The Me 163 Komet remains the only rocket fighter ever flown operationally
In 1941 a tailless German rocket plane descended from glider designs became the first piloted aircraft to top 1,000 km/h in level flight. Yet the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet could burn its motor for at most 7.5 minutes, and that brief fuel supply crippled a fighter that no other nation ever put into service.
Designer Alexander Lippisch had rockets in mind long before the war. On 11 June 1928, his canard glider nicknamed Ente, German for duck, flew on black powder rockets at the Wasserkuppe, one of the first piloted rocket flights; a later attempt ended with the plane destroyed by fire and its pilot barely escaping. Work on the Komet itself began in 1937 at the German sailplane research institute. Frustrated that his partners could not even build a prototype fuselage, Lippisch moved his team to Messerschmitt at Augsburg on 2 January 1939, where plans for a propeller version were dropped in favour of going straight to rocket power.
Much of the design came from gliders. The Komet landed on a retractable skid and took off on a wheeled dolly it dropped just after leaving the ground; on early prototypes the springy dolly bounced back up and struck the aircraft. Its swept wings were not chosen for speed but to balance the centre of gravity against the centre of lift on a tailless airframe. Secrecy extended to the name: the number 163 was borrowed from an earlier, unrelated Messerschmitt design to confuse foreign intelligence.
Test pilot Heini Dittmar set a speed record of 1,004.5 km/h on 2 October 1941, not officially beaten until the American Douglas D-558-1 flew on 20 August 1947. In July 1944 he reached an unofficial 1,130 km/h, unmatched by jets until 1953.
Roughly 370 were completed. In combat the Komet was credited with between 9 and 18 Allied aircraft against 10 losses, and its volatile, corrosive propellant killed a number of pilots in accidents. Germany also sent Japan plans and one example, which led to the Mitsubishi J8M.
Source: Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet
