I will never compare a battleship and an aircraft carrier, for the former there is just Kaptsov, for the latter there is Andrey from Chelyabinsk. And no one forbids me to do this, you just need to understand your level of competence in these matters.
I do not claim to be an "expert" in WWII aviation, although I just love these planes. They were the essence. Each country has its own, but these were complete combat vehicles that you simply cannot help but love.
And this is how the Swallow is served. In fact, the first combat jet aircraft.
Shame and degradation, you know …
The question is about who is the shame.
Let me then act not as a co-author, as suggested by some readers, but as a lawyer for Lastochka. Well, what can I do, I love these planes …
So, from the screw! Quotes by Kaptsov are italicized.
The Me.262 Schwalbe was created under the influence of its predecessors and combined the features of the piston era aircraft that were unacceptable for jet aircraft. First of all, this is noticeable on its wing with a thick profile and low sweep."
Oleg, excuse me, Anenerbe worked badly. And the drawings of the MiG-29 could not be delivered in 1941. That is why it happened so - a thick wing profile of a piston aircraft and a small sweep. In fact - a piston aircraft with suspended turbojet engines.
This is called evolution. This is called constructive search. Especially considering the fact that the Me-262 had no predecessors. It was, as it were, the first real combat aircraft.
It can be argued in terms of Arado-Blitz, but Ar-234 was, firstly, a bomber, and secondly - lo and behold, it is true - it had a sweep, like the Swallow. That is, in no way.
“After the war, no one used the technical solutions incorporated in the design of the Me.262. None of the post-war fighters had wings with such a profile or placed under the planes of the engine nacelles (outside the main landing gear)."
In how … That is, Comrade Yakovlev was messing with the Martian spacecraft? And the Yak-25 and Yak-28 did not meet these requirements? Strange, but there are more similarities than necessary. And the chassis is a tricycle with a front strut, and engines under the wings …
“With the jet era, Schwalbe was only related to the principle of operation of a turbojet engine. Everything else turned out to be a lie."
Yeah, that is, the shells of the cannons that hit the hulls of the "fortresses" are a lie. And our planes of Yakovlev and Ilyushin, painfully reminiscent of the creation of Willie Messerschmitt, are also a lie?
And the 1180 units of the Yak-28? And what about 635 Yak-25 units? Is that also a lie?
In short, everyone is lying. Such a strange alternative world. But - has the right to life. However, we go further in the text.
Further interesting comparisons begin.
"Jet Me.262 and piston" Thunderbolt "P-47D had a normal take-off weight of about 6.5 tons."
So what? Is this a reason to compare them? The weight? Excuse me, Oleg, these ships can be compared in terms of displacement. With airplanes, the situation is somewhat different.
The P-47 was a piston aircraft. Me-262 - turbojet. The R-47 was a single-engine aircraft, the Me-262 was a twin-engine aircraft. Sorry, but it never occurs to compare airplanes that are so different. And in our case, it’s easy. The main thing is that the weight is the same …
“With the advent of other fighters equipped with turbocharged high-altitude engines, the Thunder quickly gave up the initiative to the more balanced Mustangs. Which, along with "Lavochkin", "Messerschmitt" and "Spitfire" preferred to engage in battle at values of specific load 200 or less kg per square meter. wing meter ".
Requires translation into Russian. In general, the aircraft did not have a device capable of measuring the specific load on a wing at that time. This was done by calculations in the Design Bureau and the pilots were not informed. And, believe me, the pilots entered the battle without knowing at all what the load on the wing was.
As Pokryshkin correctly wrote in his book "The Sky of War": the engine worked, the weapon was in good order - the pilot went into battle no matter what. Both the I-16 and the Hurricanes fought with the Me-109 series F and G. And they dropped them to the ground.
It was, and it is simply impossible to get rid of it.
The P-47 Thunderbolt was the most massive US fighter in that war. And it was a very successful fighter capable of performing all the tasks assigned to it. Weight? Forgive me, I wrote in an article about this plane that the considerable weight of the R-47 was more than compensated for by its engine.
But these were completely different planes. And it's just silly to compare them.
"Two" whistles "under the wing provided" Schwalbe "in total less than 1, 8 tons of thrust. This is very bad. Comparison with the fighters of the post-war period is out of the question. "Schwalbe" was inferior in thrust-weight ratio to piston peers!"
Well, divine! Post-war fighters of all countries were developed in a calm atmosphere, with a careful study of German trophies, no one bombed the OKB, Soviet tanks did not rumble through the nearby streets, and so on.
Here the code word is post-war. Developed after the war. Feel the difference, as they say!
“Due to the insufficient thrust of the Schwalbe engines, a runway with a length of at least 1,500 meters was required. They quickly abandoned the idea of gunpowder boosters - they got such jokes from everyone. The impossibility of basing the Me.262 on conventional field airfields put the Reich Air Force, which was already breathing on its own, in a completely desperate situation.
The Ubermensch built the "fighter of the future" without the necessary experience and technology. The result is a replica of a heavy piston fighter with clipped wings and an exceptionally frail engine."
They did not put the characteristics of the Me-262 of the Luftwaffe in any position. Vice versa. While the Me-109 and FW-190 of all modifications were trying to fight the Mustangs and Thunderbolts, the Me-262 stood on the wing.
By the way, the statistics are in favor of "Swallows". 150 aircraft shot down versus 100 lost aircraft is not bad. For a new class of aircraft - quite. Moreover, of the hundreds of those lost, most are lost on earth. From the actions of poorly trained technicians, and from the pilots got it. Not all were Gallands.
Unpatriotic, but what losses did the Soviet BI-1 inflict on the enemy? British Gloucester Meteor? American P-59 Aircomet?
None. Except for the lives of test pilots, none. In contrast to the useless German Me-262.
And for some reason nobody could catch up with a replica of a piston fighter with turbojet engines. Yes, they caught it on takeoff and landing, when the Junkers turbojet engines, which were rather weak at that time, could not give the plane the required speed. But in a regular fight - sorry. 150 km / h is an advantage, whatever one may say.
So the Germans were building the fighter of the future without really having any experience or technology. They created these technologies and, based on their work, acquired the same experience. It wasn't the Martians who gave them the blueprints. The engines did not come from Jupiter.
On the contrary, the victorious countries with great pleasure and trembling knees hunted for the secrets of V-1, V-2, Me-163, and Me-262. They copied, improved, repelled in their developments.
"German uberengineers clipped their wings, forgetting to change their profile."
Forgot? Or didn't you? Excuse me, Mr. Kaptsov, they had Yakovlev's manuals lying on the tables, but they didn't look at them? Or Mikoyan's calculations?
How easy it is to fuss with utter nonsense. After 80 years. However, it is not surprising.
“In the era of jet aircraft, much sharper airfoils and laminar flow wings are used. To increase directional stability and prevent the spread of disturbances in the air flow over the wing, various tricks are used in the form of forks and aerodynamic ridges."
And what can you reproach the German engineers with? Probably an unfinished time machine. Again "Anenerbe" failed. They didn’t penetrate into the future, didn’t get acquainted with how the planes and battleships should be made according to Kaptsov, because the fools with the Tirpitz and Me-262 lost the war.
I will tell you. Oleg, a terrible secret. If it were not for the work of engineers at the firm "Messerschmitt", it is unlikely that everyone else would have reached supersonic equipment. That's right, the Mustang needed a laminar wing for anything but supersonic.
"When creating the Luftwaflu, the Germans made a mistake in everything, even in the choice of weapons."
Well, of course! Could Germany have created a normal weapon? Of course not! MK-108 is, according to Kaptsov, not a weapon, but a misunderstanding.
Well, I'm not going to talk about calibers here, we'll talk (soon) about 30mm cannons in the corresponding article. In defense of the MK-108, I will only say that its design is a compromise between weight, cost and the ability to cause damage.
The gun was lighter than many. Yes, the half-meter barrel is not God knows what, the dispersion was fair. Here Oleg did it. But further … Further - sadness.
Yes, the firing range of the German cannon turned out to be so-so. As well as the trajectory of the projectile. And here Kaptsov is a little cunning. Yes, at a distance of 1000 meters, the MK-108 projectile went down 41 meters. But at a distance of 200-300 meters, he behaved more than decently, and heaped, and quite straightforward.
Oh, what a bad MK-108 was and how good ShVAK and Hispano-Suiza were!
Really, Oleg?
And nothing that from the same ShVAK no one beat for a kilometer? Did you approach the same 200-300 meters and beat? Pokryshkin's laziness to look through?
And further, what is this frankly strange approach? Ours, according to the most numerous recollections, fired from 100-300 meters, and why the Germans had to be from a kilometer? Who will explain?
And how then is this alignment: in the beginning, the MK 108 cannon used 440-gram high-explosive tracer shells equipped with 28 grams of pentrite mixed with TNT. And in 1944, the main ammunition was "Minengeschoss" grenades weighing 330 grams, equipped in various modifications of the projectile from 72 to 85 grams of RDX in combination with aluminum powder and plasticizer (in a ratio of 75/20/5%).
And, as practice has shown, 4-5 hits - and any "flying fortress" turned into a heap of metal. 4 hits from 4 guns - how's that? It is quite possible. Considering the good (as usual) rate of fire of 650 rds / min for the Rheinmetall product.
Any fighter of those times needed ONE such projectile.
And what about ShVAK, who had such excellent ballistics?
The charge of a high-explosive fragmentation projectile contained 3.7 grams of tetrile or a mixture of "GTT" - hexogen, TNT and tetrile. The incendiary fragmentation contained 0.85 grams of "GTT" and 3.9 grams of incendiary composition. Armor-piercing incendiary explosives did not contain, the mass of the incendiary composition was 2, 8 grams.
Yes, during the war, the charges were strengthened and even new, more powerful ones were invented. For example, an incendiary-fragmentation projectile, which was loaded with 5, 6 grams of high explosive A-IX-2, consisting of RDX (76%), aluminum powder (20%) and wax (4%), as well as a fragmentation-incendiary-tracer projectile, equipped with 4, 2 grams of explosives A-IX-2.
Is there a difference between a 20 mm projectile weighing 93-96 grams and a loaded 4, 2-5, 6 grams of explosives and a 300 grams projectile with 85 grams of explosives?
How many such shells had to be planted in the same B-17 to make him feel bad? That's just it. But praise towards ShVAK does not look very good. A gun of a completely different class.
Engines. Here at Kaptsov everything is fine too.
“It was impossible to build a full-fledged jet fighter in 1944. But it already became possible in 1947.
The first domestic serial turbojet engine VK-1 (RD-45) exhaled 2.6 tons of flame and fire with a dry weight of 872 kg. It differed from German crafts by a four times greater resource, while it did not require complex tricks with the use of two types of fuel (takeoff on gasoline, the main flight on kerosene / diesel fuel for Jumo-004)."
Well, of course, the Germans were just disgusting, that's why they lost the war. However, we recall that they reached Moscow in six months, but three backed away.
You know, Oleg, I will disappoint you a little. Your "luxurious and spewing" flame VK-1 (RD-45) is just an illegal copy of a British engine. It was the British who sold us 40 copies of their Rolls-Royce Nene engine, and ours were just ripped off. Without permission, without a license, as the Chinese do now.
This is nothing, since another family of "Soviet" RD-10 and RD-20 engines is the Junkers Jumo 004 and BMW 003, respectively. And our planes (MiG-9 and Il-28, for example) flew on re-copied engines of allies and adversaries.
The German engines were worse, but the courts, as from the Rolls-Royce, did not threaten.
And you, Oleg, are absolutely right! We were never able to build either rocket or turbojet engines in 1944. And in 1947, when the British and German ones fell into the hands, it was easy.
To be honest, this homely "hurray-patriotism" is not very appropriate today. Especially sewn with white thread. Without studying and comparing the most elementary sources, which, I want to say, are in full swing today.
And so, in fact, a very cheerful article about the displacement of the "Me-262" has turned out. With about the same success, you can write about the flight performance of American and Japanese battleships. But not worth it.
In my reviews on German aviation, I was really quite critical of some aspects of the same Me-109. But in no case does this detract from the merits of the designers of the Messerschmitt company and of Willie Messerschmitt himself, since they created a very good combat vehicle.
And we were catching up for a very long time, and in some places we could not catch up with the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs.
The Germans knew how to build airplanes. The Germans knew how to build engines. The Germans knew how to create excellent weapons. They were very strong and worthy opponents.
And to wave a "Soviet cool engine" copied from a German engine, humiliating a defeated enemy, is, forgive me, unworthy of the winners. Roughly how to say that the MK-108 was perfect about nothing in comparison with the ShVAK, without going into details and starting from a single parameter. Even if it is very important.
We won in spite of and in spite of. This is worth remembering. And to consider what our opponents fought with, it is necessary that way: with respect and due attention.
Leaving populism and urgency aside. You have to be a little more serious, even in the pursuit of popularity.
