unknown

[paddywhack]

true but it IS rocket powered and DOES fly!!! even if there is crazy jap flying it!! having said that youd have to be MAAAAAAD to fly the 163 under power ! so much so that after the war no allied pilot would fly it fueled up they just glided it! very intresting still!!

[hein]

thanks for info

[Cantankerous]

Also if you are after some great books on the Me 163 i highly recommend these two below

http://www.ianallanpublishing.com/catal ... s_id=23590
http://www.ianallanpublishing.com/catal ... s_id=23591

For reference material you can't go wrong with them i use them all the time.

A revised and updated combined edition of the two Classic Publications volumes on the Messerschmitt Me 163 was published in 2021 and can be bought at this link:
https://www.crecy.co.uk/me-163-rocket-interceptor

Prior to the start of development of the Me 163, Alexander Lippisch worked on a variety of designs of pure-turbojet, pure-rocket, and mixed jet- and rocket-propulsion aircraft, including the P 01-114 rocket-powered research aircraft (unofficially called Me 263 and known by the alternate in-house designation P 03). The chapter about the Me 163 trainer is quite interesting because the two-seat Me 163 trainer variant was the only rocket-powered trainer aircraft ever flown, and a few examples of it fell into Soviet hands and used for evaluation testing given that the USSR had built its own rocket-powered fighter, the BI, months before the Battle of Stalingrad. The Me 263 (aka Ju 248) combined the airframe of the unbuilt Me 163C with the retractable landing wheels of the Me 163D (the latter which was a stretched Me 163B), and although the Americans captured the Junkers plant in Dessau at which the Me 263 was built in April 1945, the Soviets ended up getting their hand on many Me 263 technical documents, entrusting the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau to use some aspects of the Me 263 design, including the fuselage and bubble canopy, in design of the I-270 prototype rocket-powered fighter.