page_title: Fighter aircraft
section_title: First-generation subsonic jet fighters (mid-1940s to mid-1950s)
hierarchical_section_title: Fighter aircraft / Jet-powered fighters / First-generation subsonic jet fighters (mid-1940s to mid-1950s)
caption_attribution_description: English: DAYTON, Ohio -- Messerschmitt Me 262A at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. (U.S. Air Force photo)
context_page_description: A fighter aircraft, often referred to simply as a fighter, is a military fixed-wing aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat against other aircraft. The key performance features of a fighter include not only its firepower but also its high speed and maneuverability relative to the target aircraft.
  The fighter's main tactical purpose is to establish air superiority over the battlefield. The success or failure of a combatant's efforts to gain air superiority hinges on several factors including the skill of its pilots, the tactical soundness of its doctrine for deploying its fighters, and the numbers and performance of those fighters.
  Many fighters have secondary capabilities such as ground attack and some types, such as fighter-bombers, are designed from the outset for dual roles. Other fighter designs are highly specialized while still filling the main air superiority role, these include the interceptor, heavy fighter, and night fighter.
context_section_description: The first generation of jet fighters comprised the initial, subsonic jet-fighter designs introduced late in World War II (1939–1945) and in the early post-war period. They differed little from their piston-engined counterparts in appearance, and many employed unswept wings. Guns and cannon remained the principal armament. The need to obtain a decisive advantage in maximum speed pushed the development of turbojet-powered aircraft forward. Top speeds for fighters rose steadily throughout World War II as more powerful piston engines developed, and they approached transonic flight-speeds where the efficiency of propellers drops off, making further speed increases nearly impossible.
  The first jets developed during World War II and saw combat in the last two years of the war. Messerschmitt developed the first operational jet fighter, the Me 262A, primarily serving with the Luftwaffe's JG 7, the world's first jet-fighter wing. It was considerably faster than contemporary piston-driven aircraft, and in the hands of a competent pilot, proved quite difficult for Allied pilots to defeat. The Luftwaffe never deployed the design in numbers sufficient to stop the Allied air campaign, and a combination of fuel shortages, pilot losses, and technical difficulties with the engines kept the number of sorties low. Nevertheless, the Me 262 indicated the obsolescence of piston-driven aircraft. Spurred by reports of the German jets, Britain's Gloster Meteor entered production soon after, and the two entered service around the same time in 1944. Meteors commonly served to intercept the V-1 flying bomb, as they were faster than available piston-engined fighters at the low altitudes used by the flying bombs. Nearer the end of World War II, the first military jet-powered light-fighter design, the Luftwaffe intended the Heinkel He 162A Spatz (sparrow) to serve as a simple jet fighter for German home defense, with a few examples seeing squadron service with JG 1 by April 1945. By the end of the war almost all work on piston-powered fighters had ended. A few designs combining piston- and jet-engines for propulsion – such as the Ryan FR Fireball – saw brief use, but by the end of the 1940s virtually all new fighters were jet-powered.
  Despite their advantages, the early jet-fighters were far from perfect. The operational lifespan of turbines were very short and engines were temperamental, while power could be adjusted only slowly and acceleration was poor (even if top speed was higher) compared to the final generation of piston fighters. Many squadrons of piston-engined fighters remained in service until the early to mid-1950s, even in the air forces of the major powers (though the types retained were the best of the World War II designs). Innovations including ejection seats, air brakes and all-moving tailplanes became widespread in this period.
  The Americans began using jet fighters operationally after World War II, the wartime Bell P-59 having proven a failure. The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star (soon re-designated F-80) was less elegant than the swept-wing Me 262, but had a cruise speed (660 km/h (410 mph)) as high as the maximum speed attainable by many piston-engined fighters. The British designed several new jets, including the distinctive single-engined twin boom de Havilland Vampire which Britain sold to the air forces of many nations.
  The British transferred the technology of the Rolls-Royce Nene jet-engine to the Soviets, who soon put it to use in their advanced Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter, which used fully swept wings that allowed flying closer to the speed of sound than straight-winged designs such as the F-80. The MiG-15s' top speed of 1,075 km/h (668 mph) proved quite a shock to the American F-80 pilots who encountered them in the Korean War, along with their armament of two 23 mm cannons and a single 37 mm cannon. Nevertheless, in the first jet-versus-jet dogfight, which occurred during the Korean War on 8 November 1950, an F-80 shot down two North Korean MiG-15s
  The Americans responded by rushing their own swept-wing fighter – the Nor
caption: Messerschmitt Me 262A at the National Museum of the United States Air Force
exif: {"Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "44", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4369"}