Quote:
Originally Posted by Immelmann
I'd not heard of that armament consideration, but it sounds really interesting! Thanks for posting, I'll definitely have to check that book out
I wonder how they accounted for positions in relation to the sun though (or flying upside-down :P)
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Actually one of the very first tests went wrong, the pilot flew under a cloud, someone forgot to install the delay and every cannon fired at once. Canopy disenergrated and pilot was almost killed.
Reading the book will make the way the USA tested rocket planes look like kind of wimpy...Nobody shooting at you, a long runway, no cannons onboard, and copying what others had done.
Don't get me wrong, it still took guts and plenty of nerve.
A couple of other books about flying Rocket Planes:
In the book
The Fastest Man Alive by Bri. Gen Frank Everest, he claims many firsts, but some of them were done by the pilots who flew the ME163. Now if he had clarified and said, "first in the USA", it would've been true.
One of my favorites is
The Lonely Sky by William Bridgeman. Douglass D558-II Skyrocket (jet and rocket at first from the ground, eventually air launch like the X-1).
Mike