"Messerschmitt concluded that the Me 262 could not exceed Mach 0.86 without becoming completely uncontrollable."
This is very much clear that there will be severe control problems, but also that Willy did not have too much experience of what will happen once you go past Mach 1, few did at that time. As I mentioned the mach effects build up gradually in different parts of airframe so the mach effects the pilots experienced could also be any of those, not necessarily the actual mach for the whole airframe. But theoretically the 262 was up to it aerodynamically if assisted by engine thrust (prior to flame out due to mach lock in inlet), but the structural limitations due to wing design existed too.
"Any higher Mach number would generate a nose-down pitch so strong that the pilot would not be able to overcome it. This pitch would constantly increase the plane's dive angle to the point that the aircraft would disintegrate under the negative g-loads."
Somehow I doubt this, don't you? The same problem plaqued P38 and P47 and many many other planes and it is related to wing profile design and somehow I doubt that Willy would have designed a 500mph plane with a heavily asymmetric, top heavy, profile.
Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe NACA 00011-0.825-35 NACA 00009-1.1-40
I understand that is a somewhat symmetric profile. I also understand that American planes which were noticed to have this kind of behavior, even with asymmetric profile, did not disintegrate due to neg G but exceeding the terminal velocity of the airframe and particularly wings, that is if they had time to build up enough speed before lawndarting.
"The Royal Aircraft Establishment in the United Kingdom later confirmed these findings during Britain's evaluation of the Me 262 after the war. The RAE found that the maximum safe speed that could be attained was Mach 0.84, and any higher speed would result in a fatal, uncontrollable dive from which recovery was not possible."
I wonder how they came into this conclusion? By taking the aircraft to the limit or beyond that and maybe there was an actual loss of life and the conditions where this happened were recorded?
"It's based on captured documents and German pilot interviews. To me that seems to indicate at least some level of.... well not "reliability" but... "benefit of the doubt" perhaps is what I'm looking for." Sure. If I doubt the reliability of RAE reports I guess it is fair of you to doubt what the actual pilots who took he plane to combat (and back) said of the plane.
Yeah, sorry for a slight OT but the topic is interesting and I do not see a reason to start a new thread for such light skimming through the subject.
"But riddle me this guys, how many AH aircraft with WEP are not injection related (e.g. ADI, NOS, MW50 etc. etc.)?"
As far as I know none, but that kind of arrangement is the choice of HTC and it is/was not necessary true for all planes. I have understood that initially the "restricted power" was indeed a restriction in throttle lever to prevent accidental use of excess RPM and later on as the engines became more and more boosted by charger arrangements it started to include the additives that were sprayed into intake charge to prevent detonation. So its merely a choice in game mechanics, not necessarily how it was arranged IRL. Not that I'm completely sure about this but that is the impression I've got from literature.
I agree that the extra RPM could as well be behind the WEP button in this game as the game mechanics do not allow the engine to destruct itself under the normal throttle control limits. From that we get to request for more failure mechanisms and symptoms for engines, but that belongs to Wishlist.
-C+
