Here Baker tells the full story, from its tortuous development through to its operational days, including details of its specs, and insight into the men who designed and flew the Me Profusely illustrated with photos, including a comprehensive walk-around section showing all aspects of the airframe, and diagrams from official manuals. The Production Log , 1st Edition By Dan O'Connell Hardcover, pages This is an essential work of reference on the history of the world's first operational jet fighter, the Me This book is the first detailed summary of every known and identified Me Some of the aircraft constructed have been identified.
The book lists sequentially each aircraft by Werknummer Works Number from prototypes and test aircraft through to all variants of operational machines, together with known pilots, assigned units and recorded flights. Where known the fate of each individual aircraft is given and where possible, a photo of each aircraft will accompany its entry in the Werknummer log. Me , Volume One By J. Richard Smith, Eddie J.
Wings were produced in Germany's oldest motorway tunnel at Engelberg , to the west of Stuttgart. Due to poor throttle response, the engines' tendency for airflow disruption that could cause the compressor to stall was ubiquitous. Therefore, a roller-coaster attack was devised. That one in the gentle left-hand curve! Data from Quest for Performance [23] Original Messerschmitt documents []. About 1, Me s were produced, but a maximum of were operational at any one time.
Merrick, Mike Norton, Stephen Ransom, Jurgen Rosenstock and Gunter Sengfelder Hardcover, pages The most detailed study ever published on the Me , created after over 30 years of detailed research. Each volume includes vintage photos, detailed diagrams, full-color illustrations and fold-outs of the airplane and its systems. Me , Volume Two By J. Richard Smith and Eddie J. Creek Hardcover, pages Examines the impact the Me made on the course of the European air war in This volume includes detailed descriptions of the of the various weapons designed to be carried on the airplane.
Contains many precise technical scale drawings and never-before seen photographs. Consequently, the B engine was designed to use a minimum amount of strategic materials.
Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Top author is a Polish aviation historian and modeller, Messerschmitt MeA Schwalbe (Yellow Series) Kindle Edition. Messerschmitt Me Schwalbe (Yellow Series) [Robert Pęczkowski] on Two jet fighter aircraft: * How the Me A changed during production from * How to.
All high heat-resistant metal parts, including the combustion chamber, were changed to mild steel SAE and were protected only against oxidation by aluminum coating. The total engine represented a design compromise to minimize the use of strategic materials and to simplify manufacture. If passed the test, the engine was refitted for a further 10 hour running, but 35 hours marks the absolute limit for the turbine wheel. Frank Whittle concludes in his final assessment over the two engines: Operationally, carrying 2, litres imperial gallons; US gallons of fuel in two litre imperial-gallon; US-gallon tanks, one each fore and aft of the cockpit; and a litre imperial-gallon; US-gallon ventral fuselage tank beneath, [Note 3] the Me would have a total flight endurance of 60 to 90 minutes.
Fuel was usually J2 derived from brown coal , with the option of diesel or a mixture of oil and high octane B4 aviation petrol. Unit cost for an Me airframe, less engines, armament, and electronics, was RM 87, Major Walter Nowotny was assigned as commander after the death of Thierfelder in July , and the unit redesignated Kommando Nowotny. Essentially a trials and development unit, it mounted the world's first jet fighter operations. Trials continued slowly, with initial operational missions against the Allies in August , and the unit made claims for 19 Allied aircraft in exchange of six Me s lost.
Despite orders to stay grounded, Nowotny chose to fly a mission against an enemy bomber formation flying some 30, feet above, on 8 November He claimed two PDs destroyed before suffering engine failure at high altitude. The Kommando was then withdrawn for further flight training and a revision of combat tactics to optimise the 's strengths. The was shot down by a Bofors gun of B. Others were lost to ground fire on 17 and 18 December when the same airfield was attacked at intervals by a total of 18 Me s and the guns of and Squadrons RAF Regiment damaged several, causing at least two to crash within a few miles of the airfield.
In February , a B. The final appearance of s over Volkel was in , when yet another fell to 's guns. By January , Jagdgeschwader 7 JG 7 had been formed as a pure jet fighter wing, partly based at Parchim [46] although it was several weeks before it was operational. In the meantime, a bomber unit—I Gruppe , Kampfgeschwader 54 KG J 54 —redesignated as such on 1 October [47] through being re-equipped with, and trained to use the Me A-2a fighter-bomber for use in a ground-attack role.
However, the unit lost 12 jets in action in two weeks for minimal returns. Galland was able to draw into the unit many of the most experienced and decorated Luftwaffe fighter pilots from other units grounded by lack of fuel. During March, Me fighter units were able, for the first time, to mount large-scale attacks on Allied bomber formations. On 18 March , 37 Me s of JG 7 intercepted a force of 1, bombers and escorting fighters. They shot down 12 bombers and one fighter for the loss of three Me s. In the last days of the war, Me s from JG 7 and other units were committed in ground assault missions, in an attempt to support German troops fighting Red Army forces.
Luftwaffe pilots claimed six lorries and seven Soviet aircraft, but three German jets were lost.
They succeeded in strafing 65 Soviet lorries, after which the Me s intercepted low flying IL-2 Sturmoviks searching for German tanks. The jet pilots claimed six Sturmoviks for the loss of three Messerschmitt. During operations between 28 April and 1 May Soviet fighters and ground fire downed at least 10 more Me from JG 7. And on the 8th of May, at around 4 p. Fritz Stehle of 2. He claimed a Yakovlev Yak-9 , but the plane shot down was most probably a P Airacobra.
Soviet records show that they lost two Airacobras, one of them downed probably by Stehle, who thus scored the last Luftwaffe air victory of the war. Staffel Nachtjagdgeschwader 11 , near Berlin, these few aircraft alongside several single-seat examples accounted for most of the 13 Mosquitoes lost over Berlin in the first three months of As the two-seat trainer was largely unavailable, many pilots made their first jet flight in a single-seater without an instructor.
Despite its deficiencies, the Me clearly marked the beginning of the end of piston-engined aircraft as effective fighting machines. The Me 's top ace [Note 5] was probably Hauptmann Franz Schall with 17 kills, including six four-engine bombers and 10 P Mustang fighters, although night fighter ace Oberleutnant Kurt Welter claimed 25 Mosquitos and two four-engine bombers shot down by night and two further Mosquitos by day. Most of Welter's claimed night kills were achieved by eye, even though Welter had tested a prototype Me fitted with FuG Neptun radar.
The Me was so fast that German pilots needed new tactics to attack Allied bombers. Even from astern, the closing speed was too great to use the short-ranged quartet of MK cannon to maximum effect. Therefore, a roller-coaster attack was devised. When they were about 1. Target acquisition was difficult because the jets closed into firing range quickly and remained in firing position only briefly, using their standard attack profile, which proved more effective.
You whack in at your bomber. It was never meant to be a dogfighter, it was meant to be a destroyer of bombers The great problem with it was it did not have dive brakes. For example, if you want to fight and destroy a B, you come in on a dive. The 30mm cannon were not so accurate beyond metres.
So you normally came in at yards and would open fire on your B And your closing speed was still high and since you had to break away at meters to avoid a collision, you only had two seconds firing time. Now, in two seconds, you can't sight.
You can fire randomly and hope for the best. If you want to sight and fire, you need to double that time to four seconds. And with dive brakes, you could have done that. Eventually, German pilots developed new combat tactics to counter Allied bombers' defences.
Me s, equipped with up to 24 unguided folding-fin R4M rockets —12 in each of two underwing racks, outboard of the engine nacelle—approached from the side of a bomber formation, where their silhouettes were widest, and while still out of range of the bombers' machine guns, fired a salvo of rockets with strongly brisant Hexogen -filled warheads, exactly the same explosive in the shells fired by the Me A's quartet of MK cannon. The much more massive BR 21 large-calibre rockets, used from their tubular launchers in undernose locations for an Me A's use one either side of the nosewheel well were only as fast as the MK 's shells.
Though this broadside-attack tactic was effective, it came too late to have a real effect on the war, and only small numbers of Me s were equipped with the rocket packs. Some nicknamed this tactic the Luftwaffe's Wolf Pack , as the fighters often made runs in groups of two or three, fired their rockets, then returned to base.
On 1 September , USAAF General Carl Spaatz expressed the fear that if greater numbers of German jets appeared, they could inflict losses heavy enough to force cancellation of the Allied bombing offensive by daylight. The Me was difficult to counter because its high speed and rate of climb made it hard to intercept.
However, as with other turbojet engines at the time, the Me 's engines did not provide sufficient thrust at low air speeds and throttle response was slow, meaning in certain circumstances such as takeoff and landing, the aircraft became a vulnerable target. Another disadvantage that pioneering jet aircraft of the World War II era shared, was the high risk of compressor stall and if throttle movements were too rapid, the engine s could suffer a flameout.
The coarse opening of the throttle would cause fuel surging and lead to excessive jet pipe temperatures. Pilots were instructed to operate the throttle gently and avoid quick changes. German engineers introduced an automatic throttle regulator later in the war but it only partly alleviated the problem. The plane had, by contemporary standards, a high wing loading Due to poor throttle response, the engines' tendency for airflow disruption that could cause the compressor to stall was ubiquitous.
The high speed of the Me also presented problems when engaging enemy aircraft, the high-speed convergence allowing Me pilots little time to line up their targets or acquire the appropriate amount of deflection. This problem faces any aircraft that approaches another from behind at much higher speed, as the slower aircraft in front can always pull a tighter turn, forcing the faster aircraft to overshoot. Johannes Steinhoff , Luftwaffe fighter ace. Luftwaffe pilots eventually learned how to handle the Me 's higher speed and the Me soon proved a formidable air superiority fighter, with pilots such as Franz Schall managing to shoot down 17 enemy fighters in the Me , 10 of them American P Mustangs.
Other notable Me aces included Georg-Peter Eder , with 12 enemy fighters to his credit including nine Ps , Erich Rudorffer also with 12 enemy fighters to his credit, Walther Dahl with 11 including three Lavochkin La-7s and six Ps and Heinz-Helmut Baudach with six including one Spitfire and two Ps amongst many others. Pilots soon learned that the Me was quite maneuverable despite its high wing loading and lack of low-speed thrust, especially if attention was drawn to its effective maneuvering speeds.
The controls were light and effective right up to the maximum permissible speed and perfectly harmonised. Too fast to catch for the escorting Allied fighters, the Me s were almost impossible to head off. Combating the Allied fighters could be effectively done the same way as the U. Allied pilots soon found that the only reliable way to destroy the jets, as with the even faster Me B Komet rocket fighters, was to attack them on the ground or during takeoff or landing.
Luftwaffe airfields identified as jet bases were frequently bombed by medium bombers , and Allied fighters patrolled over the fields to attack jets trying to land. The Luftwaffe countered by installing extensive flak alleys of anti-aircraft guns along the approach lines to protect the Me s from the ground—and by providing top cover during the jets' takeoff and landing with the most advanced Luftwaffe single-engined fighters, the Focke-Wulf Fw D and just becoming available in Focke-Wulf Ta H. As the Me A's pioneering Junkers Jumo axial-flow jet engines needed careful nursing by their pilots, these jet aircraft were particularly vulnerable during takeoff and landing.
Chuck Yeager of the th Fighter Group was one of the first American pilots to shoot down an Me , which he caught during its landing approach. On 7 October , Lt. Urban Drew of the th Fighter Group shot down two Me s that were taking off, while on the same day Lt. Hubert Zemke , who had transferred to the Mustang equipped th Fighter Group , shot down what he thought was a Bf , only to have his gun camera film reveal that it may have been an Me Hubert Lange, a Me pilot, said: They did not intercept the jet, but instead flew towards the Me and Ar base at Hopsten air base.
Adolf Busemann had proposed swept wings as early as ; Messerschmitt researched the topic from Interest in high-speed flight, which led him to initiate work on swept wings starting in , is evident from the advanced developments Messerschmitt had on his drawing board in While the Me V9 Hochgeschwindigkeit I HG I flight-tested in had only small changes compared to combat aircraft, most notably a low-profile canopy —tried as the Rennkabine literally "racing cabin" on the ninth Me prototype for a short time—to reduce drag, the HG II and HG III designs were far more radical.
Messerschmitt also conducted a series of flight tests with the series production Me The resulting steepening of the dive would lead to even higher speeds and the airframe would disintegrate from excessive negative g loads. The HG series of Me derivatives was believed [ by whom? The Soviets ran similar tests. This claim relies solely on Mutke's memory of the incident, which recalls effects other Me pilots observed below the speed of sound at high indicated airspeed, but with no altitude reading required to determine the speed.
The pitot tube used to measure airspeed in aircraft can give falsely elevated readings as the pressure builds up inside the tube at high speeds. The Me wing had only a slight sweep, incorporated for trim center of gravity reasons and likely would have suffered structural failure due to divergence at high transonic speeds. About 1, Me s were produced, but a maximum of were operational at any one time.
According to sources they destroyed from to enemy planes, with the Allies destroying about Me s in the air. Through the end of February to the end of March , approximately 60 Me s were destroyed in attacks on Obertraubling and 30 at Leipheim ; [82] the Neuburg jet plant itself was bombed on 19 March Large, heavily protected underground factories were constructed - as with the partly-buried Weingut I complex for Jumo jet engine production - to take up production of the Me , safe from bomb attacks, but the war ended before they could be completed. Wings were produced in Germany's oldest motorway tunnel at Engelberg , to the west of Stuttgart.
Many Me s were found in readily repairable condition and were confiscated. The Soviets, British and Americans wished to evaluate the technology, particularly the engines. During testing, the Me was found to be faster than the British Gloster Meteor fighter jet, and had better visibility to the sides and rear mostly due to the canopy frames and the discoloration caused by the plastics used in the Meteor's construction , and was a superior gun platform to the Meteor F.
The Me appeared to have a higher critical Mach number than any American fighter. Between May and August , the aircraft completed eight flights, lasting four hours 40 minutes. Testing was discontinued after four engine changes were required during the course of the tests, culminating in two single-engine landings. The F, designed by engineer Edgar Schmued , used a slat design based on the Me 's.
From August , a total of nine Ss and three two-seater CSs were completed and test flown. They were introduced in and in were supplied to the 5th Fighter Squadron, becoming the first jet fighters to serve in the Czechoslovak Air Force. These were kept flying until , [4] when they were replaced in service by Soviet jet fighters. Both versions are on display at the Prague Aviation museum in Kbely.
In January , the American Me Project , based in Everett, Washington , completed flight testing to allow the delivery of partially updated spec reproductions of several versions of the Me including at least two B-1c two-seater variants, one A-1c single seater and two "convertibles" that could be switched between the A-1c and B-1c configurations. All are powered by General Electric CJ engines and feature additional safety features, such as upgraded brakes and strengthened landing gear.
The "c" suffix refers to the new CJ powerplant and has been informally assigned with the approval of the Messerschmitt Foundation in Germany [91] the Werknummer of the reproductions picked up where the last wartime produced Me left off — a continuous airframe serial number run with a near year production break. Flight testing of the first newly manufactured Me A-1c single-seat variant Werknummer was completed in August The first of these machines Werknummer went to a private owner in the southwestern United States, while the second Werknummer was delivered to the Messerschmitt Foundation at Manching, Germany.
This aircraft conducted a private test flight in late April , and made its public debut in May at the ILA The new Me flew during the public flight demonstrations. The first Me reproduction a two-seater took off for the first time in December and the second one in August