Can you number this plane?

[Leigh]

Right this lot is eventually gonna be an entry based on this premise.

Lack of Jumo engines makes Willy and his buddies develop a prop driven ME-262, success of the P-38 makes 'em go for a twin boomer. This back story will be fleshed out later hopefully with your help seeing as I know bugger all about WWII German fighter development.
Where I do need your help is giving this thing an ME- number, ME-263? 162? dunno what was already used or how they came up with numbers, got a couple of names in the mill though.



PLAN A

Just graft two 109 fuselages onto the wing simple eh?



PLAN B

Then I notice that if I turn the fuselages upside down I get a perfect mate to the back of the wing. 'Cept that would mean having to cut the back of the fuselage to turn the tail right way up and we know that those cross sections aren't gonna match.



PLAN C

Go buy a twin boom Luftwaffe plane and bung those on. 'Cept they look a bit anemic and wimpy.



PLAN D

Leave the 262 engines on and easily stab the cut fuselage to those. Of course completely different profile and cross section. Looks like someones gonna be doing alot of scratching, filling, sanding and repeat. Ah I love a simple plan :dum:
Do it twice! And make them symmetrical



For some reason I've not been inspired to actually do any modelling for about six weeks and then when I sit down again I decide on this! Where are my Meds?

[Tophe]

Before considering your different plans, all VERY nice!   , let me answer about numbers. Using as reference "German aircraft of WW2, Putnam Pub.)
- Me 162 is almost impossible   (Joyless Modelling Nazis would be angry! ): the Messerschmitt Bf 162 (kind of He111) had been built and flown in 1937, then the 8-162 RLM code was used again for Heinkel, through the famous He 162, so a further Me 162 seems "dubious"  (or "guilty" according to JMN s' standards...).
- Me 263 could very well have been used   before affecting this code to the improved 163 Komet that finally flew gliding in 1944. As this was a secondary name from the bubble-Komet Me 163D then Ju 248, it is very possible that a Me 263 project occurred before, just after the Me 262 and before the 4-engined Me 264 that flew in 1942.
- Me 362 could have been used   before affecting this code to the 3-engined jet-airliner Me 362 project (and before I used it for a Me-262/He-162 mix...).
- P.1066 could have been used   as the P.1065 was the Projekt code that became Me 262 while the actual Me P.1066 seems forgotten (I have not found again   Justo Miranda's "Luftwaffe Databook" that I have somewhere... ). There was an Heinkel P.1066, yes , but there was also an Heinkel P.1065 different from the Messerschmitt P.1065, so it looks like internal code for each design bureau. Besides, most JMNs reject unbuilt projects that are guilty of having killed nobody, so they will not argue about such a code...
As a conclusion, let you choose, dear . I hope this checking will have helped a little...

[Tophe]

- Plan A is wonderful, according to me. Just a question: what about landing gears: tricycle (nose, Me 262-way) or tail (Me 109 way)?
- Plan B is great and more balanced with the 3 fuselages close to one another, and unchanged tricycle landing gear from the 262 would be better understandable, but the lateral view for the (central?) pilot would be rather bad...
- Plan C is nice but I agree that Fw 189 tiny engines are not much impressive on the swept-wing aerodynamic Me 262, almost contradictory (but anyone is allowed to dream...).
- Plan D looks like a more complicated way to reach Plan A in plastic, if I have understood.
As a conclusion, let you choose among your extraordinary ideas, dear Leigh... If you do not build them all, I may draw someday the combinations you have invented then cancelled. Thanks for this whole bunch of additions to my collection!

[nev]

Leigh, I think you need a plan E    

[Leigh]

So were German planes just numbered in order regardless of manufacturer? I.E. ME-109, ME-110, HE-111 ? Therefore are there numbers available between 111 and 262 ? I know 190, 177, 219, 163 were taken and I'm sure others can fill me in on alot more that were gone. And what about numbers past 262 which would make sense seeing as this is a development based on the 262 airframe. ME-274 for example. Or were the numbers issued pursuiant to various criteria, as in single engines got 1__ and twin engines 2__ ?

So we ended up with PLAN D 4.6

Yeah went the long way round to get back to PLAN A. I thought it would be alot easier to graft the front and back to existing engine, first mistake I started thinking. What seemed like a better idea probably was alot more work, but after I'd cut up the 109's fuselage it was too late to go back. So mucho styrene card, half a Hindenburg drop tank off a Tornado, ton's of glue and the best part of the day sanding I've kinda got one done. I want to make the other one and make sure I get them the same before I scribe some panel lines and glue it together.
Realizing these have got to be a perfect match or the cross tail section is gonna be all wonky. It's gonna keep the tricycle undercarraige and basically be a German version of the Lightning.
Next I get to butcher up the 262 fuselage into a central pod.

And next week on "Sado Masochists corner" we will be attempting to build an MPM kit without using a hacksaw, industrial files and a very lage knife

[Jschmus]

I'm probably too late with this, but is it out of the question to just mount the wings over the booms by flipping the wing over?  Sure, that makes mounting the landing gear a puzzle, but you said the parts fitted together better that way.

[Tophe]

So were German planes just numbered in order regardless of manufacturer? I.E. ME-109, ME-110, HE-111 ? Therefore are there numbers available between 111 and 262 ? I know 190, 177, 219, 163 were taken and I'm sure others can fill me in on alot more that were gone. And what about numbers past 262 which would make sense seeing as this is a development based on the 262 airframe. ME-274 for example. Or were the numbers issued pursuiant to various criteria, as in single engines got 1__ and twin engines 2__ ?

Yes, German aircraft were coded by the Air Ministry (RLM, for both civil and military) regardless of the manufacturer and regardless of the role (fighters, bombers etc.) all in the same 8- list for aircraft.
The only 'available' numbers before 350 seem to have been just lost due to archive destructions. While the numbers after that are mainly for derivatives, regardless of engine number: Me409/509/609 & Me410/510 & Me423/523, Do435/535/635, Ju388/488, Fw391/491, Ar432/532/632 & Ar396, He419.
PS. The 8-274 code was used for an Heinkel derivative of the 8-177 (He 177 --> He 274 --> French AAS 01A), but as the 162 code has been used for both Bf 162 then He 162 after cancellation of the former, you are allowed to call Me 274 your baby: what-if...

[Leigh]

I'm probably too late with this, but is it out of the question to just mount the wings over the booms by flipping the wing over?  Sure, that makes mounting the landing gear a puzzle, but you said the parts fitted together better that way.

Something along those lines would have probably been a better idea, but although MPM do give you a big lump of plastic which vaguely resembles a plane until you spend hours filing, carving and sanding they are nice enough to make up for it with Photoetch sheets for the wheel wells and other goodies. The 262a is one of the better MPM kits as it's actually the Heller 262b Kit with one different sprue for the single seat fuselage. I've got the Heller one but I wanted to keep this a single seater.

So PLAN D 3.1 which I toyed with for a minute or two was to put the wing through the engine boom like the FW-189 or the Lightning but aesthetically I liked the idea of keeping the top of the wing smooth. Mocking this thing up it looks awkward and unbalanced



The black line represents the cut where the fuselage will end. I think I'm gonna go back to  putting the wing through the boom so as to lift it up some. I'm also worried with this arrangement, that because the 109 fuselage is so much deeper than the 262 engines that there won't be any ground clearance with the 262 undercarraige.

[Leigh]

Doh :dum: Doh :dum: Doh :dum:    

This thing has propellers! Now it's blatantly obvious why I dig ditches for a living instead of designing aircraft. I believe that in order for propellers to be effective they have to rotate freely and not go grinding into the tarmac. So with the 262 undercarraige and moving the wing lower so it goes through the boom I've still not got any ground clearance. So options? Lengthen the undercarraige? that's gonna give it a real spindly look. Put the U/C in the booms? well that negates the nice MPM wheel wells. Floatplane?
So it may well be back to the drawing board and hopefully I can salvage yesterday's work otherwise I'll just have to start over, well I've got two more 262's and Academy 109's are cheap so it may not be that bad.

Can you say "Transall" ?

[elmayerle]

Lengthen the nose to allow for a longer nose gear and put the main gear with the trunnion roughly where the BF109's seats would be so that it retracts forward into the "booms".  

[Tophe]

If ever you have a support (like the plexiglas one that were in Airfix kits), you may have retracted landing gears. And if someone asks you about landing gear location, you could say they are not anymore in the wings but re-located in the lateral fuselages (Twin-Mustang way), with rear little wheels and no nose wheel: this nose-up attitude furthermore gives clearance to the propellers without need of long legs . No? (I understand that if you want to display landing gears out, it is almost impossible to scratch-build that much , but the nose gear will be so long... )...

[Leigh]

Well after extensive research and by that I mean looking at the Heller P-38 and the Airfix Westland I think the answer is as simple as longer struts. The Lightning is tricycle, wing through boom and has bigger radius props just has longer struts and the Whirlwind has engines underslung the wing and the fuselage atop, pretty much like this is gonna be and has really long struts although a tail sitter. Lengthening the nose is a task I really don't want to look at so if the nose gear get's ridiculously long we'll close it up and sit it on it's tail. Wasn't the 262 originally a tail sitter anyway?


So I guess this is PLAN F as in F*** it I'm gonna make it work even if it ends up "gear up"

[Xpander]

Usable numbers - according to the Putnam book - are:

Me 260 (unused before a batch of numbers allocated to Messerschmitt)
Me 320 (a Messerschmitt project but unknown details)
Me 326 (as 260)
Me 327 (as 260)
Me 368 (as 320)

Take your pick.

Wouldn't it have larger tailfins?  Messerschmitt aircraft were generally designed with small tailfins and notoriously bad to handle until the fins were enlarged.  An Me 410 fin or using the Me 262 fin and making a replica in plastic card would be you best option.

[elmayerle]

Well after extensive research and by that I mean looking at the Heller P-38 and the Airfix Westland I think the answer is as simple as longer struts. The Lightning is tricycle, wing through boom and has bigger radius props just has longer struts and the Whirlwind has engines underslung the wing and the fuselage atop, pretty much like this is gonna be and has really long struts although a tail sitter. Lengthening the nose is a task I really don't want to look at so if the nose gear get's ridiculously long we'll close it up and sit it on it's tail. Wasn't the 262 originally a tail sitter anyway?

Making it a tail-dragger would create some visibility problems from the cockpit until you got enough ground speed to raise the tail(s).  A better approach would be to add a fairing under the Me262 nose, lowering the trunnion point for the nose gear, and retracting it into that.  This would likely be similar to the version(s) of the Me262 with the "bulged" front end for fighter-bomber or reconnaisance duties but with the nose gear lowered in the fuselage.

Just my $0.02,
Evan

[Tophe]

Usable numbers - according to the Putnam book - are:
Me 260 (unused before a batch of numbers allocated to Messerschmitt)
Me 327 (as 260)

Other books say different things   . Joining the Putnam & Midland books, it seems something like that happened:
- Me 163 was the code for the rocket-plane prototype
- Me 263 was the code for the (intended) mass-produced version, then changed into Me 163A, then developped in Me 327, this code being changed into Me 163B, actually mass-produced, then leading to projects Me 163C, Me 163D
- the Me 163D became Ju 248 taken by Junkers then Me 263 taken back by Messerchmitt.
So Me 327 seems to be simply the first name of the very famous Komet... But it is so complicated that you can name your one as Me 327, saying this code was used again later for something else, via cancellation and official change-of-mind. This seems even serious, and JMNs  have no clearer story ...