for More than 30 years, the aircraft hanging on the ceiling of the aviation hall of the German Museum in Munich. Now specialists of fürth, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, the machine type of the Me 163, was to secure Germany in the Second world war, the “victory” put in an oversized x-ray machine. The nine-million-Volt, 14-metre high XXL-Scanner works similar to a computer tomograph in the field of medicine.
Mr Hempfer, a world war II plane in the x-ray Scanner? This is the usual way to historical Technikzu explore?
no, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. After we had done before successfully a car with x-ray, the Wendler-BMW, we were already in contact with the Fraunhofer Institute. Us conservation issues of interest in addition to the offal. Worldwide, there are ten existing copies of this type of aircraft, large parts of the individual story of our machine are cleared. What is the work number? You ever came? We know that the UK has given the plane in the middle of the 60s the German Museum.
for Years, the Me 163 was a prominent exhibit of the Museum. But no one knew the story?
Yes, Amateur researcher and former curators have tried, more about the story, but there are still many puzzles. We know that England has captured at the end of the war, about 30 planes of this type. Some more they gave to the United States and even Australia. The famous test pilot Eric Brown under a test adopted in England, even the flight, was injured but in the case of a crash landing. The British were in after the war, break the sound barrier. Many accidents occurred, even fatal. The Me 163 was the first aircraft that broke the 1000 km/h.
Still not the sound barrier, but close to it.
Yes, because it is also aerodynamically sensitive. A Supersonic aircraft must be extremely low resistance built in. The Me 163 was designed for high-speed flight, but if the engine was burned out after about seven minutes, then had to land in the gliding flight, so they had to have good slow flight characteristics. Therefore, the wooden wings were relatively thick and had slats.
Why you disassemble the machine not easy to examine them?
We want to handle our objects absolutely non-destructive. The Problem with this plane is that you edited the exhibition pieces in the mid-sixties radical. During the restoration the focus was not on the original condition. Machines should then look especially radiant.
The data from the x-ray scan to provide detailed pictures.
So you painted it?
was The plane after it arrived from England, several times painted over. You have even filled Openings and Flaps, which is historically nonsense. So the machine was never in use. We learn so when fluoroscopy is also a lot about the historical handling of technical objects of cultural value. Today, we treat such exhibits are more like a work of art, with all the use and aging traces.
The Englishman had removed the Cockpit and engine. Have you retrofitted?
In the sixties the German Museum good contacts to former pilots had. One of these pilots had developed at the end of the war from his own machine, the instruments Board and later to the Museum. This was then incorporated into the Me 163. The engine came separately from England. The engine was probably the work of the legendary Pilot Eric Brown flew. We suspect that our Me was prepared 163 for test flights, we noticed, however, after brown’s accident, that this aircraft a little too dangerous, even without a powered engine.
The bizarre plane was a daring Experiment by the aircraft engineers. How is the often cited myth of the wonder weapon? Would dieMe 163 can still intervene substantially in the war?
In any case. It is the attempt to build a plane with a rocket drive, as they had been used previously only in the unmanned weapon system.
… rockets?
Yes. For pilots, the sensational was that you could climb a lot faster and almost vertically in the sky turf. Military that makes very little sense: Due to the short burning time of the engine, the pilot found the enemy is often not in a timely manner. The Me 163 was not allowed to remove themselves too far from airports, because we had to return in gliding flight. The armament consisted of two 30-mm machine guns with a relatively low muzzle velocity. It was extremely difficult, in full flight at a speed of 950 km/h, a target to set our sights on. The pilots had had only a window of maybe one to two seconds, in which you pull the trigger. Allegedly nine kills with the Me 163, but are not all confirmed.
But the concept of a Rocket plane was in the following years is important. The U.S. Pilot Chuck Yaeger by 1947 with a rocket-powered X-1 broke the sound barrier. The later Apollo astronauts lerntenihr craft on the X-15, a rocket plane Nasa.
Yes. But the X-1 from Yaeger looked aerodynamically different, she had no back-swept wings and a tailplane had, in contrast to the Me 163 at the rear. As a direct precursor to the US planes, you can’t look at the Me 163.
Had to do, people to Wernher von Braun, who worked later for Nasa, the rocket plane?
Hardly in the Nazi period, two separate development programmes in Peenemünde on the Baltic sea. It is a myth that the United States had set up directly on the German cutting-edge technology. The statements of the war and the post-war period. The allies had to evaluate the technology and assess. Contemporaries overestimated the potential threat.
So, not a wonder weapon?
Military, the rocket plane was a cul-de-SAC, which has been acknowledged by many sides during the war. The Germans were not the fathers of modern aviation. The allies built the first Experimental Supersonic aircraft on the basis of our own research. The United States made the first supersonic flight without the German swept-wing technology.
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Created: 03.04.2019, 17:55 PM
