Apologies for the green screen background - it's an unfortunate hangover from technical issues I've been having with the software all week. Thought I had everything fixed and didn't notice until it was too late. Join membership: ruclips.net/channel/UCGHDQtN_vzFYJaq_Fx1eikgjoin Second Channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCt93hxFmjppL5nLRAX94UrA Merch: qxir.creator-spring.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/qxir Twitter: twitter.com/QxirYT Discord: discord.gg/jZzvvwJ Twitch: www.twitch.tv/qxiryt/ Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/Qxir/
Have you done a vid on this? It’s worth it. IMO Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 was a scheduled flight of Pacific Southwest Airlines from Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego. On September 25, 1978, the Boeing 727-214[a] serving the flight, registration N533PS, collided with a private Cessna 172 light aircraft, registration N7711G, over San Diego, California.
Flying in as Aspestos suit, right next to concentrated hydrogen peroxide, and in front of hydrazine, without landing gear, and probably high on meth. Crazy times
Nazi scientists weren’t dumb, you have to give them that. The only reason why we look at WWII as such a monumental event is because of how close they came to winning and how much it revolutionized technology in the years to come.
@@agisuru Well it would be adjusted for the difference in luminous intensity between the two. The darkness caused by a cloud, on an otherwise good day, would probably be less than the darkness caused by a bomber's frame.
in 1997 i was injured in an industrial accident involving 90% reagent sulfuric acid, and the description of human body parts as "a mass of soft jelly" is spot-on. I lived, luckily.
While turning boiler tubes at miss. phosphate, I had 100% pure sulfuric acid drip from the top of a condensation tower into my eye and on the back of my denim welding jacket. Didn't do a thing to my eye and stained the jacket brown like tobacco. washed the jacket later and it ( the jacket) was practically gone when removed from the machine. Boss said it had to have something else in it to be caustic.
Eric Winkle Brown lived to the age of 97, which is made even more impressive by the fact that he survived 11 plane crashes and being torpedoed. He continued to fly experimental aircraft well into his 70s.
"listen eventually it's gonna work and i'll be DAMNED if i'm not the one that flies it when it does!" -probably brown after his 90th near death experience flying an experimental plane
@@toomanyuserids “Never really did combat”. Give your head a shake. Is it so hard to read a Wikipedia page? During his service on board Audacity he shot down two Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime patrol aircraft, using head-on attacks to exploit the blind spot in their defensive armament.[4] Audacity was torpedoed and sunk on 21 December 1941 by the German submarine U-751, commanded by Gerhard Bigalk.[13] The first rescue ship left because of warnings of a nearby U-boat, and Brown was left in the sea overnight with a dwindling band of survivors, until he was rescued the next day.[4] He was the one of two of the 24 to survive the hypothermia; the rest succumbed to the cold.[14] Of the complement of 480, 407 survived, The loss of life was such that 802 Squadron was disbanded until February 1942. On 10 March 1942, Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his service on Audacity, in particular "For bravery and skill in action against Enemy aircraft and in the protection of a Convoy against heavy and sustained Enemy attacks". “Never really did combat”. Tell, me, what combat have you “done”?
I mean ... The last days of one technology are always better than the first days of a new technology. Especially when that new technology literally dissolves you in the likely event of something like a less than perfect landing or sheer bad luck.
I love how every single video about WW2 German tech can be summarised to praises between every single sentence about it being: “absolutely flawless revolutionary piece of futuristic engineering equipment that was way too ahead of it's time, and totally worked”- followed by a single *“BUT”* and 900 page essay report on how it was utter mechanical failure that didn't work at all and shouldn't had been made in first place.
About the only wunderwaffe I praise the Germans for with WW2 is the STG-44. That was a wunderwaffe that wasnt total shit. They made some good shit, but people typically dont praise the Panzer 4, the Gewher 41 and 43, the MP-40 or the K98.
TBH some of the absolute worst offenders like the Maus never entered production due to their issues. The “Big Cats” have historically been overrated, and by mid-late 1944 there were plenty of Allied vehicles that could destroy them, but everyone else’s heavy tanks weren’t much if at all of an improvement over them in terms of reliability (there was a reason the very reliable M4 Sherman was often preferred over the more powerful but problematic Pershing even in the postwar era, and the Soviet heavy tanks also broke down all the time), and Germany wasn’t in a position to field large numbers of PzIVs anyways (not enough fuel and manpower). The Me-262 is another one that’s overrated but not really a bad idea once scrutinized. Yes, its engines had some serious reliability issues. Yes, it used up more fuel than piston-engines fighters. But it used much lower-grade fuel than piston-engine fighters which more than compensated for the amount of fuel used, and as an interceptor (a far better interceptor than the Komet too) short range and limited flight time weren’t that big of an issue.
@@Mr-Trox Stg was great Mp40 was great MG42 was great Kar98 was ok G43 was ok Their machine gun was far ahead of everyone else throughout the war and after aswell as cost efficient since they used stampings and could use it for many different roles Mp40 was dominant early war Stg was very good but an M1 carbine wouldn't be far behind
Also to note about plane speeds circa WW2. The fastest piston fighters of the war, when running flat out in best conditions, were getting into the upper 400s in mph. A gap of 200+ mph here literally means the better part of 50% more speed, at the top end. Just to help put things into better context.
@@ik2254 Yep and even fighters would not be running flat out for top speed all that often. As much as people love to obsess over things with 'this is faster than that' type arguments. Top speed was rarely a speed that mattered for any given aircraft. Practical speeds determined by altitude, weight, configuration, etc. those were what mattered. Which are (excepting perhaps dive speed) universally slower than top speed in level flight and basic maneuvers and often significantly slower.
@@MadScientist267 Completely not my point. The video makes much of its speed and what came after. It however failed, as far too many do, to put its speed into context by actually mentioning the actual speeds of contemporaries.
@@whyjnot420 I don't think anyone walked away from this with anything but "it doesn't matter because it was faster than anything out there, to the point of being detrimental" Sometimes the details are less important. This is one of them.
This plane is like something you'd expect to find in the inventory of 40k Ork warband. Bizarre, noisy, at least as dangerous to the operator as to the enemy, yet somehow still a functional piece of equipment.
Of all the videos I ever saw about the 163, yours is the first to get most of the many drawbacks of this piece of madness right! You still missed the bit with the bulletproof screen in front of the pilot exploding in their faces due to thermal tensions now and then. These planes were suicide machines.
I remember hearing that both of those chemicals it used as fuel were colorless. That one mechanic poured the wrong thing into the wrong tank and "Before he realized the severity of his mistake, his insides were spread thinly around the hangar."
It would be hard to even think of anything that could be added to help tell them apart. Hydrazine likes to explode in contact with... just about anything, and high-test peroxide will just break down almost any additive instantly. I'd want to store them in different buildings far apart, not sit in between large tin cans full of them screaming through the sky.
@@SuperCatacata Their ability of picking enemies wasn't smart either, as they fought 2 wars at once. Italy was in full civil war, Japan joined only to revenge against the US, Austria wanted to recreate the Austro-Hungarian empire. They did try to ally with the brits and the soviets at some point, but peace talks fell through. The reason why Germany became dictated by Adolf was mostly due to the UK and the French during the league of nations' 'peace talks' after the WW1. Even the then-US president Wilson allegedly spoke against making Germany pay up so much for post ww1 reparations. Also, France is also directly responsible for the vietnam war. Germany has basically engaged in scorched earth tactics when they invaded both France and Poland, as both Russia and the rest of the allies front. They maybe could've also allied with Spain, but like Italy, they had their own internal issues to deal with. Now with the EU, they basically went to economic war against most of the member states.
Hydrogen peroxide doesn't react with aluminium (oxide, which is a ceramic which forms when aluminium comes into contact with oxygen. It forms a tiny, self-healing layer around it), but any form of impurity in the metal would cause it to break down into steam and oxygen. And pure aluminium isn't too easy to make, especially when your industry is as badly damaged as Germany's
'T-Stoff' (hydrogen peroxide) does not react with aluminium oxide. 'C-Stoff' (a mixture of methanol and hydrazine hydrate used as fuel) very much does, however; it thus had to be stored in special glass/enamel-lined containers. And did I mention that hydrazine is both highly corrosive AND a carcinogen? That said, T-Stoff had a small amount of 8-hydroxyquinoline in it, which would capture metal ions to prevent them from acting as catalysts.
Hydrazine is EXTREMELY dangerous stuff. Titan Missle techs managed to detonate one IN THE SILO by creating a leak and then inaccurately reporting the incident until it was too late.
@@maxjoechl5663 that's quite cool. I know about straight hydrazine, and the issues they had when trying to metalize it (aluminium powder suspended in it to improve performance. worked really well, but the massive increase in surface area meant that the amount of catalysing impurities in the aluminium was massively increased, causing 'something akin to a cheese souffle'), but I didn't know about T-Stoff and those properties.
Späte himself narrowly avoided the same fate as Pöhs, when Späte's Me-163 suffered a ruptured fuel line on takeoff. His cockpit filling with T-stoff fumes, he made an emergency landing on six inches of snow, popping the canopy before the craft came to a halt and bailing out, sustaining a concussion in the accident.
@@AHHHHHHHH21 sure. I just admire his snap quick thinking and reflexes. Lots of stuff happen in such cases. I used to have a coach who studied in a military school - and he didn't wear any accessories, although it is common for Christians to wear a crucifix. He told me why: he knew a case where soldier burned to death while trying to escape a burning armoured vehicle - he got stuck because of his chain (or a ring, not sure which).
What a great history lesson and entertaining story. We have a Messerschmitt intact at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. We used to laugh at how cute and tiny it was compared to the Spitfires and Lancasters on display. Never new it’s dark history
I grew up with many WWII neighbors. One man, who never talked much about the war, flew bombers from N. Africa and England. He did see Me 163's buzz his formations late in the war. He said they were so fast there was no defence, blink and they were gone. When he died in the early 1990's his obituary was a full column in a NY paper, seems he flew nearly 100 missions, ditched in the English Channel three time, and had a slew of medals including three DFCs from US, UK, FR.
you mean the RIGHT reasons, lol. These pilots and test pilots werent exactly fresh conscripts but card carrying nazis that had been fighting a long time and not once regretted it. I'm glad they met a fate like this.
Concentrated H2O2 scares me, and I'm a chemist. You have to be incredibly thoughtful about storage and disposal, not just because it eats nearly everything, but it also has a tendency to form extremely sensitive explosives.
9:35 "Yeah, so the fuel that powers this thing is extremely dangerous, in fact if there's a spillage there's a chance it'll digest you alive-" Captain Brown: I'mma fly it.
The log indicates 32,000 feet. Given its top speed of 700+ mph, this would be well above the speed of sound at altitude*, even substantially below that max height. I wonder if he was tempted to go for it. _____ * 660 mph at 20,000 feet
My grandfather told me stories about how they used to put corrosives **inside** of him. Well, he didn't say corrosives, he said something in German. I asked him what it meant and he wouldn't tell me. Also he wasn't a pilot.
@@DILFDylF "Panzerschokolade" = Tank chocolade. It was Amphetamine laced chocolade. Kind of explains some of the absolute human horrors we see all through wars since WW2 as "speedballs" are used to this day.
Of course it was Eric Brown. That dude was protected from death, dismemberment and disciplinary action by plot armor. Had some misguided alien scientists crashed their science saucer in his back yard, he'd have had his ground crew buddies fix it up while his wife had tea with the aliens and he'd have flown the thing out to Neptune and back and have the ground crew improve the handling characteristics.
I've said it before, but I'm an aviation mechanic and I really appreciate you taking the time to get all the facts right, most RUclipsrs don't know anything about airplanes and make themselves sound stupid, but you know your stuff 👍
My best friend was an A-6 mechanic in the Marines. He used to run into other aircraft mechanics that were clueless, even after training. One guy argued with him about a plane taking off, he 'could tell it was an A-4 by the afterburner '......
Another reason not mentioned for the fact it killed so many pilots was that this was one of the first (if only) German aircraft to be made using slave labour in concentration camps. For that reason, they were often sabotaged or poorly made, so there were many technical issues.
Sadly a lot of the German weapons were made from such. There's the well known photo of the He-162 plant in the mountains near a camp that comes to mind. Also the sabotage was common among all weapons (which is a no shocker given the state they found themselves in).
Hitler also unsuccessfully tried to do the same thing with the V2 rockets. They were terrorizing the British with mobile V2 launch sites on the back of trucks, but Hitler wanted to create an all in one factory for producing and launching the rockets out of the same location powered off the back of concentration labor. Sabotage from the prisoners and allied bombings of the factory made it so they could barely launch any missiles, which IMHO was a huge contributor to the British not being bombed into surrender.
The prisoners discovered that pissing in the solvents that held bits of the aircraft together weakened the bond enough to come apart in flight. The natter suffered this with a lot of the test aircraft having things break off causing loss of the craft.
@@Evildandalo dude, bombed into surrender? This was late war. Britain wasn't going to surrender because a few more bombs fell as Germany was in the midst of collapse.
I remember trying this plane in the game Battlefield 1942, one of the expansions has it. It's literally impossible to fly, just a tiny input and the whole thing shoots in that direction, and just as you got the hang of it's sensitive input it'd run out of fuel and be sent plummeting towards the ground.
No, it doesn't. It only has the Natter Rocket Plane. That's a different rocket plane that has never seen combat. Warthunder has it. Also, the handling in game obviously doesn't reflect the handling irl. Especially with battlefield not even having proper joystick and throttle support.
Try to play it in war thunder, then youll actually know its performance. Battlefield is way too arcard and has not the physics of the real world emulated correctly
As an aviation historian and volunteer interpreter at my local museum, that has a 163, the thing is tiny, I always stress to visitors how deadly C-stoff and T-stoff were. A nastier airplane to its crews than its targets, the pilots had to wear asbestos-lined suits to protect themselves, and even then, many died on landing in horrific fires or were shot down by roving allied fighters due to the aircraft becoming a glider once it's fuel was expended. Great video as always, keep up the amazing work!
I have seen this plane in person at the Udvar Hazy center in Virginia it's a really neat looking plane to see in person. Even being an 80 year old design it still seems cutting edge. They have an amazing collection of ww2 German planes there at the museum including the Horton ho 229 flying wing example that allied forces captured at the end of the war.
I was about to correct you about that name's spelling (I am Hungarian myself, like Steven Udvarházy) but it seems that's the official name of the place. Weird. Also very fascinating to me that one of these planes, a Blackbird, and the Enola Gay are all in one place and it was financed by someone from my country
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan I'm a space guy, so...yeah the Blackbird is cool..but they got a freakin' space shuttle!. The only thing that beats that is the 11' long USS Enterprise model from the original 60s Star Trek TV show. That's on display at the Air and Space at the National mall.
For context, Satellites often use hydrazine and if/when they deorbit them they put them in a specific max friction orbit to vaporize everything. In 2008 a new satellite lost contact shortly after reaching orbit and was decaying quickly. It had a thousand pounds of hydrazine in it. So a Navy ship launched a missile into space and obliterated it.
Given the Komet's piss poor combat record vs pilot losses and injuries simply from operating it normally.. I would suggest that it was not "just as dangerous to the pilot as to the enemy" but in fact much more dangerous to the pilot than the enemy.
@@aozzya1563 Well, the best to actually see service. There were lots of spectacular failures taking up development money and factory time because Funny Moustache Man thought they sounded cool. Some of those could have been even better for the Allies.
The cursed Me163 is like a manned missile, both the high performance and the high risk. They are powerful weapons if you don’t need your pilots to come back alive… such as the case of Kamikaze planes
"Kommandant, I am worried about the corrosive fuel in the tanks." "Do not worry! We have made suits to protect you." "Really? What a relief! What's it made out of?" "Asbestos!"
There's also a really wild story of an accident with the ground crew. Remember how the T-Stoff and C-Stoff had to be kept separate but in different types of containment materials? This sounds simple in theory, but it was a nightmare in practice. Both were a clear liquid and were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Smelling the fumes to tell them apart was not only hazardous, but often impossible given the thick asbestos suits and PPE handlers wore. So the story goes that once a ground crewman saw a bucket of what he thought was C-Stoff on the floor of the hangar, probably having been drained or recovered from an aircraft being serviced by another ground crewman. So, the unfortunate ground crewman picked the bucket up and attempted to return it to the larger C-Stoff storage tank also located in the hangar. The content of the bucket was actually T-Stoff. He was killed instantly by the blast, and the whole hangar was engulfed in flames.
Its a MYTH ask anyone working with at least one of the Substances. Hydrazine smell like Ammonia like really really bad and HTP also smells with a very distinct and unpleasant. Also they both got a different texture and HTP definitely has coloring to it.
This does sound like a myth. Returning an unidentified bucket to the rocket fuel storage seems unlikely. I doubt they return rocket fuel back to the main storage after it's been in an airplane or a bucket. Accidents happen, it seems more likely that during cleanup of materials the same piece of equipment might accidentally get used for one and then the other without first having been sufficiently cleaned.
4:54 I appreciate you pronouncing 500 as fünfhundert, even I constantly make the mistake of reading numbers in languages as English or Hungarian numbers despite knowing the words for said numbers
There’s audio of Americans hearing and seeing one for the first time, crazy to listen to. They had no idea what it was as it was the first thing even close to fighter jet
@@kittytrailI could've sworn Qxir did a video about a fighter jet Pepsi advertised as something of a grand prize in one of their contests lol Personally I would've gone with an aircraft carrier myself
@@thryi yep, he did. but pepsico didn't even have that harrier in stock unlike all of 17 soviet subs and much more surface vessels including a fully fledged destroyer. 😋
10:08 You can see that he had flown the me163A one month earlier where he stated "familiarisation. flight to 20 000" And then later flew the me163B where he commented "Handling to 32 000. Fantastic" He actually flew it twice
USAF museum has one. Sabotage was also a risk to pilots. This Me 163B (S/N 191095) may have been sabotaged while under construction, perhaps by the forced laborers building it in Germany. A small stone was wedged between the fuselage fuel tank and a supporting strap (which could have eventually caused a dangerous fuel leak), and there was contaminated glue in the wing structure (which could have caused a failure of the wing in flight). Inside the aircraft's skin are these words, perhaps written by a defiant French laborer: "Manufacture Ferme" means "Plant Closed." "Mon coeur est en chomage" translated directly means "My heart is not occupied" (as opposed to France being occupied by the Germans).
Sabotage was a big problem for Nazi Germany. Who would've figured slave laborers wouldn't be motivated to do good work? One book I read about a bomber crew, they took an AA round to the wing on one mission which hit the wing spar but didn't detonate. After landing, the bomb squad removed the round and instead of an explosive filler in the shell they found only a note that said something like "Your welcome from your friends in Poland"
Oh boy. I already know the story of this rocket death sentence. Can't wait for the rest of the video. On that note I'd absolutely love for you to cover more older topics. The Great War and WW2 have so many absolutely insane stories with development and people that would be brilliant for this channel.
The photo cell launcher itself seems like a recipe for disaster, clouds , birds, maybe even crew getting on top of the aircraft could set it off. Maybe an expert could fill me in but it feels not to dissimilar from putting half life laser mines on your plane
Remember that the aircraft has no power unless that generator propeller up front is spinning. Ground crews would most likely be fine if it couldn't be powered at all. for the rest, idk if the pilot had a way to switch it on and off or if it was always on
More than likely that record was flown well below the claimed 700mph. Modern analysis proves the Komet would have disintegrated at transonic speeds. Just as with the P-47 pilots who swore they had exceeded the speed of sound in a dive, it was literally impossible and they were getting grossly inflated readings from their airspeed indicators due to compressibility effects. Anyone who may have actually exceeded the speed of sound in a P-47 would not have lived to tell the tale and the same goes for the Komet. Neither aircraft would have been controllable at such speeds. Even when they thought they were doing 640mph in the Komet, it was really probably more like 580mph because compressibility effects will occur in a pitot tube from that era well before the wing will be subjected to them.
I’ve seen one in person before, it’s at the Air Force Museum In Wright Patterson Air Force Base. It’s next to a V-2 rocket, V-1 Rocket, and an ME-262, it’s pretty interesting.
Honestly, it's such an extraordinary plane design. Even the rocket engine aside, but the swept wing, the canopy - I'd say the bloody thing was actually closer to modern day fighter jets than "regular" WW-2 era aircraft. As dangerous as it was, it was in many ways a over decade ahead of its time. No wonder after WW2 the Soviets and the West snatched as many German engineers and scientists as they could. What really makes me wonder, though - since they were fast and highly agile, the pilots would be subjected to high G-forces. I know allies kind of had G-suits (it was a fledgeling invention back then), not sure about the Nazis though. And not sure if anti-G training was much of a thing then, either
i feel like our culture always kind of projects this image of nazi tech being “well engineered” but tends to completely overlook or ignore all the massively stupid and ridiculous design decisions that only such a cruel and inhumane political system could produce which are _just as much a part_ of this so-called “brilliant” engineering. watching this video kind of made me sick to my stomach as to how disposable _the actual pilot_ is treated in the very design of the aircraft. there’s absolutely *no* consideration given to their safety or survival: they are squished in between three tanks of fucking _acidic fuel_ in a bloody rocket and without a pressurised cabin … like holy fuck - if it didn’t in fact actually happen this sounds like a propagandistic caricature by the allies of the nazis - _and then_ that glider couldn’t even properly land?! like, i’m sorry, but how tf is that good engineering? one can say the technological achievement of the glider is impressive in isolation _somehow,_ but all the decisions that got them to that point are just so inescapably horrible and linked to that very _somehow_ that i think it’s a bad and historically idealist way of looking at technological progress, instead of seeing it for what this thing was: a plane birthed out of the general intellect of a fascist society that had so little regard for human life at that point that it killed more of its own than it did of its “enemies”. if we can’t learn to see how the soviets and the US simply gobbling up nazi scientists because their leadership was respectively so envious of the envisaged “technological progress” the fascists proclaimed and have successfully cemented themselves in history for with their propaganda is directly linked to the now still present and ever more prevalent fascistic elements in our contemporary bourgeois democracies … i dunno, i think humanity is kind of fucked, then.
@@scush most "firsts" do not go smoothly. the komet was basically at a late prototype stage by the time of its last flight, the hazards that come with that should be obvious. the crazy inventions, it should be added, are not as much the result of a cruel and inhuman political system (and believe you me, all parties of the war had plenty of cruelty and inhumanity to spare), but the desperation of germany to get some kind of wonder weapon in an effort to not be completely overrun. the machines that come out of it, the Aggregat 4, which is the first man made rocket capable of reaching space, the Fieseler rocket propelled bombs (V1s), the early jet fighters, and the numerous other crazy inventions, were acts of desperation, however, still, in their ambitions and considering the circumstances they were made under, certainly worthy of being called "ahead of their time", even if that came with obvious risks.
@@scush you are looking at it from the modern liberal perspective that values human life perhaps even too much. This plane was a marvel of engineering and it's even more impressive given the time and resource constraints. This thing nearly broke the speed of sound. Sure it was dangerous, sure people died. Doesn't make it less impressive.
The thing about hydrogen peroxide is that although technically it is a weak acid, it is also an oxidising agent, i.e., a stuff that can accelerate oxidation or combustion process. In other words, it does not burn like an acid but more like a fire.
^this. It is a really good oxidiser, very unstable, especially in high concentrations. And the stuff used as fuel was very concentrated. It burns the fuel very efficiently, but also reacts quickly with other stuff. The pilot who was exposed to it got oxidised by it, he basically burned without flames, and pretty quickly. Must've been incredibly painful, hydrogen peroxide hurts a lot.
@@tonyth9240Its higley likley that he was dead after a nearly full on collision with a radio tower shortly after he lost control. So hopefully for this poor man he was alredy dead. Also HTp is no acid at all its just an oxidizer. Without its oxigen its purest water so no acidic particles here.
I have seen two Komets in museums. One in Ottawa's air museum and one in DC at the Smithsonian (if I recall it is the one in Virginia at Dulles Airport - Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center). Absolutely insane vehicle in such a small package.
One can be seen flying at Shuttleworth, Bedfordshire, UK. Released after an aerotow and flown as a aerotowed glider at their air shows. Very impressive.
I seriously love that Qxir has a green screen... That he almost never uses to actually add images or video behind him. Also that Legend allied pilot, if I could have, I also probably would have give the comet ago, would have been fun even though also terrifying.
Seems like a pretty typical design from Germany for this time: Brilliant on paper, with absolutely zero consideration for error on the part of designers, pilots, or manufacturers. You're kind of always about a half inch from either crippling mechanical failure or exploding.
last efforts to create wunderwaffe that will please angry little moustach man and save the germany.You cant rush to the perfection and expect miracles.
A slight note; the Iron Cross was not the highest award in the German military of WW2, the Knights Cross was the highest Order of German WW2 and still is. It is called an Order due to having multiple levels. The English Victoria Cross and American Medal Of Honor are the highest awards because there is only that, one level. The Iron Cross is an Order because there are levels. Iron Cross had many levels to it. Thus, an order of an award. To even further clarify since it is apparently needed, what he had was not the highest because, as with an order, you needed to be awarded the medal many times for it to be the highest award. For Germany in WW2 the highest award was after getting 6-8 Iron Cross', this man had two.
Technically speaking, the highest award was the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Goldenem Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten). It was only awarded once, to Hans-Ulrich Rudel.
Hey Qxir, I just want to take a moment to say that you’ve gotten so good at the whole RUclips thing. I’ve been here a while and comparing your early videos to what you put out now really highlights how good you’ve gotten. You were good at the start but you felt distinctly unfamiliar with making videos but now you feel like an old hand at this. Love the videos, keep it up!
It's a unique aircraft that you wouldn't build if you have better options. Short-ranged rocket interceptors like the Me 163 and the Ba 349 were built for a niche now filled by surface-to-air missiles.
My Father swears he saw two of these flying and making sonic booms. He was a Hungarian "volunteered" to join a Waffen-SS unit from University in the last year of the war. I don't know all his movements during this time but he also talked about seeing the Messerschmitt Me 323 Gigant making waves in the turf as they landed. He ended in the Edelweiss battalion on the Russian front.
Modern scientific knowledge holds that there is no way the Komet could have exceeded the speed of sound without breaking up. It was too weak an airframe to handle the stresses and the aerodynamics were woefully off base for a supersonic plane. People also claimed they hit the sound barrier in the P-47 but they definitely didn't.
Dont forget the german testpilot Heini Dittmar reach 1941 with the Me 163A V4 the speed of 1003 km/h(Mach 0,84) and 1944 with the Me 163B V18 the speed of 1130km/h(Mach 0,91) Unbelievable what a performance from this tiny rocket powered 163!
Wearing an asbestos suit, sitting in death machine surounded by toxic and highly dangerous fuel while intens and rapid pressure changes and a bumpy landing in the end. Seems fun
The Komet that Eric 'Winkle' Brown flew under power is on display at the Scottish Museum of Flight at East Fortune near Edinburgh. Tiny aircraft. Brown had been specifically ordered not to fly it under power.
@@Sniperboy5551 imagine the thrust when you punch that rocket for just a few seconds. those nazis were short in oil the whole war but never lacking in the creativity department.
For the Apollo 10 mission to the moon (the last before Apollo 11's first landing), NASA was worried that the pilot would try to land it, against orders. So they took special precautions. To quote astronaut Gene Cernan: "A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: 'Don't give those guys an opportunity to land, 'cause they might!' So the ascent module, the part we lifted off the lunar surface with, was short-fueled. The fuel tanks weren't full. So had we literally tried to land on the Moon, we couldn't have gotten off." If they didn't want Brown to fly it under power, why did they load it with fuel and arm the engines?
@@renerpho bit of a long story here. The aircraft was at an airfield in Germany. Brown was part af a group of test pilots who were sent to obtain and test captured German aircraft. He would tend to fly into recently captured airfields and see what was there. As far as I can recall, on this occasion (this was after the war) he was based at this airfield to conduct thorough testing. His Co had ordered that no powered flights were to be carried out but as the only ground crew who could operate the aircraft were German, that was who was used. Brown was determined to fly the Me 163 under power and has arranged to meet the ground crew the night before. There, he briefed them to be ready before sunrise but gave no further info. The following morning, he told the ground crew of his intention to fly under power. As the airfield had been an operational Me 163 base and the allies had no idea how to safely dispose of the fuel, there was a supply on hand. The ground crew attempted to talk Brown out of this but he was determined. The flight was carried out just after sunrise to prevent anyone from stopping it. There is an account of the in Brown's biography Wings on my Sleve. A very good read.
7:19 this picture nearly had me fooled until I looked at the "writing" and realized its a very clever AI photo. No wonder why when you zoom in pretty much everything just kinda looks off.
It also didn’t have much of a kill ratio. Pretty much a novelty plane. I have hauled Hydrogen Peroxide in it’s most pure form and it’s very corrosive and I can’t imagine flying one of these things.
"Very corrosive" is an understatement. When acid is used in horror movies, very rarely is the stuff that they claim is being used to melt people alive would actually do that. Not nearly at that speed anyway. H2O2 actually would. Not surprised that pilot was basically a pile of jelly. I have my degree in chemistry, top 3 scariest substances I used was 30% hydrogen peroxide. I will take pure hydrochloric acid any day
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 30% H2O2 is fine, I've spilled it on myself and it just bleaches your skin for a few days. 70%+ H2O2 though? Hell no am I not touching that stuff LMAO
The reason for the low kill ratio was probably because they had so few of them, that bombers could just attack somewhere where they didn't had the Comet. That's the same reason why the STG 44 didn't really change a lot in the war even though it was actually really good (I mean we still use assault rifled today) because they didn't have a lot of them during the war.
10:00, Those german ground crew's were the real mvps tho. Didn't care that it's an allied pilot that just invaded them, they still don't wanna see him melted into a pile of goo!
If the chemicals powering the me163 didn't kill you,the sudden loss of power from your engine quitting would. It made you a slow easy target for the enemy to pounce on.As an add bonus,the me163 didn't have any landing gear just a retractable skid,slamming you into the ground,making you an even better target. More of a danger to yourself then to the enemy.
I remember hearing an anecdote where a pilot jettisoned the fuel shortly after takeoff into a pasture (a feature that wasn't added til near the end of the war IIRC) due to some malfunction. Apparently some farmer came complaining to the airbase command they accidentally dropped a bomb on some of his cows, which were mostly melted into nothing, and the farmer was told to beat it or he'd be arrested within the hour. Whether it's true or not, idk, but high-test peroxides are literally the cartoon acids that melt the chicken off a drumstick in seconds.
Jea i guess this is a Myth too, HTP is even in Extremely concentrations not capable of doing this. Piranha solution is however very capable of doing so. The cow was Surely dead won't argue with this. Hydrazine is Toxic as shit and HTP is capable of killing everything down to the sturdiest Microbes. I even would believe that this special spot was barren of all life for the next year but all you get even from HTP even in its 80 percents or so are some nasty chemical burns. Melting isn´t the thing
This just unlocked a core memory of a picture of this thing that was in a "fighters" encyclopedia I was obsessed with as a kid. I could barely even read anything it said but loved looking at the pictures. I'll have to find this book next time I'm at my parents' house and find this one
Between 1940 and 1945, the Germans came up with some incredible designs that were far ahead of their time. ME262 jet fighter, Komet, STG-44 assault rifle, FG42 assault rifle, V1 flying bomb and V2, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, Type XXI class submarine, the King Tiger and Panther tanks. The list goes on!
And not one of them was cost-effective or reliable. Instead of building Panzer 4s and BF109s they wasted their limited resources on Wonder weapons which barely worked. Only the STG was a success, but it was an unauthorized developed which was reluctantly accepted, because the troops liked it
One thing which gets rarely managed is that the Komet 163 was not designed as a fighter but was a test bed for exploring this new way of engine. It was just forced into service after some bigwig, I think maybe even Göring himself, saw the Komet by a test flight.
For reference, the speed of sound is about 767 MPH Edit: at an altitude, the speed of sound increases but drag also decreases, and also on the airfoil, local compression regions may be able to create supersonic flows and thus creating shockwaves, so this could very possibly be the first ever man piloted "supersonic" vehicle...? (This is atmospheric air becoming supersonic relative to the aircraft which counts, and supersonic rocket exhaust does not count, in my opinion)
@@williewilson2250 Why not, using oxygen is not necessity for going supersonic. Btw, in space there is no such thing as supersonic. Certainly there is a difference between a rocket and a n airplane since a rocket doesn't need wings for lift and hence doesn't face the same issues with shockwaves. Well, the 163 was an airplane and therefore it should be counted, no matter how it was propelled. It is though unlikely that it really reached supersonic speed since the wing and airframe designs were not suitable for it.
In which altitude is the speed of sound 767 mph? The speed of sound actually deceases with higher altitude and decreasing air density reaching 0 in outer space. So the speed records of any plane must always be seen in conjunction with the altitude and even the current barometric pressure in that altitude to determine the actual Mach number. It is unlikely that the 163 reached Mach 1 in any of its speed records. Although it must have been pretty close. In one of the speed record flights it lost big parts of its tail due to high subsonic turbulences.
Apologies for the green screen background - it's an unfortunate hangover from technical issues I've been having with the software all week. Thought I had everything fixed and didn't notice until it was too late.
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Whatever happened to that million dollars
What does Qxir mean?
Have you done a vid on this? It’s worth it. IMO
Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 was a scheduled flight of Pacific Southwest Airlines from Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego. On September 25, 1978, the Boeing 727-214[a] serving the flight, registration N533PS, collided with a private Cessna 172 light aircraft, registration N7711G, over San Diego, California.
Dude you gotta do a tales from the bottle vid on the Japanese story of Jesus’s death trust
There's a lot of ways to die in a war, but being digested inside your own aircraft is certainly one of the weirder ones.
*insert joke about aeromorph vore"
@DangerNuzzles I was thinking closer to Evangelion units turning you into orange Fanta than anthro plane vore, but I guess that works too.
@@dangernuzzles4568 the fact that I know what that is makes me very sad.
**insert incredibly loud laugh track here**
@@Dustyspace_ We've been on the internet for too long
This plane was the definition of "a fine line between genius and insanity."
Truly Magical !
Goes over that line.
@@bkjeong4302how so?
I would say that it straddled both with ease. Hugely innovative and insanely dangerous at the same time.
so, it fits as a Nazi plane then
Normal plane: Runs out of fuel
Pilot: "Oh no!"
Komet: Runs out of fuel
Pilot: Thank God
Nonono
It’s
Danke Gott
@@shepardren8006 Gott sei Dank
@@shepardren8006Yep, but he can still choose the English thingy, though it can be a choice that he can have ig so yea.
Flying in as Aspestos suit, right next to concentrated hydrogen peroxide, and in front of hydrazine, without landing gear, and probably high on meth. Crazy times
Indeed 😅
Only a man with a name like Heini Dittmar could pull it off.
to be fair if that was your job the least they could do was give you some pervitin
sounds fun tbh, sign me up
I mean we give adderal (meth) to 5th graders for not sitting still in class so its not far off
Having darkness-activated upwards-facing cannons to compensate for how difficult aiming was was actually really clever, damn.
Nazi scientists weren’t dumb, you have to give them that. The only reason why we look at WWII as such a monumental event is because of how close they came to winning and how much it revolutionized technology in the years to come.
I feel like there's a very obvious flaw in that design, though. What if, like... I dunno. You pass under a cloud.
@@agisuru you probably just activate the cannons when you're about to fly under your target
Mother of invention....and Germans, well they're the motherfuckers of invention
@@agisuru
Well it would be adjusted for the difference in luminous intensity between the two.
The darkness caused by a cloud, on an otherwise good day, would probably be less than the darkness caused by a bomber's frame.
in 1997 i was injured in an industrial accident involving 90% reagent sulfuric acid, and the description of human body parts as "a mass of soft jelly" is spot-on. I lived, luckily.
Strong 'I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream' vibes 😅😱
How did that happen?
While turning boiler tubes at miss. phosphate, I had 100% pure sulfuric acid drip from the top of a condensation tower into my eye and on the back of my denim welding jacket. Didn't do a thing to my eye and stained the jacket brown like tobacco. washed the jacket later and it ( the jacket) was practically gone when removed from the machine. Boss said it had to have something else in it to be caustic.
I would NOT want to be the person to see that, or worse, have to clean it up. That’s gotta leave a lasting scar on your psyche.
@@billbush-t5x I can imagine you automatically placed your hand over your eye in that moment
Eric Winkle Brown lived to the age of 97, which is made even more impressive by the fact that he survived 11 plane crashes and being torpedoed. He continued to fly experimental aircraft well into his 70s.
He never really did combat but he flew ALL the stuff that wanted to kill you save maybe the tailless DeHavillands even the Me163 didn't do the job.
He's on my list with St Peter of who I pray to sit down with for dinner in the afterlife.
@@toomanyuserids I hope "Mad Jack" Churchill is on that list, too.
"listen eventually it's gonna work and i'll be DAMNED if i'm not the one that flies it when it does!" -probably brown after his 90th near death experience flying an experimental plane
@@toomanyuserids “Never really did combat”. Give your head a shake. Is it so hard to read a Wikipedia page?
During his service on board Audacity he shot down two Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime patrol aircraft, using head-on attacks to exploit the blind spot in their defensive armament.[4]
Audacity was torpedoed and sunk on 21 December 1941 by the German submarine U-751, commanded by Gerhard Bigalk.[13] The first rescue ship left because of warnings of a nearby U-boat, and Brown was left in the sea overnight with a dwindling band of survivors, until he was rescued the next day.[4] He was the one of two of the 24 to survive the hypothermia; the rest succumbed to the cold.[14] Of the complement of 480, 407 survived,
The loss of life was such that 802 Squadron was disbanded until February 1942. On 10 March 1942, Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his service on Audacity, in particular "For bravery and skill in action against Enemy aircraft and in the protection of a Convoy against heavy and sustained Enemy attacks".
“Never really did combat”. Tell, me, what combat have you “done”?
I mean ... The last days of one technology are always better than the first days of a new technology. Especially when that new technology literally dissolves you in the likely event of something like a less than perfect landing or sheer bad luck.
Yes let’s worr
Well it kinda was the first and last days of a new technology rocket planes pretty much fizzled at as soon as the war ended
I wonder if you would still say that when I take revenge for y'all bullying me in word 2003. You'll soon be my pets in my AI robot colony! 🤖
@@iwantmynametobeaslongaspos7194 no they didn't. This led to the space shuttle and that one airplane that went like Mach 8 or whatever, space plane.
@@iwantmynametobeaslongaspos7194rocket planes are still in development, though mostly for high altitude and space
I love how every single video about WW2 German tech can be summarised to praises between every single sentence about it being: “absolutely flawless revolutionary piece of futuristic engineering equipment that was way too ahead of it's time, and totally worked”- followed by a single *“BUT”* and 900 page essay report on how it was utter mechanical failure that didn't work at all and shouldn't had been made in first place.
Flattery doesn’t fix anything but an ego.
About the only wunderwaffe I praise the Germans for with WW2 is the STG-44. That was a wunderwaffe that wasnt total shit.
They made some good shit, but people typically dont praise the Panzer 4, the Gewher 41 and 43, the MP-40 or the K98.
TBH some of the absolute worst offenders like the Maus never entered production due to their issues.
The “Big Cats” have historically been overrated, and by mid-late 1944 there were plenty of Allied vehicles that could destroy them, but everyone else’s heavy tanks weren’t much if at all of an improvement over them in terms of reliability (there was a reason the very reliable M4 Sherman was often preferred over the more powerful but problematic Pershing even in the postwar era, and the Soviet heavy tanks also broke down all the time), and Germany wasn’t in a position to field large numbers of PzIVs anyways (not enough fuel and manpower).
The Me-262 is another one that’s overrated but not really a bad idea once scrutinized. Yes, its engines had some serious reliability issues. Yes, it used up more fuel than piston-engines fighters. But it used much lower-grade fuel than piston-engine fighters which more than compensated for the amount of fuel used, and as an interceptor (a far better interceptor than the Komet too) short range and limited flight time weren’t that big of an issue.
@@Mr-Trox
Stg was great
Mp40 was great
MG42 was great
Kar98 was ok
G43 was ok
Their machine gun was far ahead of everyone else throughout the war and after aswell as cost efficient since they used stampings and could use it for many different roles
Mp40 was dominant early war
Stg was very good but an M1 carbine wouldn't be far behind
they just pushed boundaries, a lot of experimentation
Also to note about plane speeds circa WW2. The fastest piston fighters of the war, when running flat out in best conditions, were getting into the upper 400s in mph. A gap of 200+ mph here literally means the better part of 50% more speed, at the top end. Just to help put things into better context.
Bombers are like half of that.
The window for firing was probably like 0.1sec
@@ik2254 Yep and even fighters would not be running flat out for top speed all that often. As much as people love to obsess over things with 'this is faster than that' type arguments. Top speed was rarely a speed that mattered for any given aircraft. Practical speeds determined by altitude, weight, configuration, etc. those were what mattered. Which are (excepting perhaps dive speed) universally slower than top speed in level flight and basic maneuvers and often significantly slower.
@@whyjnot420 the issue with this thing is you can't *control* it's speed with any precision
@@MadScientist267 Completely not my point. The video makes much of its speed and what came after. It however failed, as far too many do, to put its speed into context by actually mentioning the actual speeds of contemporaries.
@@whyjnot420 I don't think anyone walked away from this with anything but "it doesn't matter because it was faster than anything out there, to the point of being detrimental"
Sometimes the details are less important. This is one of them.
This plane is like something you'd expect to find in the inventory of 40k Ork warband. Bizarre, noisy, at least as dangerous to the operator as to the enemy, yet somehow still a functional piece of equipment.
And more aerodynamic than the flying bricks of the astartes
Fit for Orks (and literally no one else).
@@jirokoshibailey2052 lmao
It also fits because of how short and cartoony it looks. Very orky.
@@jirokoshibailey2052 if it won't fly it just needs BIGGER ENGINES
Of all the videos I ever saw about the 163, yours is the first to get most of the many drawbacks of this piece of madness right! You still missed the bit with the bulletproof screen in front of the pilot exploding in their faces due to thermal tensions now and then. These planes were suicide machines.
Jesus. The fact that ANY of the pilots of this thing survived the experience is a goddamn miracle.
As soon as I read suicide machines my mind went to the lyrics from Born to Run.
Japanese Ohka sent her regards
I remember hearing that both of those chemicals it used as fuel were colorless. That one mechanic poured the wrong thing into the wrong tank and "Before he realized the severity of his mistake, his insides were spread thinly around the hangar."
Colorless and oderless. There was no easy way to tell them apart
I think I’ve read that on the Wikipedia page before
@@Sniperboy5551 it's 🧢
It would be hard to even think of anything that could be added to help tell them apart. Hydrazine likes to explode in contact with... just about anything, and high-test peroxide will just break down almost any additive instantly. I'd want to store them in different buildings far apart, not sit in between large tin cans full of them screaming through the sky.
@@johnladuke6475 as the Russians were reminded of with the submarine Kursk.
The idea that a "lucky" bullet in a fuel tank would "only" result in your cockpit being filled with hydrogen peroxide is so unfathomably insane!
So is gassing and burning millions of people so I suppose it's on brand
And an incendiary bullet in the center fueltank of a regular airplane would fill your cockpit with flames.... is that any better ?
@@Flt.Hawkeye I like my odds of "engulfed in flames" better than "spontaneous violent explosion" if a round pierced both tanks
@@Flt.HawkeyeConsidering the survival rate of deflagration exposure vs. HP exposure, burns are better.
@@acceptablecasualty5319 50 to 60 percent of you Body surface burned and youre going to die with a Chance of 80 percent. Burns are better ?
"The glider was so good, it was almost *too* good." Classic German engineering moment.
Only the Germans could invent a glider so good it didnt want to land.
Germans are definitely smart.
Their ability to pick competent allies back then certainly wasn't smart. Same with waging winnable wars.
@@SuperCatacata Their ability of picking enemies wasn't smart either, as they fought 2 wars at once.
Italy was in full civil war, Japan joined only to revenge against the US, Austria wanted to recreate the Austro-Hungarian empire. They did try to ally with the brits and the soviets at some point, but peace talks fell through. The reason why Germany became dictated by Adolf was mostly due to the UK and the French during the league of nations' 'peace talks' after the WW1. Even the then-US president Wilson allegedly spoke against making Germany pay up so much for post ww1 reparations. Also, France is also directly responsible for the vietnam war. Germany has basically engaged in scorched earth tactics when they invaded both France and Poland, as both Russia and the rest of the allies front. They maybe could've also allied with Spain, but like Italy, they had their own internal issues to deal with. Now with the EU, they basically went to economic war against most of the member states.
Hydrogen peroxide doesn't react with aluminium (oxide, which is a ceramic which forms when aluminium comes into contact with oxygen. It forms a tiny, self-healing layer around it), but any form of impurity in the metal would cause it to break down into steam and oxygen. And pure aluminium isn't too easy to make, especially when your industry is as badly damaged as Germany's
Electrolytically produced aluminum is usually very pure. I assume that's the process they'd be using.
'T-Stoff' (hydrogen peroxide) does not react with aluminium oxide.
'C-Stoff' (a mixture of methanol and hydrazine hydrate used as fuel) very much does, however; it thus had to be stored in special glass/enamel-lined containers. And did I mention that hydrazine is both highly corrosive AND a carcinogen?
That said, T-Stoff had a small amount of 8-hydroxyquinoline in it, which would capture metal ions to prevent them from acting as catalysts.
Pure aluminum isn't strong enough for aircraft structures.
Hydrazine is EXTREMELY dangerous stuff. Titan Missle techs managed to detonate one IN THE SILO by creating a leak and then inaccurately reporting the incident until it was too late.
@@maxjoechl5663 that's quite cool. I know about straight hydrazine, and the issues they had when trying to metalize it (aluminium powder suspended in it to improve performance. worked really well, but the massive increase in surface area meant that the amount of catalysing impurities in the aluminium was massively increased, causing 'something akin to a cheese souffle'), but I didn't know about T-Stoff and those properties.
Späte himself narrowly avoided the same fate as Pöhs, when Späte's Me-163 suffered a ruptured fuel line on takeoff. His cockpit filling with T-stoff fumes, he made an emergency landing on six inches of snow, popping the canopy before the craft came to a halt and bailing out, sustaining a concussion in the accident.
Probably a preferred outcome compared to the other options eh?
Now that Späte guy is lucky the leak didn't get him fast enough
@@AHHHHHHHH21 he was not just lucky - he was obviously a professional. He knew what to do and how!
@@RockinEnabled Well, yeah, but even a professional would have need melted if even the slightest thing stalled him from exiting
@@AHHHHHHHH21 sure. I just admire his snap quick thinking and reflexes.
Lots of stuff happen in such cases. I used to have a coach who studied in a military school - and he didn't wear any accessories, although it is common for Christians to wear a crucifix. He told me why: he knew a case where soldier burned to death while trying to escape a burning armoured vehicle - he got stuck because of his chain (or a ring, not sure which).
What a great history lesson and entertaining story. We have a Messerschmitt intact at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. We used to laugh at how cute and tiny it was compared to the Spitfires and Lancasters on display. Never new it’s dark history
The little turbine on the front looking like a miniature propeller is the cherry on the top of how toylike it looks.
I grew up with many WWII neighbors. One man, who never talked much about the war, flew bombers from N. Africa and England. He did see Me 163's buzz his formations late in the war. He said they were so fast there was no defence, blink and they were gone. When he died in the early 1990's his obituary was a full column in a NY paper, seems he flew nearly 100 missions, ditched in the English Channel three time, and had a slew of medals including three DFCs from US, UK, FR.
Corrosive C-Stoff and corrosive T-Stoff: when pilots learned of the deadly effects of these chemicals, they were P-Stoff.
Underrated comment
This plane is terrifying for all the wrong reasons.
The Me 163: Redefining "toxic workplace environment" since 1941.🧪☠️
Einstein
you mean the RIGHT reasons, lol. These pilots and test pilots werent exactly fresh conscripts but card carrying nazis that had been fighting a long time and not once regretted it. I'm glad they met a fate like this.
@@cpte3729you're damn right
@@wardog1838So? Even the vilest scum of the earth can get a family, but they're still card carrying nazis.
Concentrated H2O2 scares me, and I'm a chemist. You have to be incredibly thoughtful about storage and disposal, not just because it eats nearly everything, but it also has a tendency to form extremely sensitive explosives.
And still, while in high school I was able to get 36% H2O2 from local pharmacy...
highly explosive hydrogen peroxides.
Why did HS you need h2o2?
@@Spaghetti742 making PCBs...
@@mrblc882 Oh
Fantastic video mate well done
Some new footage and pictures there I haven’t seen before
Thanks for that
9:35 "Yeah, so the fuel that powers this thing is extremely dangerous, in fact if there's a spillage there's a chance it'll digest you alive-"
Captain Brown: I'mma fly it.
The log indicates 32,000 feet. Given its top speed of 700+ mph, this would be well above the speed of sound at altitude*, even substantially below that max height.
I wonder if he was tempted to go for it.
_____
* 660 mph at 20,000 feet
German ground crew: "Verrückt hundes und Englishmen...-some Pervitin?"
Captain Ahab:
My granduncle was one of the few testpilots to survive the Komet. It was pretty anxiety inducing to fly in a wodden construction propelled by a rocket
Yeah, I'm glad we don't put corrosives around our pilots anymore.
My grandfather told me stories about how they used to put corrosives **inside** of him.
Well, he didn't say corrosives, he said something in German. I asked him what it meant and he wouldn't tell me.
Also he wasn't a pilot.
@@DILFDylF Toxine? or cocaine chocolate. perhaps heroin for the "super soldier" wonder medicine thing
@@DILFDylF "Panzerschokolade" = Tank chocolade. It was Amphetamine laced chocolade. Kind of explains some of the absolute human horrors we see all through wars since WW2 as "speedballs" are used to this day.
liar
Of course it was Eric Brown. That dude was protected from death, dismemberment and disciplinary action by plot armor.
Had some misguided alien scientists crashed their science saucer in his back yard, he'd have had his ground crew buddies fix it up while his wife had tea with the aliens and he'd have flown the thing out to Neptune and back and have the ground crew improve the handling characteristics.
I've said it before, but I'm an aviation mechanic and I really appreciate you taking the time to get all the facts right, most RUclipsrs don't know anything about airplanes and make themselves sound stupid, but you know your stuff 👍
Fudged the chemistry quite a bit
@@travismiller5548 Well I'm not a chemist so I don't really know or care about that myself
@@travismiller5548
Oh yes?
I mean, people in adult age learned that jet fuel can be a little bit dangerous, how dumber you can actually get?
My best friend was an A-6 mechanic in the Marines. He used to run into other aircraft mechanics that were clueless, even after training. One guy argued with him about a plane taking off, he 'could tell it was an A-4 by the afterburner '......
Another reason not mentioned for the fact it killed so many pilots was that this was one of the first (if only) German aircraft to be made using slave labour in concentration camps. For that reason, they were often sabotaged or poorly made, so there were many technical issues.
Sadly a lot of the German weapons were made from such. There's the well known photo of the He-162 plant in the mountains near a camp that comes to mind. Also the sabotage was common among all weapons (which is a no shocker given the state they found themselves in).
Hitler also unsuccessfully tried to do the same thing with the V2 rockets. They were terrorizing the British with mobile V2 launch sites on the back of trucks, but Hitler wanted to create an all in one factory for producing and launching the rockets out of the same location powered off the back of concentration labor. Sabotage from the prisoners and allied bombings of the factory made it so they could barely launch any missiles, which IMHO was a huge contributor to the British not being bombed into surrender.
The prisoners discovered that pissing in the solvents that held bits of the aircraft together weakened the bond enough to come apart in flight. The natter suffered this with a lot of the test aircraft having things break off causing loss of the craft.
@@Evildandalo dude, bombed into surrender? This was late war. Britain wasn't going to surrender because a few more bombs fell as Germany was in the midst of collapse.
Suuuuure
I remember trying this plane in the game Battlefield 1942, one of the expansions has it.
It's literally impossible to fly, just a tiny input and the whole thing shoots in that direction, and just as you got the hang of it's sensitive input it'd run out of fuel and be sent plummeting towards the ground.
The one in the game is a manned V-1. It looks like a cigar with wings. But the glider would have been fun.
It's actually a Ba 349 Natter. I don't know what made me mistake it for a V-1.
No, it doesn't. It only has the Natter Rocket Plane. That's a different rocket plane that has never seen combat.
Warthunder has it.
Also, the handling in game obviously doesn't reflect the handling irl. Especially with battlefield not even having proper joystick and throttle support.
Try to play it in war thunder, then youll actually know its performance. Battlefield is way too arcard and has not the physics of the real world emulated correctly
@@legendaerycraft2226 its not in war thunder
As an aviation historian and volunteer interpreter at my local museum, that has a 163, the thing is tiny, I always stress to visitors how deadly C-stoff and T-stoff were. A nastier airplane to its crews than its targets, the pilots had to wear asbestos-lined suits to protect themselves, and even then, many died on landing in horrific fires or were shot down by roving allied fighters due to the aircraft becoming a glider once it's fuel was expended. Great video as always, keep up the amazing work!
Does your local museum happen to be the Udvar-Hazy center?
@@49thcorps_models No, The Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Canada
I have seen this plane in person at the Udvar Hazy center in Virginia it's a really neat looking plane to see in person. Even being an 80 year old design it still seems cutting edge. They have an amazing collection of ww2 German planes there at the museum including the Horton ho 229 flying wing example that allied forces captured at the end of the war.
I was about to correct you about that name's spelling (I am Hungarian myself, like Steven Udvarházy) but it seems that's the official name of the place. Weird. Also very fascinating to me that one of these planes, a Blackbird, and the Enola Gay are all in one place and it was financed by someone from my country
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan As well as a space shuttle. In my opinion, it's more interesting than the main Air and Space on the National Mall.
@@josephmassaro I mean, yea that's cool and all, but there's a Blackbird!! And the bomber that dropped the first nuke!
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan I'm a space guy, so...yeah the Blackbird is cool..but they got a freakin' space shuttle!. The only thing that beats that is the 11' long USS Enterprise model from the original 60s Star Trek TV show. That's on display at the Air and Space at the National mall.
So cutting edge that post war every aircraft looked like it?
For context, Satellites often use hydrazine and if/when they deorbit them they put them in a specific max friction orbit to vaporize everything. In 2008 a new satellite lost contact shortly after reaching orbit and was decaying quickly. It had a thousand pounds of hydrazine in it. So a Navy ship launched a missile into space and obliterated it.
Given the Komet's piss poor combat record vs pilot losses and injuries simply from operating it normally.. I would suggest that it was not "just as dangerous to the pilot as to the enemy" but in fact much more dangerous to the pilot than the enemy.
This plane was the best weapon the Germans made for the Allies
@@aozzya1563 Well, the best to actually see service. There were lots of spectacular failures taking up development money and factory time because Funny Moustache Man thought they sounded cool. Some of those could have been even better for the Allies.
The cursed Me163 is like a manned missile, both the high performance and the high risk. They are powerful weapons if you don’t need your pilots to come back alive… such as the case of Kamikaze planes
Didn't matter, still scared the piss out of anyone that suddenly got jumped by it.
It was a big help to the allied war effort.
2:37 he’s so proud of his tiny propeller
"Kommandant, I am worried about the corrosive fuel in the tanks."
"Do not worry! We have made suits to protect you."
"Really? What a relief! What's it made out of?"
"Asbestos!"
Underrated comment bro I creased
There's also a really wild story of an accident with the ground crew.
Remember how the T-Stoff and C-Stoff had to be kept separate but in different types of containment materials? This sounds simple in theory, but it was a nightmare in practice. Both were a clear liquid and were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Smelling the fumes to tell them apart was not only hazardous, but often impossible given the thick asbestos suits and PPE handlers wore. So the story goes that once a ground crewman saw a bucket of what he thought was C-Stoff on the floor of the hangar, probably having been drained or recovered from an aircraft being serviced by another ground crewman. So, the unfortunate ground crewman picked the bucket up and attempted to return it to the larger C-Stoff storage tank also located in the hangar. The content of the bucket was actually T-Stoff. He was killed instantly by the blast, and the whole hangar was engulfed in flames.
Its a MYTH ask anyone working with at least one of the Substances. Hydrazine smell like Ammonia like really really bad and HTP also smells with a very distinct and unpleasant. Also they both got a different texture and HTP definitely has coloring to it.
This does sound like a myth. Returning an unidentified bucket to the rocket fuel storage seems unlikely. I doubt they return rocket fuel back to the main storage after it's been in an airplane or a bucket.
Accidents happen, it seems more likely that during cleanup of materials the same piece of equipment might accidentally get used for one and then the other without first having been sufficiently cleaned.
Get rekt tbh
Wild story is synonymous with urban legend
@@timthorson52 it was 1944 Germany
This plane looked like it came straight out of Metal Slug.
4:54
I appreciate you pronouncing 500 as fünfhundert, even I constantly make the mistake of reading numbers in languages as English or Hungarian numbers despite knowing the words for said numbers
"impossible to stall or spin"
WT players: you underestimate my power
When you deploy weapons more dangerous to your own side than to the enemy, you're losing the war.
There’s audio of Americans hearing and seeing one for the first time, crazy to listen to. They had no idea what it was as it was the first thing even close to fighter jet
Mind giving us a link?
I think you mean the me 262?
The Me-262 was the first fighter jet, and came about before the Me-162.
Hey, mind sharing a link, or at least what to Google for?
@@ruffedgrouse2711 ruclips.net/video/E-8CQp2_BLc/видео.html
Imagine if this was the jet you couldve won from Pepsi.
Would've made that contest waaay different
nah, pepsico only had soviet subs and destroyer(s?) and probably a few helos and jets. 😽👌
@@kittytrailI could've sworn Qxir did a video about a fighter jet Pepsi advertised as something of a grand prize in one of their contests lol
Personally I would've gone with an aircraft carrier myself
@@thryi he did make a video about the pepsi fighter jet
@@thryi yep, he did. but pepsico didn't even have that harrier in stock unlike all of 17 soviet subs and much more surface vessels including a fully fledged destroyer. 😋
@@kittytrail 17 soviet subs, a fully fledged destroyer, and pepsico couldn't afford to give a fighter jet
10:08 You can see that he had flown the me163A one month earlier where he stated "familiarisation. flight to 20 000" And then later flew the me163B where he commented "Handling to 32 000. Fantastic" He actually flew it twice
From his remarks it actually looks like he flew the 163A three times.
komet engineers: This is the best performing combat glider of its time.
also komet engineers: We've surrounded the seat with corrosive fuel. 👍
USAF museum has one. Sabotage was also a risk to pilots.
This Me 163B (S/N 191095) may have been sabotaged while under construction, perhaps by the forced laborers building it in Germany. A small stone was wedged between the fuselage fuel tank and a supporting strap (which could have eventually caused a dangerous fuel leak), and there was contaminated glue in the wing structure (which could have caused a failure of the wing in flight).
Inside the aircraft's skin are these words, perhaps written by a defiant French laborer: "Manufacture Ferme" means "Plant Closed." "Mon coeur est en chomage" translated directly means "My heart is not occupied" (as opposed to France being occupied by the Germans).
Sabotage was a big problem for Nazi Germany. Who would've figured slave laborers wouldn't be motivated to do good work? One book I read about a bomber crew, they took an AA round to the wing on one mission which hit the wing spar but didn't detonate. After landing, the bomb squad removed the round and instead of an explosive filler in the shell they found only a note that said something like "Your welcome from your friends in Poland"
"Laborers" the word you're looking for is slaves.
They were slaves.
toomuchsasha. TRUTH! 💯👍
ferme in portuguese means "sick or hurt."
@@TooMuchSascha Right on.
Is that YOU showing off the propeller at 2:45?
Oh boy. I already know the story of this rocket death sentence. Can't wait for the rest of the video.
On that note I'd absolutely love for you to cover more older topics. The Great War and WW2 have so many absolutely insane stories with development and people that would be brilliant for this channel.
The photo cell launcher itself seems like a recipe for disaster, clouds , birds, maybe even crew getting on top of the aircraft could set it off. Maybe an expert could fill me in but it feels not to dissimilar from putting half life laser mines on your plane
I'm guessing that the pilot would turn on the photo cell from the cockpit while positioning himself under the enemy aircraft
@@wojciechd6765 ohhhh that would make sense. Yeah that would be equally anxious having that on there as well, right next to the tanks.
Remember that the aircraft has no power unless that generator propeller up front is spinning. Ground crews would most likely be fine if it couldn't be powered at all. for the rest, idk if the pilot had a way to switch it on and off or if it was always on
@@bigfish821 I imagine you'd only want one going off at a time, so they probably had to arm them one at a time
Perhaps the pilot could select how many vertical cannons fired, at a time.
@3:20 or in other words it's record wouldn't be broken until the US got a hold of some of them German rocket scientists
More than likely that record was flown well below the claimed 700mph. Modern analysis proves the Komet would have disintegrated at transonic speeds. Just as with the P-47 pilots who swore they had exceeded the speed of sound in a dive, it was literally impossible and they were getting grossly inflated readings from their airspeed indicators due to compressibility effects. Anyone who may have actually exceeded the speed of sound in a P-47 would not have lived to tell the tale and the same goes for the Komet. Neither aircraft would have been controllable at such speeds. Even when they thought they were doing 640mph in the Komet, it was really probably more like 580mph because compressibility effects will occur in a pitot tube from that era well before the wing will be subjected to them.
@@Lurch-Bot Are you really comparing the P47 with the Komet?
ridiculous
I’ve seen one in person before, it’s at the Air Force Museum In Wright Patterson Air Force Base. It’s next to a V-2 rocket, V-1 Rocket, and an ME-262, it’s pretty interesting.
when will those thieving american give back all the art and artefact they stole from Europe and especially Germany and Austria then?
NASM also has one
I love that place
Hmm how morbidly tied together
@@LukSter18998 indeed
Honestly, it's such an extraordinary plane design. Even the rocket engine aside, but the swept wing, the canopy - I'd say the bloody thing was actually closer to modern day fighter jets than "regular" WW-2 era aircraft. As dangerous as it was, it was in many ways a over decade ahead of its time. No wonder after WW2 the Soviets and the West snatched as many German engineers and scientists as they could. What really makes me wonder, though - since they were fast and highly agile, the pilots would be subjected to high G-forces. I know allies kind of had G-suits (it was a fledgeling invention back then), not sure about the Nazis though. And not sure if anti-G training was much of a thing then, either
The Luftwaffe pilots were indeed just 'built different'.
especially on the diet late war germans we’re on i’m very suprised lol
i feel like our culture always kind of projects this image of nazi tech being “well engineered” but tends to completely overlook or ignore all the massively stupid and ridiculous design decisions that only such a cruel and inhumane political system could produce which are _just as much a part_ of this so-called “brilliant” engineering.
watching this video kind of made me sick to my stomach as to how disposable _the actual pilot_ is treated in the very design of the aircraft. there’s absolutely *no* consideration given to their safety or survival: they are squished in between three tanks of fucking _acidic fuel_ in a bloody rocket and without a pressurised cabin … like holy fuck - if it didn’t in fact actually happen this sounds like a propagandistic caricature by the allies of the nazis - _and then_ that glider couldn’t even properly land?!
like, i’m sorry, but how tf is that good engineering? one can say the technological achievement of the glider is impressive in isolation _somehow,_ but all the decisions that got them to that point are just so inescapably horrible and linked to that very _somehow_ that i think it’s a bad and historically idealist way of looking at technological progress, instead of seeing it for what this thing was: a plane birthed out of the general intellect of a fascist society that had so little regard for human life at that point that it killed more of its own than it did of its “enemies”.
if we can’t learn to see how the soviets and the US simply gobbling up nazi scientists because their leadership was respectively so envious of the envisaged “technological progress” the fascists proclaimed and have successfully cemented themselves in history for with their propaganda is directly linked to the now still present and ever more prevalent fascistic elements in our contemporary bourgeois democracies … i dunno, i think humanity is kind of fucked, then.
@@scush most "firsts" do not go smoothly. the komet was basically at a late prototype stage by the time of its last flight, the hazards that come with that should be obvious. the crazy inventions, it should be added, are not as much the result of a cruel and inhuman political system (and believe you me, all parties of the war had plenty of cruelty and inhumanity to spare), but the desperation of germany to get some kind of wonder weapon in an effort to not be completely overrun. the machines that come out of it, the Aggregat 4, which is the first man made rocket capable of reaching space, the Fieseler rocket propelled bombs (V1s), the early jet fighters, and the numerous other crazy inventions, were acts of desperation, however, still, in their ambitions and considering the circumstances they were made under, certainly worthy of being called "ahead of their time", even if that came with obvious risks.
@@scush you are looking at it from the modern liberal perspective that values human life perhaps even too much. This plane was a marvel of engineering and it's even more impressive given the time and resource constraints. This thing nearly broke the speed of sound. Sure it was dangerous, sure people died. Doesn't make it less impressive.
Well done video lad. Cherrs.
The thing about hydrogen peroxide is that although technically it is a weak acid, it is also an oxidising agent, i.e., a stuff that can accelerate oxidation or combustion process. In other words, it does not burn like an acid but more like a fire.
^this. It is a really good oxidiser, very unstable, especially in high concentrations. And the stuff used as fuel was very concentrated. It burns the fuel very efficiently, but also reacts quickly with other stuff.
The pilot who was exposed to it got oxidised by it, he basically burned without flames, and pretty quickly. Must've been incredibly painful, hydrogen peroxide hurts a lot.
@@tonyth9240Its higley likley that he was dead after a nearly full on collision with a radio tower shortly after he lost control. So hopefully for this poor man he was alredy dead. Also HTp is no acid at all its just an oxidizer. Without its oxigen its purest water so no acidic particles here.
@@tonyth9240I'm pretty sure hydrogen peroxide solutions become more stable the higher you go up in concentration, but I'm not a chemist.
> No, you'll never guess what gruesome fate this little aircraft could subject you to
> The gruesome fate: is literally written on the video thumbnail
I have seen two Komets in museums. One in Ottawa's air museum and one in DC at the Smithsonian (if I recall it is the one in Virginia at Dulles Airport - Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center). Absolutely insane vehicle in such a small package.
Man imagine your last moments being you melting alive from acid. Terrifying way to go
No better than a Nazi deserves.
No thank you I don't think I will.
I mean they absolutely deserved it, they were card-carrying nazis
One can be seen flying at Shuttleworth, Bedfordshire, UK. Released after an aerotow and flown as a aerotowed glider at their air shows. Very impressive.
Nah, could’ve just left all the acids in. 💀
“Nah, dont worry about the fuel thing, we got you this aspestos suit for protection”
I seriously love that Qxir has a green screen... That he almost never uses to actually add images or video behind him. Also that Legend allied pilot, if I could have, I also probably would have give the comet ago, would have been fun even though also terrifying.
Seems like a pretty typical design from Germany for this time: Brilliant on paper, with absolutely zero consideration for error on the part of designers, pilots, or manufacturers. You're kind of always about a half inch from either crippling mechanical failure or exploding.
Speed or big gun
@juliandavidhoffer2022 Which also happens to be the route the USSR took during the Cold War.
@@Sniperboy5551 it’s a better plan than putting half of your citizens in gulags.
last efforts to create wunderwaffe that will please angry little moustach man and save the germany.You cant rush to the perfection and expect miracles.
And it was made by a bunch of pissed off slaves so something will go wrong in use
you know the aircraft is something else when both the pilot and the enemy is waiting for its fuel to run out
A slight note; the Iron Cross was not the highest award in the German military of WW2, the Knights Cross was the highest Order of German WW2 and still is. It is called an Order due to having multiple levels.
The English Victoria Cross and American Medal Of Honor are the highest awards because there is only that, one level. The Iron Cross is an Order because there are levels.
Iron Cross had many levels to it. Thus, an order of an award.
To even further clarify since it is apparently needed, what he had was not the highest because, as with an order, you needed to be awarded the medal many times for it to be the highest award. For Germany in WW2 the highest award was after getting 6-8 Iron Cross', this man had two.
7:53 he says the knights cross was the highest award
so exactly like it’s described in the video???
Technically speaking, the highest award was the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Goldenem Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten). It was only awarded once, to Hans-Ulrich Rudel.
You mean exactly what he said? At 7:53? Maybe you should have watched the video you so eagerly wanted to correct.
What?
Hey Qxir, I just want to take a moment to say that you’ve gotten so good at the whole RUclips thing.
I’ve been here a while and comparing your early videos to what you put out now really highlights how good you’ve gotten. You were good at the start but you felt distinctly unfamiliar with making videos but now you feel like an old hand at this.
Love the videos, keep it up!
You have an awesome voice and delivery. Have you considered doing audiobooks?
It's amazing Eric Brown was able to fly anything given the massive balls he had to haul along with him.
I like the derpy little propeller on the front.
yeah, imagine the same, modernized and piloted remotely... 😏
The propellor turns an electric generator.
@@kittytrail we already have that
its called air to air missile
@@PRH123 Whatever, it looks funny.
I still have PTSD trying to fly that thing in Battlefield: 1942
It's a unique aircraft that you wouldn't build if you have better options. Short-ranged rocket interceptors like the Me 163 and the Ba 349 were built for a niche now filled by surface-to-air missiles.
Failure or success overall, the base tech behind it is amazing. Those German engineers were geniuses.
WOW. Gives new meaning to
"Nightmare Fuel"
My Father swears he saw two of these flying and making sonic booms. He was a Hungarian "volunteered" to join a Waffen-SS unit from University in the last year of the war. I don't know all his movements during this time but he also talked about seeing the Messerschmitt Me 323 Gigant making waves in the turf as they landed. He ended in the Edelweiss battalion on the Russian front.
Modern scientific knowledge holds that there is no way the Komet could have exceeded the speed of sound without breaking up. It was too weak an airframe to handle the stresses and the aerodynamics were woefully off base for a supersonic plane. People also claimed they hit the sound barrier in the P-47 but they definitely didn't.
Dont forget the german testpilot Heini Dittmar reach 1941 with the Me 163A V4
the speed of 1003 km/h(Mach 0,84) and 1944 with the Me 163B V18 the speed of 1130km/h(Mach 0,91)
Unbelievable what a performance from this tiny rocket powered 163!
fun fact: “stoff” literally just means “stuff”. this insanely dangerous fuel was literally just called “c stuff” and “t stuff”.
Damn this stuff was so dangerous the creators decided it didn't deserve a proper name.
"Stoff" is a word used for alot of fuels in German.
Get the feeling you won't see this flying at any air shows.
Best footage I've ever seen of the Komet program.
Fantastic video as usual! Your way of narrating is absolutely amazing, thank you for the videos!
You gona get a room with him??
Crazy how its first flight was September 1941 yet was only introduced at the end in 1944 the thing could do around 790kmh
Wearing an asbestos suit, sitting in death machine surounded by toxic and highly dangerous fuel while intens and rapid pressure changes and a bumpy landing in the end. Seems fun
Off you go, intercepting formations of 1000+ aircraft.
Truly a life.
The Komet that Eric 'Winkle' Brown flew under power is on display at the Scottish Museum of Flight at East Fortune near Edinburgh. Tiny aircraft. Brown had been specifically ordered not to fly it under power.
I’d risk the punishment just to be able to fly something that badass
@@Sniperboy5551 imagine the thrust when you punch that rocket for just a few seconds. those nazis were short in oil the whole war but never lacking in the creativity department.
For the Apollo 10 mission to the moon (the last before Apollo 11's first landing), NASA was worried that the pilot would try to land it, against orders. So they took special precautions. To quote astronaut Gene Cernan: "A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: 'Don't give those guys an opportunity to land, 'cause they might!' So the ascent module, the part we lifted off the lunar surface with, was short-fueled. The fuel tanks weren't full. So had we literally tried to land on the Moon, we couldn't have gotten off."
If they didn't want Brown to fly it under power, why did they load it with fuel and arm the engines?
@@renerpho bit of a long story here. The aircraft was at an airfield in Germany. Brown was part af a group of test pilots who were sent to obtain and test captured German aircraft. He would tend to fly into recently captured airfields and see what was there. As far as I can recall, on this occasion (this was after the war) he was based at this airfield to conduct thorough testing. His Co had ordered that no powered flights were to be carried out but as the only ground crew who could operate the aircraft were German, that was who was used.
Brown was determined to fly the Me 163 under power and has arranged to meet the ground crew the night before. There, he briefed them to be ready before sunrise but gave no further info. The following morning, he told the ground crew of his intention to fly under power. As the airfield had been an operational Me 163 base and the allies had no idea how to safely dispose of the fuel, there was a supply on hand. The ground crew attempted to talk Brown out of this but he was determined. The flight was carried out just after sunrise to prevent anyone from stopping it.
There is an account of the in Brown's biography Wings on my Sleve. A very good read.
"Winkle" Brown was a bit of a bad lad, but he could certainly fly!
7:19 this picture nearly had me fooled until I looked at the "writing" and realized its a very clever AI photo. No wonder why when you zoom in pretty much everything just kinda looks off.
It also didn’t have much of a kill ratio. Pretty much a novelty plane. I have hauled Hydrogen Peroxide in it’s most pure form and it’s very corrosive and I can’t imagine flying one of these things.
"Very corrosive" is an understatement. When acid is used in horror movies, very rarely is the stuff that they claim is being used to melt people alive would actually do that. Not nearly at that speed anyway. H2O2 actually would. Not surprised that pilot was basically a pile of jelly.
I have my degree in chemistry, top 3 scariest substances I used was 30% hydrogen peroxide. I will take pure hydrochloric acid any day
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 30% H2O2 is fine, I've spilled it on myself and it just bleaches your skin for a few days. 70%+ H2O2 though? Hell no am I not touching that stuff LMAO
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 I don’t wanna imagine getting that all over you
@@Floppa221 well you wouldnt be able to at that moment
because you would be dead
The reason for the low kill ratio was probably because they had so few of them, that bombers could just attack somewhere where they didn't had the Comet. That's the same reason why the STG 44 didn't really change a lot in the war even though it was actually really good (I mean we still use assault rifled today) because they didn't have a lot of them during the war.
10:00, Those german ground crew's were the real mvps tho. Didn't care that it's an allied pilot that just invaded them, they still don't wanna see him melted into a pile of goo!
If the chemicals powering the me163 didn't kill you,the sudden loss of power from your engine quitting would. It made you a slow easy target for the enemy to pounce on.As an add bonus,the me163 didn't have any landing gear just a retractable skid,slamming you into the ground,making you an even better target. More of a danger to yourself then to the enemy.
I remember hearing an anecdote where a pilot jettisoned the fuel shortly after takeoff into a pasture (a feature that wasn't added til near the end of the war IIRC) due to some malfunction. Apparently some farmer came complaining to the airbase command they accidentally dropped a bomb on some of his cows, which were mostly melted into nothing, and the farmer was told to beat it or he'd be arrested within the hour.
Whether it's true or not, idk, but high-test peroxides are literally the cartoon acids that melt the chicken off a drumstick in seconds.
Poor cows..
"hey Jerry, why is the rain spicy"
cool
Jea i guess this is a Myth too, HTP is even in Extremely concentrations not capable of doing this. Piranha solution is however very capable of doing so. The cow was Surely dead won't argue with this. Hydrazine is Toxic as shit and HTP is capable of killing everything down to the sturdiest Microbes. I even would believe that this special spot was barren of all life for the next year but all you get even from HTP even in its 80 percents or so are some nasty chemical burns. Melting isn´t the thing
Captain Eric Brown deserves a video of his own - a truly remarkable man.
🇦🇺👍👍
Wow, the footage of this rocket machine is outstanding! All new to me, thank you.
*Each time I close the canopy before take-off, I feel that I am closing the lid on my own coffin.* ~Unknown Luftwaffe pilot.
Everybody gangster until someone dies in that goofy ass plane
amazing video love ur content always ❤
This just unlocked a core memory of a picture of this thing that was in a "fighters" encyclopedia I was obsessed with as a kid. I could barely even read anything it said but loved looking at the pictures. I'll have to find this book next time I'm at my parents' house and find this one
Between 1940 and 1945, the Germans came up with some incredible designs that were far ahead of their time. ME262 jet fighter, Komet, STG-44 assault rifle, FG42 assault rifle, V1 flying bomb and V2, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, Type XXI class submarine, the King Tiger and Panther tanks. The list goes on!
....and they didn't stop there... Just see today's supertank Leopard 2 A7, or their Class 212 submarines !
None of those were "ahead of their time" especially the tanks
@@snonsig2688 -- Hahaha...! Great joke...I cracked up.
And not one of them was cost-effective or reliable. Instead of building Panzer 4s and BF109s they wasted their limited resources on Wonder weapons which barely worked.
Only the STG was a success, but it was an unauthorized developed which was reluctantly accepted, because the troops liked it
@@dimakapeev3156- That's such a huge blunder that deserves no reply at all.
One thing which gets rarely managed is that the Komet 163 was not designed as a fighter but was a test bed for exploring this new way of engine. It was just forced into service after some bigwig, I think maybe even Göring himself, saw the Komet by a test flight.
For reference, the speed of sound is about 767 MPH
Edit: at an altitude, the speed of sound increases but drag also decreases, and also on the airfoil, local compression regions may be able to create supersonic flows and thus creating shockwaves, so this could very possibly be the first ever man piloted "supersonic" vehicle...? (This is atmospheric air becoming supersonic relative to the aircraft which counts, and supersonic rocket exhaust does not count, in my opinion)
Rockets shouldn't really count in the realm of supersonic flight, they don't need oxygen and can just go to space
@@williewilson2250 Why not, using oxygen is not necessity for going supersonic. Btw, in space there is no such thing as supersonic. Certainly there is a difference between a rocket and a n airplane since a rocket doesn't need wings for lift and hence doesn't face the same issues with shockwaves. Well, the 163 was an airplane and therefore it should be counted, no matter how it was propelled. It is though unlikely that it really reached supersonic speed since the wing and airframe designs were not suitable for it.
@@wanderschlosser1857 if oxygen is not a necessity for supersonic flight, then why is there no such thing as supersonic in space?
In which altitude is the speed of sound 767 mph? The speed of sound actually deceases with higher altitude and decreasing air density reaching 0 in outer space. So the speed records of any plane must always be seen in conjunction with the altitude and even the current barometric pressure in that altitude to determine the actual Mach number. It is unlikely that the 163 reached Mach 1 in any of its speed records. Although it must have been pretty close. In one of the speed record flights it lost big parts of its tail due to high subsonic turbulences.
@@wanderschlosser1857 your air speed would be lower at high altitude, but ground speed is still higher if you were to go mach 2 at 30000 feet
This thing is basically the real world equivalent of an A-Wing
But does a A-wing eat your insides??
You produce the best videos on RUclips! ❤
seen one of these in person, and they are as small as they look. And look as unsettling too.
Another cool aircraft I'd like to see you cover is the Northrop XP-79 "Flying Chainsaw"
I'm looking at it now..
Northrop is cursed, same for boeing
Very interesting. Well done, sir.