Schwalbes vs Meteors

[Graham Boak]

Air brakes are rarely used in combat: maintaining energy is generally the way to win not throwing it away. The air brake may be useful to force an overshoot if the enemy is already on your tail and shooting at you - but that might well be too late anyway.

Gyro gunsight was an Allied advantage, but was it fitted to the Meteors? I don't think there were enough for every fighter in late 1944, though it may have been the case in spring 1945.

For the pilot superiority: that has to be taken as an average. Most aerial successes are gained by the formation leaders and these would be equivalent on each side.

The Meteor does seem to be generally under-rated, but it took the Mk.IV to make it a world leader. However, given that P-51s killed more Me 262s than vice versa, clearly it wasn't a simple matter of speed.