Vincent

Regarding the flaps, they were not varnished like a piece of indoor furniture, they received the same yellowish anti fungal treatment as internal wooden parts. And to be honest I would not even rule out the possibility that they were linen covered

I will step in and try to explain this rivet/putty thing, maybe it will help some folks here understand how things worked. It all starts with drag. Anything that is not flush with the aircraft surface creates turbulences that result in drag, or loss of performance. There are things that can not be avoided such as intakes, fairings, etc but also things resulting from the construction techniques such as rivets and panel adjustments. A properly constructed aircraft will minimize the effects of the rivets and panel adjustments and as a result the aircraft is meeting a fixed set of perf

I have a theory for why the rudders are moving around so much on a given a/c with captured markings When the May 8th surrender took place, the Luftwaffe was given an order to render all aircraft non flyable, presumably to avoid any rogue pilot or high ranking nazi escape. The instructions given to the ground crews called for a easily visible way to verify that On piston engined aircraft, it was done primarily by removing the propellers but how do you achieve that result on a Me262 ? You remove the rudder, it's easy (4 bolts if i recall correctly) and the a/c is not dama

Enclosed light indeed And regarding the rivets, they are usually still visible on most of the surfaces on the 262. Usually the issue was more the panel junctions more than the rivets and it is important to remember that there was 2 distincts build phases for the 262. The latter phase in dispersed facilities by slave workers were the one heavily puttied but the earlier airframes were quite OK and did not require that much putty For ex, here i clearly see rivets :

Hey, look what i just found : No more guessing

Yes, it had the enclosed tail light, you are correct on that. It is not an isolated case, for example single seater WkNr. 500443 is also having this early style of rudder : My theory is that a small batch of them got produced just at the start of production and then it was quickly decided to switch to the cabochon style. And of course each and everyone of these rudders got installed Another example : To make things even murkier, there are pictures of both of these a/c with normal production rudders as well and pictures of the nightfighters

Hi ! The leads going to the FUG 16 radio set should be dark blue, not yellow ! Best Vincent

Me like !

Great job on the PE stuff !

I'm perfectly aware of the FuG120 equipment and its potential installation of Me262. I just don't believe that what we see on the canopy is related to it As far as I know, the pegs on the canopy were provision for the sighting system of the Schräge Musik that was never installed on the few night fighters produced It is however known that the British installed the gunsights for some testing. Vincent

The eyelets shows that of course there was a provision for "something" to be installed. My main point is that that something is unlikely to be what we see on post capture pictures and it is safe to not install anything at that position

Hmm Not that convinced that it is that. I have looked at pictures with better resolution and one thing is clear : there are no electrical or signal cables leading to that device so it is a "standalone" device, most likely a movie camera. If we take the example of Red 12 (WrkNr 111980) where pictures exists taken around the time of its capture by the RAF, there is no such device on the canopy. Yet a few weeks later, when in british colors, the very same device appears on the front canopy Same thing happenned to WrkNr 110635 as well The other reaso

Good work !

Hi. Just noticed that the position of the lower radiator flaps is incorrect : when the main flaps are lowered, the lower radiator flap is slaved to it and is lowered at the same angle

Funny that some people think of the G55 and noone mentionned the a/c it was copied from : the Arsenal VG33 Original : Copy : Vincent