In article ,
"Andy Mckenzie" writes:
Just to add my bit of pedantry, the Me262 was a jet, the Me163 was a rocket
powered aircraft. There was a rocket powred He 176, but as far as I am aware
no He-163.

I either meant 162 or 178, Google suggests. I'm not sure. A Close Relative
spent a fair amount of time in Germany in 1946/7 translating engineering
documentation on various fascinating projects (V1, V2, Schmetterling,
Me/He??? for various values of ???) and as a result has such a headful of
stuff that was secret for so long that he's only ever mentioned it in recent
years and tends to get them mixed up, and all I have is mixed-up hearsay.
Whichever one it was had a nasty habit of falling out of the sky in
increasingly small bits, anyway.

They only built a few 100, and they could never deploy them in
numbers to do real damage. It is estimated that they shot down about 10
allied planes for 15 Me163s lost in combat, but that hundreds of Me163 were
destroyed in landing or takeoff, or due to airfarme failure when mucking
about at the edge of the sound barrier. There is a Me-163 in the Science
museum in London.

That's perilously close to suicide missions, then, and not the war-winning
weapon others might have us believe.
--
SAm.