What was the Achilles' heel of the greatly feared "swallow"?

Datsmeharse

What do you mean, the African swallow or the European Swallow? (Sorry couldn't resist :-) I think you mean the European Swallow, specifically the one made by Messerschmidt in Germany during WWII, the ME 262 Schwalbe (Eng. "Swallow") which was the world's first working turbojet fighter, and thus greatly feared. The achilles heel was its engine, the Junkers Jumo 004, which due to proper alloy shortages among other issues caused it to fail constantly, sometimes during intitial burn. Each engine had an average life span of only 12 hours. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262 Engine Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_004 Apr 25 09, 11:05 PM

star_gazer

Correct "Swallow"! However the achillies heel I was looking for on this beautiful aircraft was this: The Germans quickly realised, and the Allied quickly leared that the Me 262 was most vulnerable during take-off or landing, while it was very hard to catch when it was in the air already. http://www.xs4all.nl/~fbonne/warbirds/ww2htmls/messme262.html Here is a cool video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYXd60D_kgQ Apr 26 09, 6:20 AM