He 162 "Volksjäger" in IL2 Great Battles?

[Soilworker]

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine some of these planes being added as collector planes at some point, I mean look at our two upcoming Flying Circus collector planes, they are are cool and interesting high performance planes that only came into service right at the end of the war and saw fairly limited action. There are far more "important" planes to add to FC than them but the enthusiasm for them seems high enough. 

[Avimimus]

19 hours ago, LukeFF said:

It's a heck of a lot stronger than the argument for the He 162 - it was shooting down buzz bombs over England in the summer of 1944 and then was flying armed recon missions over the Rhineland in the spring of 1945. As much as I love the 162 (since I built the cockpit for it for IL2 1946), the Meteor is far more relevant to the air war. 

 

That depends

 

If one cares about air-to-air combat only, then the He-162 saw more combat. If one includes cruise-missile intercepts and ground attack then the Meteor saw more combat. In terms of production to 1945, both aircraft are similar with the He-162 possibly having a slight lead in numbers, but most of those not having engines (or fuel).

 

I think one can argue that both are pretty comparable - both would have seen a lot more combat and a lot more varied combat if the war had gone on a few more months. Both saw limited frontline service with a few dozen aircraft declared operational. They fall right on the boundary between 'what-if' and what happened.

 

Honestly, I'd pre-order a Meteor F.I or F.III - and I'd also be excited for an RAAF Mk.8 if they ever decide to do Korea (although the Vampire FB.5 and Venom FB.I are probably a bit more appealing to me for a Korean era European theatre). I did enjoy your He-162 a lot though!

[EAF19_Marsh]

Err, I think there were a few more Meteors actually doing things 1944/45 vs. -162s stuck on the Baltic coast absent fuel and with pilots that appeared unwilling to fly them. In terms of ‘relevance’ (always somewhat subjective), the Meteor would to me be the far better choice out of the 2.

Meteor also fits better on our maps.

[Asgar]

13 minutes ago, EAF19_Marsh said:

Meteor also fits better on our maps.

Only if they’re not allowed to fly over main land France ?

[EAF19_Marsh]

50 minutes ago, Asgar said:

Only if they’re not allowed to fly over main land France ?

Meteors were deployed to Belgium and then Germany in March / April. We have the Rhein but we do not have JG1 operational zone somewhere near Denmark.

 

So, yes, the former better suited.

Totally OT, but after a house move etc. I am now getting everything back together so I can return to flying. Had a very quick sortie yesterday. The Typhoon absolutely kicks ass. I love it!

Edited May 12, 2022 by EAF19_Marsh

[CountZero]

Yes Meteor is only other ww2 jet that makes sense to add to game. It can be used on maps we have, it did missions in ww2 on areas on maps, you can have SP campaign for it and do it as collectable airplane. 

[Cpt_Siddy]

Much much much much rather have V1 vs Meteor scenario added over the canal. 

 

This will also add some room for imagination for alternative history fun ...

>reee reee alternative history bad, we want muh historicity where servers are 60 axis vs 20 reds 

 

 

[Eisenfaustus]

12 minutes ago, Cpt_Siddy said:

Much much much much rather have V1 vs Meteor scenario added over the canal. 

That sounds so very boring to me - hunting V1s...

 

14 minutes ago, Cpt_Siddy said:

This will also add some room for imagination for alternative history fun ...

Of course there is room for alt history in user made content/qmb/MP - but a Meteor career doesn't sound very interesting...

But of course neither does a realistic He-162 career, so I do see your point ^^

[Cpt_Siddy]

14 minutes ago, Eisenfaustus said:

That sounds so very boring to me - hunting V1s...

 

Of course there is room for alt history in user made content/qmb/MP - but a Meteor career doesn't sound very interesting...

But of course neither does a realistic He-162 career, so I do see your point ^^

 

You missing the point, the V1 campaign is just excuse to get Meteor in ?

[schwarzerHund]

I would be more interested in the aircraft that a Battle of France set would produce (P-36, Bloch, Dewoitine, Blenheim, Fokker, Curtis-Wright, etc, etc) than the He-162/Spring 1945 route...but there's no harm in anyone daydreaming is there?

[BlitzPig_EL]

I'd love to have a Hawk 75/P36 modeled in the fidelity of Great Battles.

 

I helped gathering research from the US archives for the P36/Hawk 75 for 1946, and still have copies here at home...

 

The Curtis Hawk 75 fought on almost every front, and for both sides.  The Finns did quite well with it, which is a front I would really like to see in the sim.  Brewsters, Hawks, and Fokker D.XXI, vs. the VVS.  What fun.

[Rjel]

I think we all agree that we definitely want more from this series. I think too that the majority will continue to support come what may as far as other maps, time frames or theaters. But, this thread again points out the obvious. That is, ask 10 flight simmers what they want and you'll get 11 different opinions.

[oc2209]

9 hours ago, Eisenfaustus said:

That sounds so very boring to me - hunting V1s...

 

Of course there is room for alt history in user made content/qmb/MP - but a Meteor career doesn't sound very interesting...

But of course neither does a realistic He-162 career, so I do see your point ^^

 

Neither the Meteor nor the He-162 have great career potential, but from purely a flight model perspective, I would think the 162 is far more interesting.

 

Meteor should behave like a more sluggish 262, essentially.

[Asgar]

2 hours ago, oc2209 said:

Meteor should behave like a more sluggish 262, essentially.

But with less fires and the ability to use air brakes

[BlitzPig_EL]

True, the Whittle centrifugal type engines were more reliable than the German axial flow type initially.

[CountZero]

Relaiability dosent mather in game, everything is as it was without problems, so Meteor would not be any better then Tempest vs 262, but it would be better option then any other ww2 jet if they do another jet airplane.

[EAF19_Marsh]

Faster than a Tempest but less responsive. I would certainly buy it for the sheer joy and  individuality.

[Avimimus]

9 hours ago, oc2209 said:

Neither the Meteor nor the He-162 have great career potential, but from purely a flight model perspective, I would think the 162 is far more interesting.

 

Meteor should behave like a more sluggish 262, essentially.

 

Honestly, people said the Typhoon wouldn't be that interesting - just a Tempest with a lower roll rate... but looking at the airfoil cross-sections, tip dihedral etc. It was pretty obvious that it'd be radically different.

 

I think with the level of fidelity being modelled by the team almost any aircraft is going to have some interesting flight model quirks (just look at the short nosed Fw-190A3 vs. the A5)!

 

That said, the tiny wing area and short wingspan of the He-162... the twin tails, the dihedral on the horizontal stab... it would be quite fascinating to fly! I honestly would like both (and an I-153, and a Fi-156, and Fw-189... and... well, mainly filling gaps in existing modules would be my priority - but these jets would be unique experiences to say the very least).

[Asgar]

2 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

True, the Whittle centrifugal type engines were more reliable than the German axial flow type initially.

The compressor type had nothing to do with it. The axial compressor of the 004 is more effective for a jet engine which is why all high power commercial and military jets nowadays use them. Issue with the 004 was the main fuel control until the fuel flow restriction  valve was added and more importantly the lack of rare materials for the turbine blades to make them heat resistant. Which was a problem until the war and production ended. Also why the Russians could copy them with proper material post war and had way less issues with them ?

Edited May 13, 2022 by Asgar

[EAF19_Marsh]

The point was not the respective efficiency but the reliability of the engines. An axial flow is more efficient but in 1940s terms was more complex. Centrifugal engines are not a poor design (see Nene) but have a limit. Good for helicopters and turboprops, however.

 

The 004 was an immature design and also suffered from weak materials. The concept itself, however is clearly superior for a fighter.

[Asgar]

1 hour ago, EAF19_Marsh said:

The point was not the respective efficiency but the reliability of the engines. An axial flow is more efficient but in 1940s terms was more complex. Centrifugal engines are not a poor design (see Nene) but have a limit. Good for helicopters and turboprops, however.

 

The 004 was an immature design and also suffered from weak materials. The concept itself, however is clearly superior for a fighter.

No it wasn’t. The 004 engines in testing could run much longer. The  Junkers was told there aren’t enough materials they needed and they had to rework the engine to use simple steel turbine blades. The low runtime of the engines has nothing to do with the construction, only the materials available.

[BlitzPig_EL]

I know all this Asgar, but in service, in the 262, the 004 simply was not as reliable as the Whittle engines.  The actual concept is a winner, be sure.

[Avimimus]

So what of the BMW 003? Is it plausible at all that development could've been a few weeks faster leading to a couple hundred more He-162s reaching units (albeit without actually having enough fuel to fly)? Or were there no decisions that would have resolved issues sooner and allowed ramping up of production?

 

P.S. It occurs to me that flight sims generally don't have every sortie in a campaign. To allow the player to move forward in time faster some sorties are often left out, and often the sorties we have always involve combat (i.e. no aborts due to weather and no failures to contact then enemy). So if one wanted a longer player experience of a Meteor campaign one could simply up the number of sorties per week in the campaign mode.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Avimimus

[Asgar]

55 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

So what of the BMW 003? Is it plausible at all that development could've been a few weeks faster leading to a couple hundred more He-162s reaching units (albeit without actually having enough fuel to fly)? Or were there no decisions that would have resolved issues sooner and allowed ramping up of production?

 

P.S. It occurs to me that flight sims generally don't have every sortie in a campaign. To allow the player to move forward in time faster some sorties are often left out, and often the sorties we have always involve combat (i.e. no aborts due to weather and no failures to contact then enemy). So if one wanted a longer player experience of a Meteor campaign one could simply up the number of sorties per week in the campaign mode.

I have no idea what the development state of the BMW 003 were, but considering the Soviets build thousands of them and used them in the Yak 15 and MiG-9 IIRC. I guess they weren’t that far from ready.

[Avimimus]

21 minutes ago, Asgar said:

I have no idea what the development state of the BMW 003 were, but considering the Soviets build thousands of them and used them in the Yak 15 and MiG-9 IIRC. I guess they weren’t that far from ready.

 

I think the RD-10 was based on the Jumo 004?

 

Btw. For a long time I'd assumed that the Me-262 and He-162 used the same engine. It turns out that they aimed for redundancy and allocated different engines for each aircraft. BMW 003 development was slightly slower, meaning production ramp up happened a bit later and a lot of He-162 airframes didn't receive engines in time to go operational. Hence my speculation on how easy it'd have been for a few slightly luckier decisions by designers to have led to two or three more units going operational prior to the end of the war.

[Asgar]

40 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

 

I think the RD-10 was based on the Jumo 004?

 

Btw. For a long time I'd assumed that the Me-262 and He-162 used the same engine. It turns out that they aimed for redundancy and allocated different engines for each aircraft. BMW 003 development was slightly slower, meaning production ramp up happened a bit later and a lot of He-162 airframes didn't receive engines in time to go operational. Hence my speculation on how easy it'd have been for a few slightly luckier decisions by designers to have led to two or three more units going operational prior to the end of the war.

it’s the MiG, I knew one of the designs used the BMW jet engine

[Bremspropeller]

4 hours ago, Asgar said:

The compressor type had nothing to do with it. The axial compressor of the 004 is more effective for a jet engine which is why all high power commercial and military jets nowadays use them. Issue with the 004 was the main fuel control until the fuel flow restriction  valve was added and more importantly the lack of rare materials for the turbine blades to make them heat resistant. Which was a problem until the war and production ended. Also why the Russians could copy them with proper material post war and had way less issues with them

 

Depends on massflow and thrust-class.

You'll find most modern jet-engines of similar size and thrust to at least have a combination of axial and radial compressors.

 

Axial compressors suck at low mass-flow because their percentage of  blade tip leakage goes up and hence compressor-efficiency goes down.

 

Just take the Williams FJ44 jet-toaster as reference (similar thrust-class as the Jumo/ Bimmer jets):

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_FJ44

[Asgar]

10 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

 

Depends on massflow and thrust-class.

You'll find most modern jet-engines of similar size and thrust to at least have a combination of axial and radial compressors.

 

Axial compressors suck at low mass-flow because their percentage of  blade tip leakage goes up and hence compressor-efficiency goes down.

 

Just take the Williams FJ44 jet-toaster as reference (similar thrust-class as the Jumo/ Bimmer jets):

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_FJ44

See this is one of the reasons I don’t like talking to you. You’re making your own topic up. Nothing you say relates to what I said and you don’t need to explain aircraft engines to me. I’m quite familiar with how they function

[EAF19_Marsh]

2 hours ago, Asgar said:

No it wasn’t. The 004 engines in testing could run much longer. The  Junkers was told there aren’t enough materials they needed and they had to rework the engine to use simple steel turbine blades. The low runtime of the engines has nothing to do with the construction, only the materials available.

Why are you arguing? The engine was a very early axial-flow and suffered from imperfect understanding oh how to build a robust design. That is only natural. The BMW engine appears to have been better in many ways. It was later. That is to be expected.

 

Material issues then contributed to the problem.

[CountZero]

7 minutes ago, EAF19_Marsh said:

Why are you arguing? The engine was a very early axial-flow and suffered from imperfect understanding oh how to build a robust design. That is only natural. The BMW engine appears to have been better in many ways. It was later. That is to be expected.

 

Material issues then contributed to the problem.

But hes saying design was good they just didnt have enought materials that were needed to be durable, design was not problem germans losing war was ?

[Bremspropeller]

55 minutes ago, Asgar said:

See this is one of the reasons I don’t like talking to you. You’re making your own topic up. Nothing you say relates to what I said and you don’t need to explain aircraft engines to me. I’m quite familiar with how they function

 

I'm not making up a new topic, I'm adding additional information and correcting blanket-statements. Like "axial compressors are more effective", when it's just not that simple. Especially in the thrust class of the original Jumos/ BMWs.

 

No need to be bum-hurt about it. I like being corrected - especially when I'm wrong.

 

[[CPT]Crunch]

Lycoming T53 in the UH-1 Huey's were basically the Jumo 004 from the 262, same German engineer Anselm Franz designed both.  Just a little trivia, these engines didn't exactly go extinct.

[EAF19_Marsh]

8 hours ago, CountZero said:

But hes saying design was good they just didnt have enought materials that were needed to be durable, design was not problem germans losing war was ?

I entirely agree. What I mean is that the centrifugal deaign is a much easier proposition. Mass producing a relatively new concept - and an a axial-flow engine was both new and less-well understood - is tricky. The materials issue was clearly a huge part of it, but the 004 was a new direction and this posed its own problems.

 

IIRC the BMW was a more advanced design and it showed in terms of reliability and thrust-to-weight. Still, the Nene indicated that the RR approach - while limited in the longer term - was still a powerful

beast.

 

Anyway, I would love a Meteor. And a bacon sandwich, but I am out of bacon ☹️

 

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by EAF19_Marsh

[BlitzPig_EL]

Mmmmmmm   bacon.

[Asgar]

16 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

 

I'm not making up a new topic, I'm adding additional information and correcting blanket-statements. Like "axial compressors are more effective", when it's just not that simple. Especially in the thrust class of the original Jumos/ BMWs.

 

No need to be bum-hurt about it. I like being corrected - especially when I'm wrong.

 

Which is your own topic because that is not what I said, it’s only what YOU chose to respond to. I said they are more effective for jet engines which is why they are used in high power commercial and military jet engines today.

„thrust classes“ were of 0 concern in the 30s and 40s. Engineers simply tried to get as much thrust as the technology allowed.

 

YES  especially low power engines nowadays often use a combination of axial and radial compressors but mostly these designs are used in helicopter turbines or other turbines where short construction lengths are desired.

[Bremspropeller]

8 minutes ago, Asgar said:

Which is your own topic because that is not what I said, it’s only what YOU chose to respond to. I said they are more effective for jet engines which is why they are used in high power commercial and military jet engines today.

 

I just gave you an example where your blanket-statement happens to not apply, and additional considerations must be made. Ironically this is right in the Jumo thrust-class. If that's opening a side topic to you, fine.

 

12 minutes ago, Asgar said:

„thrust classes“ were of 0 concern in the 30s and 40s. Engineers simply tried to get as much thrust as the technology allowed.

 

Disagree. The engineers were scrambling to build engines producing a given thrust-requirement, determined by the performance-goals of said aircraft. The Germans added a flavour of "do all this without using that" and almost failed. They brought some key innovations along the way, though. Like the variable area exhaust nozzle (though with inverted kinematics) and the air-cooled turbine.

 

14 minutes ago, Asgar said:

YES  especially low power engines nowadays often use a combination of axial and radial compressors but mostly these designs are used in helicopter turbines or other turbines where short construction lengths are desired.

 

It's not the low power that determines the use of combined flow compressors (see the Progress D-27 or the PW150 turboprops) or short installed length.

It's mostly about total losses in tip-flow, which turns against axial compressors at lower mass-flows and high pressures (HPC section). Hence using a single radial stage is more efficient than using multiple axial stages in that case. That's either the case with turbofans in the Jumo thrust-class (and below) or on many turboprops or - as you said - in turboshafts.

 

Centrifugal compressors tend to scale poorly in terms of weight and frontal-area over size (mass-flow), which is one of the main drawbacks. You also end up losing a bit of pressure-ratio by bending the airflow around corners constantly. Hence if the overall pressure-ratio requires several stages, you'll rather end up with combined axial-centrifugal stages instead. When going up higher in total required pressure-ratios (and high mass-flows) you'll see pure axial designs, which is the reason why you see so many axial designs. Also, building a turbofan with centrifugal compressors would turn out to be quite challenging.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Regardless of reasons for or against, thanks for this technical discussion.  I am well versed in recip engines, but those infernal kerosene burning things are not in my wheelhouse.  It's good to learn new things.

[EAF19_Marsh]

21 hours ago, Asgar said:

I have no idea what the development state of the BMW 003 were, but considering the Soviets build thousands of them and used them in the Yak 15 and MiG-9 IIRC. I guess they weren’t that far from ready.

Bur they dropped them when they got a Nene?

[FliegerAD]

Funny enough, at one time in April 45, the airbases of the Meteor and He 162, Faßberg and Leck, were only 220km (or so) apart.

...though I think the only combat the Meteor had with another manned jet was being bombed by the Ar 234 in Belgium. ?

 

I would love to see the He 162, even if there are more important aircraft.

 

...like the Fw 190A9. ?

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by FliegerAD

[EAF19_Marsh]

2 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Mmmmmmm   bacon.

Got me one at the cafe around the corner. They put coriander in them here, which sounds odd but is pretty tasty.

 

But no Meteor so far.

20 hours ago, Asgar said:

it’s the MiG, I knew one of the designs used the BMW jet engine

Ouragan had a Nene, pretty sure.