Komet 163 • Chief test pilot Rudy Opitz tells it like it was • Walking on the Edge—the challenges of data acquisition • Popular Wisdom vs. a Test Pilot’s Experiences (interview with Rudy Opitz) • A Fighter Ahead of Its Time (includes aircraft specs)

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“There were two different kinds of students: accomplished fighter pilots from the Luftwaffe, which were ideal, and new student pilots. But nearly all started out flying it as a glider in tow. Flying without fuel lowered the wing loading and the speed and made handling still easier. Trainees would first sit in a two-place glider and learn to hold a certain speed and other facets of glider handling. Germany had a single-seat glider at this time designed for aerobatics, and it was also used because it handled very much like a fighter. It had a gull wing, and the outer wing panels were cut off to increase the wing loading and speed. And then they stepped into the 163.

“The 163A had a lower wing loading than the 163B and very docile landing characteristics. Neither would stall; instead, they just mushed forward. Nor would they spin. You had to point these things out to students to make them relax. You could fly the Komet with the stick full back and have it in a turn and then use the rudder to take it out of the turn and not fear it snapping into a spin. It would also slip beautifully. But there was one thing about approaches we had to warn students of. If you made your turn from base onto final and were close in and made the turn very steep, the sink rate would increase, and you could quickly lose altitude. That could be a problem because you could suddenly come in short.

“The main difference from a propeller-driven aircraft is that there was no slipstream over the rudder. On takeoff, you had to attain the speed at which your aerodynamic controls become effective—about 80mph—and that was always a critical thing. You didn’t want the student to get excited and have the control stick somewhere in the corner when the control surfaces began working.

“We took off on a brakeless dolly that was dropped while we were in the air. So you had a narrow dolly and an aircraft heavily loaded with fuel. If, while taking off from a grass field, you hit ruts or bumps, the aircraft would start to veer off to one side, and if you didn’t yet have aerodynamic controls, that could be a serious problem. In the earliest days, before we trained pilots, we would very carefully point the 163A prototype into the wind and ensure there were not ruts or bumps on the takeoff strip. A tailskid also helped stabilize direction during takeoff. These problems were soon solved.

(1) Six dials in the central panel in front of stick: clockwise, starting from upper left: rate-of-climb indicator, turn-and-bank indicator, airspeed indicator, engine-pressure gauge, turbine tachometer, altimeter. (2) T-Stoff consumption gauge (3) Engine gauges. (4) Five-position throttle: off, ground idle, flight idle, cruise, max power. (5) Undercarriage extension/retraction. (6) Master engine arming switch. (7) Oil-pressure gauge. (8) Undercarriage indicator lights. (9) Revi 16B Gunsight. (10) 90mm thick armor glass. (11) Flap lever.

“The 163A’s fuel created a low-temperature chemical reaction that didn’t burn and didn’t have a flame. The exhaust temperature was about 600 degrees C, and it left a long dense trail behind it. We put a little rudder-like tab in the exhaust nozzle and coupled it on a ratio to the rudder to provide rudder control on takeoff. We also upgraded the dolly on the 163A to include shock aborption, to minimize the effects of field irregularities.

“The ‘hot’ engines in the 163B did not permit the use of such tabs; they had a 10-foot-long flame and an exhaust temperature of 1800 degrees C, but by then, we had a steerable tailwheel coupled to the rudder. On the 163B, the landing skid and tailwheel were extended until the dolly dropped off, then retracted. The skid provided shock absorpion to the dolly while the craft took off. It was no different than flying a modern jet, really. When we trained people for the Lutwaffe in the 163B, we typically took off on hardtop runways. Landings always took place on grassy fields or shoulders alongside the hardtop, as to land on hardtop would damage the skid.

“The engines were completely throttleable. Acceleration at first seemed surprisingly slow. The aircraft was poised on small wheel blocks, and when you went from ground idle to full power, the dolly wheels would roll over the blocks, and it took a while to build up flight speed. Once airborne, you accelerated to speed for best climb.

“We’d take off and try to keep the plane low, say 15 feet up, and then start to trim it for speed and then very gradually climb as we accelerated to the best climbing speed, which was about 420 miles per hour. The airplane was very short-coupled, so you didn’t want to over-control it in pitch as you took off. When we reached the best climbing speed, we’d pull back and climb at approximately 70 degrees.

“You had unrestricted throttle control from ground idle to flight idle to cruise power to full power. Prior to climbing you had to be careful not to exceed the critical Mach number, which would make the aircraft unstable and tend to tuck under. We first had a red lamp in the cockpit to warn us when we approched critical Mach. The problem was you were looking outside and didn’t see the lamp. So we installed a horn. Finally, we had to have the horn positioned right behind the pilot’s head or it might not be heard. Yet the cockpit was not considered noisy.”

Flying the 163 in combat required skill, finesse and lightning fast decisions.

“Some of our experienced fighter pilots, after three powered training flights, felt they knew the aircraft well and would rather use our scarce fuel on missions than on further training. They were very quickly married to the 163 because of its gentle handling characteristics. But they were thinking in conventional fighter pilot terms: you sight a target in your gunsight and take the time to hold the target. But at a climb rate of 15,000 feet per minute (a Mustang climbed at one tenth that rate), you might find yourself past the target and it’s already way down below. Although we were supposed to have seven minutes of fuel, we had five. There was therefore a premium on a fast close to conserve fuel, and then you had a only a few seconds to use your Mk 108 [30mm] cannon. For many, by the time they were ready to fire at the target, they had run out of fuel. It was something you had to learn yourself.”

As pilots gained experience with the Komet, combat strategies evolved.

Feldwebel Siegfried Schubert, the most successful of all Komet pilots in combat—downed two B-17s in one 5-minute flight.

“The 163 was originally envisioned as an interceptor for high flying reconnaisance aircraft—at 30,000 feet say. But it was instead used to attack large formations of bombers. Maybe two or three would take off in a cluster or singly and have five minutes to attack the bombers. Now you can imagine a fighter pilot with little experience would want to fly a standard approach from the back, maybe out of a 15-degree turn and attack a B-17 bristling with that massive defense power. That became a pretty risky thing. And approaching bombers one aircraft at a time, using that standard school-training approach, would mean your chances to fly very many missions was low.

“The highly experienced fighter pilots could fly and attack in a 45-degree climb. They were quite safe because the turrets couldn’t easily follow them. These were the pilots who survived.

“When the 163 was designed, Germany had air superiority at the lower altitudes. That was not the case anymore in ’44. There were P-51s and P-38s, and their pilots learned very fast that as the 163s came up, you left them alone, but on the way down the 163s had a short flying time, and they could be targeted. But the 163, now empty of fuel, had a low wing loading and could dive much closer to the ground before pulling out than could the Allied fighters.

“I saw P-51s at one airbase flying just outside the defense perimeter created by our antiaircraft guns. If you had a 163 pilot with low flying time, he would set up a normal landing pattern and one of the allied fighters would just come out and make a sweep. If he didn’t get the Komet, another would make a sweep, and they’d just down him.

“Whereas the experienced 163 pilot would come down at 500 miles per hour, down to the deck and come over the airport and fly inside the defense perimeter and stay there circling until it bled off its speed and landed. The Allied fighters had a long way to fly home, and were not going to risk flying within that perimeter. But there were very few people who could fly the 163 to its best performance because the most experienced pilots were needed elsewhere.”

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