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Reviews (18)
24 Mar, 2023
A comprehensive, up-to-date account of the design and evolution of the Messerschmitt Me 262
The Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter is remembered as the first jet fighter to be used in combat and was part of Adolf Hitler's emphasis on the "Wunderwaffe" in hopes of reversing the tide of the European theater of World War II that was gradually turning in favor of the Allies. However, many aspects of the development and production of this revolutionary fighter are not well-known to many aviation gurus, including the creation of trainer, night-fighter, reconnaissance, and mixed-power variants. Relying not just on prior knowledge of the development and production of the Me 262, but also a wealth of previously unpublished RLM and Messerschmitt documents, Dan Sharp updates knowledge of the design, development, and evolution of the Me 262, while refuting explanations by some historians as to why operational deployment of the Me 262 was delayed until 1944. Some important highlights and additional new data from this book can be summarized as follows:
- The designation Me 262A-3 was used twice, initially for the Me 262A-2/U2 variant of the Me 262A-2 fighter-bomber with a glazed nose section for the bombardier and later for the proposed Panzerflugzeug (armored airplane) variant of the baseline Me 262A-1 that would have had the cockpit protected by armor
- Messerschmitt temporarily put the Me 262 design on the backburner due to preoccupation with development of the Me 264 intercontinental bomber, Me 328 pulsejet fighter/attack aircraft, and two enhanced Bf 109 derivatives, the Me 309 and Me 209 (not to be confused with the Me 209 record-breaking aircraft). While the initial unavailability of and technical problems with the intended BMW 003 dogged the initial test flights of the Me 262, Messerschmitt's workload meant that production plans for the Me 262 would be put on hold until the point where the Me 309 program failed and production plans for the Me 264 were axed by Erhard Milch in 1943
- Design studies for rocket- and pulsejet-powered Me 262 variants were conducted in late 1941, long before the Me 262C Heimatschützer series began flight tests
- The Me 262C-2b Heimatschützer II was initially designated Me 262D-1
- The designation Me 609 associated in some books with a proposed twin-fuselage Me 309 was actually allocated to some production Me 262s built as Regensburg, and thus the twin-fuselage Me 309 design was called Me 309Z and not Me 609
- Despite Hitler's call for the Me 262 to be used as a fighter-bomber and Hermann Goering agreeing to Hitler's suggestion, fighter ace Adolf Galland and a few other Luftwaffe officials pushed back against the idea of configuring the Me 262 for the fighter-bomber role, and the worsening war situation for Germany in late 1944 made Hitler accept the fact that the Me 262 should be used in its intended role as a fighter
- The name Schwalbe (swallow) quoted as the official name for the Me 262 was actually coined by Allied intelligence and does not appear in wartime German documents, and the official German name for the Me 262 was Sturmvogel (storm bird), which is widely associated in literature with the Me 262A-2
- The RLM's first jet fighter requirement called for a jet fighter powered by a single jet engine, but Messerschmitt decided that a twin-engine jet fighter presented less technical risks because a single-jet design entailed difficulties accommodating the landing gear with the installation of the jet engine inside the fuselage
Anyone interested in German military aircraft of World War II and early jet aircraft ought to purchase this volume because it is the most up-to-date history of development and evolution of the Me 262, and Messerschmitt experimented with mixed-powered jet/rocket fighter variants of the Me 262 light-years ahead of the Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor and Saunders-Roe SR.53, SR.177, and P.187. Although things did not go Hitler's way when it came to his demand for use of the Me 262 as a fighter-bomber in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Normandy, this demand he made regarding the Me 262 is of the many reminders of how Hitler's psychology and drug addiction resulted in many political and military decisions that either cost Nazi Germany the air war against the Eighth Air Force or did not come to pass.
12 Mar, 2022
A total rip-off conversion kit
This product was a rip-off in terms of components because it contained only a few parts (wings, propellers, engines, tailplane, guns), and my dad told me that it was a conversion kit to add parts to an existing model, yet I nonetheless put some components on the wings. If anyone's aware, the aircraft shown in the image on the top of the conversion set kit is actually the Heinkel He 177B, not the He 277, and the designations in the conversion kit instruction sheet are fictitious because the He 277 design study for a long-range bomber with a 131-foot wingspan did not leave the drawing board, and the He 177B designation, far from being a cover designation for He 277, was allocated to the He 177 variant with four individual piston engines originally designated He 177A-8 (there was a 1939 proposal for an He 177 design with four individual Jumos, the He 179, but it was never built), not to mention that Heinkel's proposed four-engine derivative of the unbuilt He 177A-7 was called He 177B-7 after having been originally called He 177A-10.
15 Mar, 2024
The most up-to-date account of the Douglas B-18 heavy bomber
The Douglas B-18 Bolo is sometimes overshadowed by the more famous B-17 and B-24 in most books about US strategic bombers of the 1930s and World War II. However, the most trivial piece of information about this aircraft is the fact that initially had the upper hand over the B-17 when it came to securing sizeable production orders due to its lower unit cost compared to that of early-generation B-17s, although the B-18 prototype was inferior to that of the B-17 in performance.
This book does a pretty good job of covering the story of design, development, flight testing, production, and operational career of the B-18 along with relative discussion of a number of derivatives, including the unbuilt XB-22 with R-2600s and the B-23 tactical bomber. Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 17 discuss and chronicle in-depth the operational history of the B-18, including attacks on U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic, the use of B-18s by Canada with the internal Douglas designation DB-280, and the operational career of the B-18 with other foreign customers, including those in Latin America. The story of the B-18's evolutionary development is also defined by a panoply of internal Douglas designations for both built and unbuilt B-18 variants, because whereas the baseline B-18 variant was called DB-1, Douglas allocated the designation DB-2 to one B-18 fitted with a power turret, and a number of evolutionary B-18 variants were proposed as the DB-3, DB-4, and DB-5 (company specification numbers DS-223, DS-224, and DS-225 respectively) for the USAAC Circular Proposal 36-545, with DB-5 being the internal designation for the B-18A variant that differed from the baseline B-18 in having a redesigned nose section. The initial use of DB-4 for one of the unbuilt B-18 proposals with more powerful engines and greater bombload might surprise me at first because DB-4 also was allocated to a heavy bomber derivative of the DC-4E prototype airliner, but it was not rare for Douglas to re-use a number of internal designations, as exemplified by the DC-7 and DC-8 designations being initially used for airliner derivatives of the XB-42 Mixmaster and C-74 Globemaster respectively before being re-used for a DC-6 derivative and the DC-8 jet airliner respectively. The authors also provide extensive details and illustrations of the unbuilt XB-22 derivative of the B-18 for the first time, and they readily contrast this project with the later B-23 tactical bomber that they cover on Chapter 18.
As a side note, although the authors briefly state in passing that the unsuccessful Martin 146 competitor to the B-17 and B-18 was erroneously called XB-16 in publications, this is incorrect because the Martin 146 was never given a military designation and XB-16 was allocated to the Martin 145 four-engine strategic bomber project that competed with the Boeing XB-15 but was not built because the XB-15 was chosen for full-scale development.
If anyone is interested in US strategic bomber development in the 1930s and World War II, this work is a must-read.