Reggiane Re. Boulton Paul Defiant turret fighter. Creek Supermarine Stranraer [notes 8]. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing. London: Bounty Books. Attacks by Allied forces on fuel supplies during the deteriorating late-war situation also reduced the effectiveness of the aircraft as a fighting force.

Remote: The planes were discovered in the isolated Marshall Islands chain red circled. The planes were dumped five miles off the coast of Roi-Namur. The find includes historic American aircraft including a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber, which has amazingly remained almost intact. An incredible colour picture show a F4U Corsair, which landed on its propeller with its wings in the sand and has remained upright for years. One scuba diver using what appears to be a selfie stick takes a picture of a huge Curtiss C Commando lying ominously on the seabed.

A lionfish swims in front of the body of one of the planes while the cockpit of another is covered in coral as hundreds of small fish flit in and out of the wreckage. It is famous for delivering the fatal blows to the Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway in June - one of the most decisive battles of World War Two. The Helldiver was a larger and faster plane, although delays in production led British and Australian troops to cancel substantial orders.

A Corsair is pictured nosedown as two scuba divers take photographs and examine the wreckage, discovered seven decades after it was dumped at the site.

Amazingly three planes that landed just metres apart have remained intact, with only a few broken tails and wings littering the floor. The nose and wing of one Avenger has fallen off although it is not known whether this happened before or after impact with the seabed.

Hundreds of beautiful blue and yellow fish swim round the nose and wing of a B Mitchell, a twin-engined medium bomber.

It is clear that the planes have been left untouched for a long period of time due to the amount of coral growing on them. Some planes were not as lucky and were destroyed before the reached the seabed.

Above, the tails of two aircraft lie next to the wing of another. Fokker went into bankruptcy in , and its operations were sold to competitors. At age 20, while studying in Germany, Anthony Fokker built his initial aircraft, the Spin Spider —the first Dutch-built plane to fly in his home country. His first new design for the Germans to be produced in any numbers was the Fokker M.

Fitted with a developed version of this gear, the M. Later in the war, after the Fokker D. As this partnership proved to be troublesome, it was eventually dissolved. By then, former Fokker welder and new designer Reinhold Platz , who had taken the late Martin Kreutzer's place with the firm, had adapted some of Prof. Junkers' design concepts, that resulted in a visual similarity between the aircraft of those two manufacturers during the next decade.

Some of the noteworthy types produced by Fokker during the second half of the war, all designed primarily by Platz, included the Fokker D. VI biplane, Fokker Dr.

VII biplane the only aircraft ever referred to directly in a treaty: all D. VII's were singled out for handover to the allies in their terms of the armistice agreement and the Fokker D. VIII parasol monoplane. In , Fokker, owing large sums in back taxes including 14,, marks of income-tax , [5] returned to the Netherlands and founded a new company near Amsterdam with the support of Steenkolen Handels Vereniging, now known as SHV Holdings. Despite the strict disarmament conditions in the Treaty of Versailles , Fokker did not return home empty-handed.

In , he arranged an export permit and brought six entire trains of parts, and types of aircraft across the Dutch-German border, among them Fokker C. Is, D. VIIs, and D. This initial stock enabled him to set up shop quickly. After his company's relocation, many Fokker C. I and C. IV military airplanes were delivered to Russia, Romania, and the still clandestine German air force.

Success came on the commercial market, too, with the development of the Fokker F. VII , a high-winged aircraft capable of taking on various types of engines. Fokker continued to design and build military aircraft, delivering planes to the Royal Netherlands Air Force. These countries bought substantial numbers of the Fokker C. V reconnaissance aircraft, which became Fokker's main success in the late s and early s. In the s, Fokker entered its glory years, becoming the world's largest aircraft manufacturer by the late s.

Its greatest success was the F. It shared the European market with the Junkers all-metal aircraft, but dominated the American market until the arrival of the Ford Trimotor which copied the aerodynamic features of the Fokker F. VII, and Junkers structural concepts.

In , discontented at being totally subordinate to GM management, Fokker resigned. Notre Dame legendary football coach Knute Rockne was among the fatalities, prompting extensive media coverage and technical investigation. As a result, all Fokkers were grounded in the US, along with many other types that had copied Fokker's wings. In January Airspeed signed an agreement for the Douglas DC-2 and a number of Fokker types, with Fokker to be a consultant for seven years.

Shute found him genial, shrewd and helpful but already a sick man ; and he was difficult to deal with as his domestic life was irregular. Airspeed considered making the Fokker D. XVII for Greece, as Greece wanted to buy from Britain for currency reasons, but the proposal did not "come off"; Shute recommended reading his novel Ruined City on Balkan methods of business.

And after a year the drift to war meant that Dutchmen could not go to the Airspeed factory or to board meetings.

Is and D. XXIs of the Dutch Air Force were able to score a respectable number of victories against the Luftwaffe , but many were destroyed on the ground before they could be used. At the end of the war, the factories were completely stripped by the Germans and destroyed by Allied bombing. Rebuilding after the war proved difficult. The market was flooded with cheap surplus planes from the war. The company cautiously started building gliders and autobuses and converting Dakota transport planes Ww2 Jet Planes German 2020 to civilian versions.

A few F25s were built. Nevertheless, the S trainer was a success, being purchased by several air forces. The S Machtrainer became one of the first jet trainers , and although not an export success, it served for over a decade with the Royal Netherlands Air Force. A new factory was built next to Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam in A number of military planes were built there under license, among them the Gloster Meteor twin-jet fighter and Lockheed 's F Starfighter.

A second production and maintenance facility was established at Woensdrecht. In , the F Friendship was introduced, Fokker's most successful postwar airliner.

The Dutch government contributed 27 million guilders to its development. Powered by the Rolls-Royce Dart , it became the world's best-selling turboprop airliner, reaching almost units sold by , including under licence by Fairchild.

Also, a military version of the F, the F Troopship, was built. In , the F was followed by the jet-powered F Fellowship. Until production stopped in , a total of were built in various versions.

In , Fokker agreed to an alliance with Bremen -based Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke under control of a transnational holding company.

They collaborated on an unsuccessful regional jetliner , the VFW , of which only 19 were sold. This collaboration ended in early It consisted of companies and government agencies from these four countries and the United States. In , Fokker started a modest space division building parts for European satellites.

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.

One or two of these rockets could down even the famously rugged Boeing B Flying Fortress , [58] from the "metal-shattering" brisant effect of the fast-flying rocket's g 18 oz explosive warhead. 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, so that 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 seventeen enemy fighters in the Me , ten of them American P Mustangs.

Other notable Me aces included Georg-Peter Eder , with twelve enemy fighters to his credit including nine Ps , Erich Rudorffer also with twelve enemy fighters to his credit, Walther Dahl with eleven 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. 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: "the Messerschmitt Me 's most dangerous opponent was the British Hawker Tempest—extremely fast at low altitudes, highly manoeuvrable and heavily armed. They did not intercept the jet, but instead flew towards the Me and Ar base at Hopsten air base.

The German response was the construction of a "flak lane" of over emplacements of the 20 mm Flakvierling quadruple autocannon batteries at Rheine-Hopsten to protect the approaches. 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 Dive tests determined that the Me went out of control in a dive at Mach 0. 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? After the war, the Royal Aircraft Establishment , at that time one of the leading institutions in high-speed research, re-tested the Me to help with British attempts at exceeding Mach 1.

The RAE achieved speeds of up to Mach 0. 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, planes 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 one hundred Me s in the air. Through the end of February to the end of March , approximately sixty Me s were destroyed in attacks on Obertraubling and thirty at Leipheim ; [87] 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.

A disused mine complex under the Walpersberg mountain was adapted for production of complete aircraft. These were hauled Ww2 Jet Planes German Kings to the flat top of the hill where a runway had been cleared, and flown out. Between 20 and 30 Me s were built here, the underground factory being overrun by Allied troops before it could reach meaningful output. 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 jet fighter, 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 and forty 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 [96] 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. Data from:' Messerschmitt Me A Schwalbe [] []. The first Me reproduction a two-seater took off for the first time in December and the second one in August Data from Quest for Performance [22] Original Messerschmitt documents []. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. World's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft.

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. June Learn how and when to remove this template message.

July Learn how and when to remove this template message. The one above me went into a steep right-hand turn, his pale blue underside standing out against the purple sky. Another banked right in front of the Me's nose. Violent jolt as I flew through his airscrew eddies.

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