Talk:Messerschmitt Me 262/Archive 3

"it was much faster and better armed"?
That the Me 262 was much faster during WW II is unquestionably correct (although the Gloster Meteor was faster at 606 mph by November 1945 Rolls-Royce_Derwent). However, the "better armed" claim is not so clearly correct.

The Me 262 had four 30 mm cannon as its primary armament, with the option of carrying rockets or bombs.

Plenty of Allied aircraft were also fitted with four cannon with rockets or bombs as an optional extra, and some had machine guns as well.

The Bristol Beaufighter ended up fitted with 4 x 20mm cannon and 6 x .303 machine guns.

The Mosquito F was fitted with 4 x 20mm cannon and 4 x .303 machine guns.

Both these British aircraft could reasonably be described as better armed than the Me 262 - for some jobs. Yes, the MK 108 armed Me 262 was capable of downing a bomber with fewer shots than any Allied aircraft, but the MK 108's poor muzzle velocity was a severe disadvantage when attacking a manoeuvring target as noted below.

Bearing in mind these points, confirmed by the information below, I've changed "better armed" to "heavily armed" - because its 4 x 30mm cannon certainly was heavier armament when compared to almost everything else.

Data below gleaned from the relevant Wikipedia pages.

The MK 108 required on average just four hits to bring down a heavy bomber such as a B-17 Flying Fortress or B-24 Liberator and a single "shattering" hit to down a fighter. In comparison, the otherwise excellent 20 mm MG 151/20 required an average of 25 hits to down a B-17.

It's reasonable to assume that the 20 mm MG 151/20's 20 mm shells produced similar damage to those of the 20mm Hispano cannon used by Allied aircraft. Thus, the Me 262 was better armed for the job of shooting down bombers - its primary design task.

However, the MK 108 had a much lower muzzle velocity and consequently shorter range and lower accuracy than the Hispano 20mm cannon.

"The resulting low muzzle velocity was the MK 108's main shortcoming, with the result that its projectile trajectory was seriously affected by bullet drop after a comparatively short range — 41 m (135 ft) of drop in the first 1,000 m (3,300 ft) of range. The long time of flight and curved trajectory strongly reduced the usefulness of the MK 108 against maneuvering targets like fighters; it was designed for use against bombers. Even against these, attacks had to be pressed home to close range (often, at just 200-300 meters), which was particularly challenging for fast fighters like the Me 262, which risked colliding with the target if their approach speed was too high."

MK 108 cannon


 * Rate of fire	650 rounds/min
 * Muzzle velocity	540 m/s (1,770 ft/s)

Hispano-Suiza HS.404


 * Rate of fire	700 rounds/min
 * Muzzle velocity	880 m/s (2,900 ft/s)
 * Maximum firing range	7,000 yards

M2 Browning - used by many US fighter planes:


 * Effective firing range	1,800 m (2,000 yd)
 * Maximum firing range	6,800 m (7,400 yd)

Example British fighter armament

Bristol Beaufighter


 * 4 x 20 mm Hispano Mk III cannon (60 rpg) in nose
 * 4 x .303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns (outer starboard wing)
 * 2 x .303 in (7.7 mm) machine gun (outer port wing)
 * 8 x RP-3 "60 lb" (27 kg) rockets or 2x 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs

Mosquito F


 * 4 x 20 mm (0.79 in) Hispano cannon (belly)
 * 4 x .303 (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns (nose)

Hawker Tempest


 * 4 x 20 mm (.79 in) Mark II or V Hispano cannons
 * 2 x 500 lb (227 kg) or 1,000 lb (454 kg) bombs

Gloster Meteor


 * Guns: 4 x 20 mm British Hispano MkV cannons
 * Rockets: Provision for up to sixteen "60lb" 3 in rockets or eight 5 inch HVAR rockets. under outer wings
 * Bombs: two 1000 lb (454 kg) bombs

Michael F 1967 (talk) 20:10, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Judgements about what is better or not better should not be made by Wikipedia editors adding up and comparing their lists of facts. That's original research, which violates the policy no original research. If recognized experts on the aircraft of the period say it was better armed, it's better armed, no matter if you know some other plane had 20 cannons and 50 machine guns. The cited source, Gunstson, in The Illustrated directory of Fighting Aircraft of World War II p. 240, says, "Compared with the Allied fighters of the day, it was much faster and packed a much heavier punch." He also wrote, "Allied jets either never reached squadrons, or never engaged enemy aircraft." So perhaps Gunston's thinking is that planes that didn't see combat don't count.Regardless of what he was thinking, this is what the source says, so we should stick with it. If you want to argue that Gunston is unreliable, then you have to make that with other sources who say that in fact the 262 did not pack "a much heaver punch." In the end, this is going to be a matter of opinion as to what was better armed, and so it should be attributed to the expert by name, per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV].Copy-pasting the exact phrase " Compared with Allied fighters of its day..." from Gunston's book violates WP:COPYVIO and Close paraphrasing, so it need to be rewritten, by the way. -Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:41, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem with the analysis above is that it's comparing apples and oranges. Most of the Allied fighters above are twin-engined heavy fighters, chasing bombers rather than agile fighters. The Tempest is a more representative example of the single-engined fighters that would deliberately engage 262s - and the example given is one of the less common, later examples that did have a cannon armament, albeit the 20mm 404.
 * There's also the question of matching armament to target: a bomber is a large target, a fighter a small one. Saying "it took many hits" with MG fire is much more important for bombers. If a small fighter is hit at all, chances are much greater that it's hit in a critical area. The bomber might need a cannon shell to destroy it, the fighter probably doesn't. When the target is a small agile fighter, the problem is to hit it: many well-aimed rounds beat one that would destroy it but misses. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If you look at the picture on the front page, you will see that the Me 262 is a twin engined fighter. The main problem with this statement (and the whole article) is that it is sourced from the book "The Illustrated directory of Fighting Aircraft of World War II" which is a casual publication aimed at school children and the like. Essentially none of the sources used by this article are serious technical books. 194.94.232.74 (talk) 11:27, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The lead section is supposed to be a summary; it should not require references. Let's tell the reader what the general consensus is in the literature rather than slavishly sticking with one observer, Gunston in this case. Binksternet (talk) 22:30, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure where the idea that "items in the lead should not require references" comes from. Not WP:CITELEAD. (I agree with your other point otherwise though). ( Hohum  @ ) 23:03, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * "Shouldn't" as opposed to "must not"? In general, I get suspicious if - in an otherwise uncontroversial article - cites are needed in the lede, but there are occasions when they are necessary. Current wording seems to be a reasonable compromise.GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have some comments to your first paragraph. I am not a regular editor of this site but I am a regular reader and a little concerned it is widely used by anyone if I am interpreting your claims correctly for how it is compiled.
 * First, it is not original research to take data from published sources and summarise them. That is what one does when one takes the published payloads of various aircraft and writes down just the highest and lowest (or whatever) rather than all of them. No new data is being added by doing this; existing data is simply being presented in a way more appropriate to the audience. If you are saying you won't accept any such claim without reading the explicit statement "X has the highest payload" then you must accept that sometimes such a statement won't exist even though the data to support it does. Technical publications usually won't do this sort of basic interpretation for a reader. You also must accept that you will often have to throw away high quality primary source data and replace it with a simply spelled out statement sourced from a low quality secondary or tertiary source like "The Illustrated directory of Fighting Aircraft of World War II". This would be an odd way to construct an encyclopedia.
 * I am also not sure where you get the idea Gunston is a "recognised expert". What standard do you have for this and where is it proved? Certainly one would not cite a book such as this in any real published research on the subject. (as it happens Gunston actually is quite a good author, at least for some things, but many of his books are pitched at a low level for the mass market) 194.94.232.74 (talk) 12:04, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I would agree that this formulation is incorrect. The Me 262 had a greater throw weight with its cannons, but the Meteor carried a larger total payload. It is not correct to say that an aircraft that can carry more munitions is more lightly armed merely because those munitions are carried as bombs or rockets rather than guns. A weaker point would be that the 30mm cannons were used to optimise the aircraft for fighting bombers; they were actually less effective against fighters. Strictly, though, they were "heavier".

More generally this article is written in a way that exaggerates the Me 262's strengths and understates its weaknesses; this is systemic and can't be fixed without a major re-write with better sources. 194.94.232.74 (talk) 11:22, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Quite. For one thing, Dr Alfred Price, a noted authority, observes in Late Mark Spitfire Aces 1942-45 (Osprey 1995, ISBN 1 85532 575 6, p.71), referring to the British Mark II Gyro Gunsight fitted to RAF and USAAF fighters from 1944: 'It is difficult to exaggerate the value of the gyro gunsight in assisting the Allied air forces to maintain air superiority in the final year of the war, when their piston-engined fighters had to battle with the much-faster German jet types. The improvement in air-to-air gunnery brought about by the new gunsight helped to compensate for the huge difference in performance. As a result Allied fighters shot down an average of more than two German jet fighters for each Allied fighter or bomber destroyed by the jets.' That would give the fabled 262 a kill-to-loss ratio of less than 0.5 to 1. (Recall that the Spitfire XIV, which saw service in similar numbers over a similar period, had a kill-to-loss of about 20 to 1. No wonder jet pilot Adolf Galland said that 'The best thing about the Spitfire XIV was that there were so few of them.') I once tried tallying Me262 victories and losses and it didn't come out any better than 1 to 1. Of course Alfred Price would know better than me. And the 262's 30mm guns were heavy, but low-velocity, so that they were markedly outranged by the Browning M2 .50-calibres of the American bombers, which was a bit of a disadvantage. Then you've got the engine life of just 12 hours, and the critical Mach number far lower than a Spitfire's... and so on. Khamba Tendal (talk) 20:59, 29 July 2017 (UTC)


 * " ... am also not sure where you get the idea Gunston is a "recognised expert"." - perhaps it's from Flight International where "WTG" (Bill Gunston) was Technical Editor for over twenty years.


 * Here's a search for Gunston's Flight articles:  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.172.235 (talk) 20:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Since the BMW 003 jets proved heavier than anticipated, the wing was swept slightly, by 18.5°, to accommodate a change in the center of gravity.[13]
WHAT!? This is nonsense/ical and should be removed. There are guys out there who believe the only reason 262's wings were swept back was because the BMW's engine was a bit heavier!? Also: The Me 262 is often referred to as a "swept wing" design as the production aircraft had a small, but significant leading edge sweep of 18.5° which likely provided an advantage by increasing the critical Mach number.[23] Sweep, uncommon at the time, was added after the initial design of the aircraft. The engines proved heavier than originally expected, and the sweep was added primarily to position the center of lift properly relative to the center of mass. (The original 35° sweep, proposed by Adolf Busemann, was not adopted.)[24] Actually, I remember reading: That the Jumo engine was a bit bigger/bulkier and heavier and yet produced less thrust "but a modicum of reliability was found". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.101.38.242 (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2019 (UTC)