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Flying high over Germany, the unique jet powered Me 262
rules sky.
That is until now.
Thundering from out of the sun comes a squadron of
Yankees powered by jet fuel.
Newly arrived to the continent, this innovative American made aircraft
would level the playing field against Hitler's supersonic Armada.
But this story never happened.
The Americans would never really enter a jet fighter into
the Second World War despite having the technology years before.
While an attempt had actually been made on paper by
Lockheed, it was the second attempt that actually got built
but ultimately never saw action.
Join me to witness the discovery of the jet engine
and the Bell P59 era Comet.
Like many aerospace innovations, it was actually the Germans that
got there first.
In 1939, the Germans shocked the world with a totally
radical new aircraft, one that was powered by thrust provided
by a turbojet engine.
There were no Pistons, no propellers and for Germany it
was a clear future of aerospace.
This jet aircraft in particular was caught the Heinkel He
178 and on the 27th of August 1939 the aircraft
performed its maiden flight only days before Germany invaded Poland.
The development of this engine was only thanks to the
Allies from the previous war.
Due to the restrictions placed on Germany by France, England
and the United States at the Treaty of Versailles, Germany
was forbidden to developed any new piston aircraft.
The issue was jet engines weren't Pistons, and being the
savvy legalese Europeans that the Germans are, they came up
with an entirely new type of plane.
This development quickly woke up the Italians and the British,
who got to work developing their own jet engine aircraft.
But with the introduction of a sequel to the Great
War in 1939, essential resources were diverted away from these
operations to more tried and true technologies like piston planes.
It was the British who had a breakthrough though with
a jet powered aircraft as early as 1941 called the
Gloucester E28/39.
It was during this taxi test of the aircraft that
our hero of the story happened to be in the
crowd, Major General Henry H Hap Arnold, who took notice
and knew that the Americans just had to have it.
Returning back to the States with blueprints of the British
jet engine in hand and a copy being transported on
a top secret flight, it was time for America to
have a go.
But of course he would have to keep it all
top secret.
In order for this new fighter jet to make a
difference on the battlefield, it all had to be kept
top secret.
But if they wanted to make a really big splash
on the world stage and put the Nazis in their
place, they didn't need to roar into battle.
They could have stayed at home and just made a
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Upon arriving back in Washington, Henry Arnold got to work
contacting the best of the best top men.
Top men discreetly and using spy tactics that would make
James Bond blush.
First.
For the engine, he delivered it to the hands of
General Electric to replicate and perhaps even improve on the
British design.
But an engine isn't worth deadly squat without a plane
to fly it, so he turned to his friends at
Bell to come up with a suitable fuselage.
To keep it all hush hush.
He actually filed the program under the Bell XP59A discontinued
fighter project that got cancelled a few years before.
To any spies, hunting around, this plane would seem like
a crazy general's passion project who just wouldn't let it
go.
But he didn't stop there to take the secrecy to
the next level.
The Bell engineers decided to rent out a loft above
a car factory and not use their main plant, chosen
not only for the space but also because any fabricated
parts for this new plane would look just like car
materials.
They even made a propeller for the plane to stick
on front, so if anybody stumbled upon the workshop or
the plane sitting out in the field, they would assume
that the Major General really was nutty in building his
own little plane project.
After about a year of work on the 1st prototype,
it was ready and they had to get it to
an airfield to test it.
Ironically, because planes are bigger than cars, it wouldn't fit
in the elevator.
So under the cover of darkness on the 12th of
September in 1942, they broke down the real wall of
the building, spreading bricks everywhere and towed it to a
nearby rail yard.
It was shipped discreetly in the early hours to Murdoch
Army Airfield, now famously known as Edwards Air Force Base,
where on the 2nd of October it took to the
guys for the first time.
Impressed by the progress made by the Bell engineers in
just over a year, the Major General expedited another 13
prototypes to get through the test phase and get the
jet into the hands of ace pilots as quickly as
possible.
But that's where things started to go wrong.
Testing a new aircraft, let alone one powered by a
new type of propulsion, is no easy feat.
But the Bell P 5 ninth design was very unique
and new to the market.
The P59A aircraft featured an all metal stress skin in
a semi monocoque fuselage with an Oval cross section that
contained a single pressurized cockpit.
It's mid mounted wing was straight and equipped with two
spars and a false spar in the inner panel.
While the landing gear was that typical tricycle style of
the error and electronically powered attached to the central spar
under the wing roots were streamlined our cells that housed
a pair of General Electric J 31 turbojets.
The General Electric take on the British design.
This would give it a top speed of around 413
mph or 665 kilometers per hour at around 30,000 feet.
You'll notice that this is hardly close to some of
the Nazi designs that boasted a speed of over 1000
kilometers per hour, but we'll get to that in a
moment.
The nose of the aircraft contained it's impressive armament.
Two of the three XP59A's and most of the YP
59 A's had a pair of 37 millimetre M10 autocannons,
while later models including the production design had one M10
AutoCAD and three 0.5 inch Browning heavy machine guns, perfect
for air to air dogfights.
The fuel system consisted of four self sealing tanks which
held a total of 290 US gallons or just over
1000 litres and both production models were capable of carrying
drop tanks onto the wings with an extra capacity of
1590 US gallons or around 6000 liters.
That gave it a range of 375 miles, although that's
just in combat moving at a slower speed they could
extend that out to around 1000 miles or so.
This design one hearts and minds in Washington and an
initial order of 100 jets was made to bail, but
by March 1943, security concerns over the spy rings finding
out about the project had it moved to a very
remote location where extensive testing was carried out and the
aircraft was found lacking.
During diving trials in 1944, one prototype was forced to
make a belly landing and another crashed when it's entire
epinage broke away, but this only revealed more flaws with
the design.
After conducting tests on the prototypes and pre production P5
nines over the next few months, numerous issues were discovered.
These included unreliable and poorly responsive engines for a typical
of early turbojets, instability during high speed flights over 290
mph which caused the plane to snake in the sky,
and an effective gunnery capabilities.
It turns out that that armament wasn't so impressive.
Additionally, the engines produced insufficient thrust, failing to meet expectations
and significantly hampering performance.
Plus, they had to constantly be repaired even if they
got a little wet, something that they didn't discover when
they were training out in the desert.
Because of this, the initial order of 100 jets was
reduced to only 50.
This is all very bad news for the American jet
fighter supposed to go toe to toe against the Me
262.
Although I do need to point out in this timeline
of events, the Me 262 had not yet entered full
operations in the European theatre.
But this new technology had shown so much promise, how
could Washington determine if the project should still go ahead?
With a good old showdown, of course.
In February of 1944, the Army Air Force pitted the
jet against propeller driven fighters such as the Lockheed P38,
J Lightning and the Republic P47D Thunderbolt in combat trials,
and the older planes outperformed the jet.
Consequently, and because the Army Air Force already had fifty
production units on the way, the decision was made that
the P59 was best suited for training purposes, providing pilots
with experience operating jet engine aircraft before even more powerful
ones could be delivered.
But a footnote to this story is that the Major
General came back and actually returned the jet to the
British to show them what they had done, and it
would be a fair criticism to say that His Majesty's
Best pilots found it lacking, far inferior to the current
jet aircraft that they had at the time.
The Gloucester media won.
The Army Air Force also tried to spin off this
dud plane to the Navy and typical rival fashion, sending
2 prototypes to the Pacific, but it was found to
be terrible for carrier operations.
It seemed that the second attempt by the United States
would ultimately not pan out, but you know that famous
saying third times the charm.
Now that's an awesome tale for the next found and
explained video.
Thanks for watching.