The Birds are out and about.

[Bob Womack]

How fast does that fly with those engines Bob? Having engines of that quality and dependability would have been a game changer.

The museum says that the two General Electric J-85/CJ-610 turbojet engines each furnish 2500 pounds of thrush. According to them, it cruises at 445mph and tops out at 540mph. And yes, the Germans didn't have their metallurgy down. Gunning it once in flight didn't cause problems for you, but the next pilot in the seat could very well end up with the engines spitting compressor blades and the plane turning into a fireball. The service life of the Jumo 004A engines was said to be thirty-five hours before a rebuild but the pilots discovered that any operation over ten hours could very well end up in disaster. The service squadrons, therefore, rebuilt the engines at around ten hours and rebuilt engines had even lower life expectancy. The compressor disk was absolutely trashed by thirty-five hours and had to be replaced.

A good read on the subject is A Higher Call, by Adam Makos and Larry Alexander. The main subject, Oberleutnant Franz Stigler, ended up an instructor pilot on the ME-262. He had the inside skinny the engine's performance and spilled it in the book. He bought his way into Adolph Galland's Experten squadron by wheedling an ME-262 from a plant manager and flying it to join the squadron.

Bob