On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:16:38 GMT, "Agki Strodon"
wrote:


The German "mosquito clone" aircraft was the Ta-154, designed by Kurt
Tank and so it's also referred to as a Focke Wulf. As I thought, it
was also named "Moskito"

I don't know what Tego-Film replacement was, but my sources describe
it as a cold glue that had problems with residual acid. Maybe it was
an early PVA ?

Yeah, the history if some of the designs they had for future planes would
have made Wernher von Braun proud.

I doubt it - he just did rockets
("That's not my department", says Wernher von Braun)

One Messerschmitt design was captured by
the Americans and became the F-86 Saberjet used a lot in Korea.

No, this was the P.1101. It was captured almost complete in
Oberammergau, generally ignored for years and NASA later flew it as
the Bell (sic) X-5. The original version had a variable sweep wing
that was ground adjustable, but Bell developed this to allow in-flight
sweep changes. Last person to fly it was some guy called Neil
Armstrong.

The F-86 almost entirely ignored the German swept wing research. What
the Americans learned about sweep, they mainly picked up from the
British.

The first supersonic jet to fly was the DH108 Swallow, a swept wing
tailless development of the 1943 Spider Crab - both with short and
tubby wooden fuselage sections, built by the Mosquito laminated wood
sheet production technique. However the Swallow was a bit of a widow
maker and all three prototypes killed their pilots. Not before
however, almost certainly becoming the first supersonic jet, albeit
unrecorded and in a near-fatal dive.

Germany's tailless Gothas and Hortens would probably have suffered
similar problems, had they ever been flown under real power.

The first supersonic aircraft was of course the Miles M.52. Cancelled
by a short-sighted British government in 1946, the first real test
wasn't until a model flight in 1948 - when it promptly achieved M1.38
in level flight, with no fuss at all.

The Russians weren't so daft. They copied everything Messerschmitt did
with swept wings and produced the Mig-15 and Mig-17 on the basis of
them. However, given what the British did by giving them Nene engines
to power them, no doubt we'd have given them wing designs too, if
they'd asked.


The Me328 (twin pulse jets) was a dismal failure. The wooden fuselage
was destroyed by the intense acoustic noise from the pulse jets, so
they were moved off the fuselage and under the wings. Here they became
uncontrollable, as pulsejets aren't easily throttled to balance their
thrust. Unbalanced thrusts such a long way from the centre line gave
it a tendency to yaw wildly - and the fuselage still fell apart.

--
If we fail, then let us fail heroically
(or even better, stoichiometrically)