Subject:
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Re: Bummer of the Week: LEGO Made in China
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 7 Sep 2001 01:47:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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1636 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Chris Leach writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> > BTW, The idea that Hitler's interference somehow screwed up the
> > jet project is really untrue. The Me-262 (and the He-280
> > before it) had serious airframe issues that took until 1944
> > to sort out. What's more, the Jumo 004 engines weren't ready
> > until then anyways. Hitler was an annoyance, but it was the
> > technical issues that really delayed the arrival of operational
> > jet fighters. Even with them operational, the average service
> > life of an engine was only 10 hours' flying--after that they
> > tended to overheat and catch fire or eat themselves. (A really
> > nasty tendency...catch a bit of fan blade in the head there,
> > mister pilot?) All warring nations had these troubles, and all
> > had jet aircraft on the drawing board as early as 1942.
>
> LFB Germany was working on the 262 eaaly in the war ..then Hitler told them
> i want a bomber which delayed work on the fighter(and the fixing of
> problems)this fact has been stated many times in documentaries that i seen
> on THC/A&E.
I trust the Hitler Channel about as far as I can throw it. ;)
This is the same organization that claimed the Goeben and Breslau
were battleships, when in fact neither was. They rarely dig
far beneath the surface because they have to generalize for a
half-hour or hour-long television program, and sometimes that
means they propagate the occasional "oops."
But to answer the objection: It was the engines, plain and
simple. The Me-262 had originally been planned with BMW 003
engines, but they truly ate themselves when tested at the
end of 1941--and this was while the airframe was still only
marginally flyable. The Jumo 004B prototypes weren't ready
until nearly the end of 1943, and even when they provided
sufficient thrust later, there weren't enough of them because
they still weren't that reliable. They weren't "frozen" for
mass production--that is, the final prototype designated as
the pattern--until June 1944, and the powerplant development
had *nothing* to do with any Hitlerine delays of the 262--because
the Ar-234, which was *designed* as a bomber, was to use the same
powerplant and was held up too (Note that the first operational
Me-262s only beat the first Ar-234s by a few weeks--they were
started in design and prototype at the same time). Changes to the
landing gear (tailwheel to tricycle) and airframe (new nacelles,
wing roots, tail surfaces) were yet to come. Hitler weighed in on
the Me-262's bomber potential only *after* December 1943--and even
then he conceived of it as a fighter-bomber, not as a
dedicated bomber. But the modifications necessary to put
a 500-pound bomb were made *while* the aircraft's other
troubles were solved, and even so the production aircraft
couldn't be fitted with *engines* until after June 1944.
The dates of the famous memos and decrees are 5 December 1943
for the initial interest in the fighter-bomber, and 8 June 1944
for the executive order placing priority on bomber production
(which the Me-262 was already by then fitted for). So Hitler delayed
the Me-262 maybe a month, if even. It definitely wasn't
two years of delays--that's one of those romantic counterfactual
myths, sort of like "what if the Germans had gone to sea in 1918"
and "What if the South had won the Civil War." Fun, but flawed
because they usually miss the less exciting, yet really culpable,
cause of the failure.
best
LFB (who's just *no fun* himself ;D )
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bummer of the Week: LEGO Made in China
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| (...) LFB Germany was working on the 262 eaaly in the war ..then Hitler told them i want a bomber which delayed work on the fighter(and the fixing of problems)this fact has been stated many times in documentaries that i seen on THC/A&E. (...) (23 years ago, 7-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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