Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Canadian Komet

While in Canada my family went to the Canadian airplane museum. They have a couple of planes that are the only ones of their kind still in existence. This particular plane was not one of these planes, however this one just happens to be a cool plane. It's the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet. It's a rocket-powered plane, and it is a piece of junk, only 5% of Komets destroyed during the war where shot down by allied forces. Something like 65% crashed on takeoff and landing, 20% simply blew up, and 10% fell apart in midair (I am not certain about any of the numbers after the 5%). Just click here for pictures.

3 comments:

  1. Yes, the the idea of building a plane to fly at almost supersonic speed, when the only armanents you've got are two very show range autocannon is kinda laughable. But it certainly looked cool

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  2. interesting comment.....of course, the question must be asked:

    If the armaments are laughable i.e. 2 x short range autocannon, what would constitute NON-laughable armaments???

    I don't think they had phasers or photon torpedoes back then :=)

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  3. Well missles would be a nice touch. But as the Germans didn't have them, and they knew their pilots were having problems hitting the Allied bomber in the split second they passed underneath, spending resources eleswhere might have been the best option

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