The recent Wings over Houston (Nov. 1-2) Airshow played host to a rare formation flight. A Messerschmitt Me-262 and a North American P-51 in formation.
The Comm
About Ben Sclair
Ben Sclair is the Publisher of General Aviation News, a pilot, husband to Deb and dad to Zenith, Brenna, and Jack. Oh, and a staunch supporter of general aviation.
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I enjoyed your comments and the photo of the P-51 and Me262. The last P-51 I saw in the air crashed into Galveston Bay in the early 1980s as it ran out of gas flying through the low cloud deck trying to locate the Galveston airport. It was January or February and the Bay was unusually cold. The pilot died of hypothermia before he could be rescued in the relatively shallow waters.
You might wish to correct one comment in your story. As a life-long Democrat, I have no particular love for the Bush family, but George, Sr. was a U.S. Navy pilot flying a Navy dive bomber when he was shot down in the Pacific, not a B-24 or B-17 driver over Germany.
And I can’t quite imagine a P-47 with a top airspeed in the low 400s ever breaking the sound barrier at or near 700 mph without losing its wings first.
With respect to the B-36s, they would fly over my home outside Cleveland, Ohio when they came to the airshows and nothing compared to their size. I was on a B-52 crew in SEA. It is a great aircraft, but still smaller than the B-36 with a wingspan almost 3/4ths of a football field, and almost as long.
Thanks for the articles and the photos.
Mick
It seems to me that when WW II came along that American research and development in engine technology in other than combustion powered engines was and had been stifled for a number of years already by the big companies that had grown in power and influence to such a degree that it hindered the U.S. in many ways. I heard and read about stories of folks, off the top of my head, such as Lester Hendershot and his fuelless motor for one example and then there was NikolaTesla, as another example, whom was repressed by other powerful industrialists as well.
You can ridicule Chevys and Fords all you want but it’s a fact that Germany wanted the patents to the Model A Ford to build them in Germany after Ford had advanced to where they no longer had use for the design. Max Schmeling had something to do with the purchase of the patents as from what I remember of the story my father told me.
There were also some pretty fine American cars that rivaled if not surpassed anything that the Germans had been making. Duesenberg was renowned and Pierce-Arrow developed and produced one of the first, if not THE first, multi valve engines and there were a number of other American companies that had cutting edge technology coming from their engineers.
The problem with the United States for the last 100 plus years now is that this nations capitalization on technology became more concerned and focused on the “Capital” than the technology. The wealthy and powerful men that ran the corporations, the Rockefeller’s, the Vanderbilt’s, the Edison’s of the industries had already been in control of the direction that technological progress was headed for a good many years by the time the United States got involved in the war.
It’s no secret anymore that while American men were dying on the battlefronts, on the seas and in the skies that some of the wealthiest industrialist such as Henry Ford and the Bush family were giving money to Hitler to rebuild his factories and infrastructure and how very queer it was that George Bush Sr. was flying B-17s and bombing the very factories his family was paying to rebuild, wouldn’t you say?
The P-51 was a marvel of an fighter airplane. It was still being used to some capacity as late as the Vietnam war. If I recall correctly, the P-47 Thunderbolt was the only prop driven plane to ever, reputedly, break the sound barrier…although it was allegedly done in a power dive. I also think that the United States had the edge on the kind of men that had the nerve, wits and capabilities as pilots over those available to the Axis powers. The B-17 was outdated well before the end of the war, the B-29 was vastly superior and the B-36 Bomber could have been fully developed much earlier and would have made a big difference in favor of American bombing missions over Germany had it’s development and production been allowed the amount of rein it needed rather than the research being diverted to developing immediate short term needs, such as the B-24 Liberator. I grew up not more than a couple of miles from the Lockheed plant in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1950’s and well remember the couple of times I saw a B-36 fly so close overhead, as it came in to land, that I thought that I could reach up and touch it if I had a ladder to stand on. Which was partially an illusion as for the enormous size of that airplane that made it seem all the closer to you as it flew at same altitude when coming in to land at Lockheed as the other airplanes did back in those days.
I was also lucky enough to have seen a Norththrop YB-35 as a youngster, but I know little about the plane and don’t know what the “skinny” is about the “Flying Wing” of it’s day is. But, let me tell you, there was never a sight and sound sensational rush like being on the ground as a B-36 was coming in low for a landing or taking off… nothing like it.
I’m not knocking the Germans and Austrians as they on the whole are renowned for their mechanical engineering proclivities and the German soldier and pilot were formidable enemies but I have heard the same evaluations of the Me 262 as John states, that they were not all that maneuverable and that they didn’t operate that well over a rather low ceiling threshold. The B-36 might have easily thwarted the use of them had the war progressed differently in a manner that it came down to the two of them being used extensively by 1945. The first B-36, even though the development had been hampered, still was delivered by August of ’45.
On a whole ‘nother level, or realm of possibility, does anyone know if there is even an iota of truth to the legend, or myth, of the existence of the “Vril” and a Nazi Flying Saucer program?
Other than the story surrounding Admiral Byrds mysterious flight over Antarctica in 1929, I believe it was, and stories I’ve heard of a German by the name of Viktor Shauberger and his Vortex Mechanics and a electromagnetic power system he allegedly invented, or further developed, I can’t find much else on the subject.
It’s good (for us) that Hitler insisted the Me-262 be developed as a bomber. Luftwaffe Gen. Adolf Galland said it was a superb defensive fighter and if it had been developed a bit earlier and used properly, Germany’s defeat might not have come as early as it did. Idiocy in high places! But that time, we won!
Low service ceiling, couldn’t dive, roll, or climb. Maybe it would have been a decent defensive fighter, but it would have just been a reason to put P-80s, f7fs, f8fs, f-2gs, p-47ms ,..in the air.
Then the war would have dragged on, and on…
The P-51 was a great fighter, but so was Willie Messerschmidt’s bird. The damage to Germany was coming from day-and-night bombing, and the B-17s were easy prey for the Me-262. Look at the numbers. Those 8th Air Force crews are still heroes in my book.
It is good to have so confident people like you, that tells a lot about how you can challenge yourself.
The US only won because they could mass produce. None of the weapons they had was high technology. Just a lot of Chevies vs Mercedes…
Learn to manage your hubris.
Sorry, Greg, but John was making some valid points. No hubris that I saw. That said, you too are correct. America in the ’40s had enormous manufacturing potential. No other country could compete with us.
No. The weapons the US produced were not as technically sophisticated as the Germans. Neither were the weapons the Russians were producing. But they could produce more of them, more easily and less expensively. Ultimately, numbers matter.
I could not agree more with you guys. Interesting to read some german pilots’ thoughts about the fear they had of the US entering the fight with their production power.