page_title: Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet
section_title: Later versions
hierarchical_section_title: Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet / Development / Later versions
caption_attribution_description: English: Model of the Me163C. More pics of the same in http://www.klueser.eu/Me163.php
context_page_description: The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet was a German rocket-powered interceptor aircraft. Designed by Alexander Lippisch, it is the only rocket-powered fighter aircraft ever to have been operational and the first piloted aircraft of any type to exceed 1000 km/h in level flight. Its performance and aspects of its design were unprecedented. German test pilot Heini Dittmar in early July 1944 reached 1,130 km/h, an unofficial flight airspeed record unmatched by turbojet-powered aircraft for almost a decade. Over 300 Komets were built, but the aircraft proved lackluster in its dedicated role as an interceptor and destroyed between 9 and 18 Allied aircraft against 10 losses. Aside from combat losses many pilots were killed during testing and training.
context_section_description: The biggest concern about the design was the short flight time, which never met the projections made by Walter. With only seven and a half minutes of powered flight, the fighter truly was a dedicated point defense interceptor. To improve this, the Walter firm began developing two more advanced versions of the 509A rocket engine, the 509B and C, each with two separate combustion chambers of differing sizes, one above the other, for greater efficiency. The B-version possessed a main combustion chamber—usually termed in German as a Hauptofen on these dual-chamber subtypes—with an exterior shape much like that on the single chamber 509A version, with the C-version having a forward chamber shape of a more cylindrical nature, designed for a higher top thrust level of some 2,000 kg (4,410 lb) of thrust, while simultaneously dropping the use of the cubic-shape frame for the forward engine propellant flow/turbopump mechanisms as used by the earlier -A and -B versions. The 509B and 509C rocket motors' main combustion chambers were supported by the thrust tube exactly as the 509A motor's single chamber had been. They were tuned for high power for takeoff and climb. The added, smaller volume lower chamber on the two later models, nicknamed the Marschofen with approximately 400 kg (880 lb) of thrust at its top performance level, was intended for more efficient, lower power cruise flight. These HWK 109–509B and C motors would improve endurance by as much as 50%. Two 163 Bs, models V6 and V18, were experimentally fitted with the lower-thrust B-version of the new twin-chamber engine (mandating twin combustion chamber pressure gauges on the instrument panel of any Komet equipped with them), a retractable tailwheel, and tested in spring 1944.
  The main combustion chamber of the 509B engine used for the B V6 and V18 occupied the same location as the A-series' engine did, with the lower Marschofen cruise chamber housed within the retractable tailwheel's appropriately widened ventral tail fairing. On 6 July 1944, the Me 163B V18 (VA+SP), like the B V6 basically a standard production Me 163B airframe outfitted with the new, twin-chamber "cruiser" rocket motor with the aforementioned airframe modifications beneath the original rocket motor orifice to accept the extra combustion chamber, set a new unofficial world speed record of 1,130 km/h (702 mph), piloted by Heini Dittmar, and landed with almost all of the vertical rudder surface broken away from flutter. This record was not broken in terms of absolute speed until 6 November 1947 by Chuck Yeager in flight number 58 that was part of the Bell X-1 test program, with a 1,434 km/h (891 mph), or Mach 1.35 supersonic speed, recorded at an altitude of nearly 14,820 m (48,620 ft). However, it is unclear if Dittmar's flight achieved sufficient altitude for its speed to be considered supersonic, as the X-1 did.
  The X-1 never exceeded Dittmar's speed from a normal runway "scharfer Start" liftoff. Heini Dittmar had reached the 1,130 km/h (702 mph) performance, after a normal "hot start" ground takeoff, without an air drop from a mother ship. Neville Duke exceeded Heini Dittmar's record mark roughly 5-1/2 years after Yeager's achievement (and some 263 km/h short of it) on 31 August 1953 with the Hawker Hunter F Mk3 at a speed of 1,171 km/h (728 mph), after a normal ground start. Postwar experimental aircraft of the aerodynamic configuration that the Me 163 used, were found to have serious stability problems when entering transonic flight, like the similarly configured, and turbojet powered, Northrop X-4 Bantam and de Havilland DH 108, which made the V18's record with the Walter 509B "cruiser" rocket motor more remarkable.
  Waldemar Voigt of Messerschmitt's Oberammergau project and development offices started a redesign of the 163 to incorporate the new twin-chamber Walter rocket engine, as well as fix other problems. The resulting Me 163C design featured a larger wing through the addition of an insert at the wing root, an extended fuselage with extra tank capacity through the addition of a plug insert behi
caption: Model of the Me 163C
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