Posted on 12/21/2016 6:59:45 AM PST by C19fan
IIRC, a few of our air defense interceptors in the late 50’s used unguided rockets. Never read how good the hit rate was.
Jet engines at the time had a mean time between failure of about 10 hours due to metallurgy not being up to the task.
They did. They also developed radio-controlled rockets for ground to air and air to ground. Hitler diverted resources to his pet projects like the Maus. The Germans had some amazing hardware; but, never got to deploy much of it in significant numbers.
Fuel additives made all the difference by allowing more aggressive supercharging, more power output.
“Fuel additives made all the difference by allowing more aggressive supercharging, more power output.”
Yes. The output of the basic Merlin engine was greatly increased by better and better fuel over the course of the war.
The Luftwaffe on the other hand, was reduced to using fuel derived from coal. When allied forces had to fly captured jets to Cherbourg, they used regular diesel fuel and the Jumo 004B turbojets ran just fine.
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That long sentence can be shortened to:
Proximity fuzes (sp?) were not invented by the Germans and they did not use them in WW2.
Americans invented them as part of the war effort.
Those r4m’s were pretty effective. I think it was Walter Schuck who said when they hit a heavy bomber with them it looked like an ashtray being emptied out. Always wondered why there is no gun camera footage from the Me 262’s.
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