the lacklustre propellor driven P.39? This jet also proved to be a bit of a dud so they gave them the go ahead to break the sound barrier in a rocket which they did, amazing history.
The airacomet had a lot of problems in flight and the gloster meteor was better than the airacomet which is why it never entered service and the Americans just used the meteor instead
The P59 was never intended as a front line fighter. It was a proof of concept for US industry to build jet engines and engineer aircraft capable of using them. Even the British Meteor would have been less than effective against the ME 262. The P 80 and P 84 were the first US jets capable of effective combat service.
Typical yank xenophobic bullshit !!! The Meteor F3 from late 1944 was more than a match for the 262 , had a top speed of 525 mph at altitude and far more reliable engines !!!
