Quite correct.
And the 262 had a short range. So they could not have flew far to meet the huge onslot of fighters and bombers. And even then, THE ATOMIC BOMB WOULD HAVE BEEN USED.
Just takes one B-29 to get past those jets. Just one, day or night. Even a British Lancaster could have dropped it.
I think even Adolf Gallad said the jets would have just delayed the inevitable.
Deaf
Just by their overwhelming numbers. Furthermore with jets being busy dog-fighting allied fighters the major part of bombers would have approached their goals.
Allied planes would carry on firing back and in reality more than just one Me-262 was shot down by one of the numerous B-17 gunners. The Me-262 was not invulnerable, you know.
Also don’t forget that the British kept bombing mostly at night time. The need to convert Me-262’s to night fighters would also split the assumed armada.
Am I wrong to think that 1200 such planes would be able to defend themselves against bombing and fighter plane attacks? Are you suggesting the Allies had sufficient number of planes to counter the 1200 jets?
All Allies combined, sure as hell. Besides, it’s purely fictional to suggest that this high number of German jet fighters could more or less be in the air at the same time at the same place.
As far as “what if” scenarios, they’re largely useless to debate. But since we are, we can go on and on (which is why they’re sort of amorphous and pointless). But the idea that the German super weapons would have made much of an impact completely ignores that the Allies, especially the US, were only months from fully deploying numbers of their own jets such as the P-80 Shooting Star and Gloster Meteor; both planes were believed to be superior to the Me262 without its Achilles Heal of very slow take off and landing speeds. Not that 1800 Me262s wouldn’t quickly have been smothered even by piston engined P-51s and Spitfires ‘cherry-picking the goal’ over what remained of Luftwaffe aerodromes. And not to mention Flammenwerfer’s point regarding the complete lack of even minimally trained and proficient German pilots by the end of 1944…
ok i have to agree with some views here - expecially with that of Nickdfresh stating that the allies were going on their own projects , so it was inevitable sooner or later the allies were about to make their own jet planes . Also from my point of view the war is not only a air battles , it’s a compact battle involving the land too , and there the germans in 1944 were already defeated on all fronts , so even if you have 1200 planes , how long you can protect the land and the airfields ? I doubt for much long with a Wehrmacht beaten on all sides and all major offensives falled .
The European allies in 1944 had 6-7 times as many bombers available for operations as they did in 1942. Further by 1942 the British were only starting to rectify their appaulling bombing accuracy, so I doubt they would be able to do much of anything. Also the allied airsuperiority over Germany only occured due to the massive bombing campaign focusing on the Luftwaffe starting in mid 1943and then the aircraft industry and finally the aviaition fuel industry in spring of 1944. None of that would be possible in 1942 with appaulling bombing accuracy and just a 600-800 bomber force available on any given day.
Just because you are flying a jet aircraft it does not mean you have an advantage over piston engined aircraft.
Sea Furys in Korea succesfullly shot down Mig15 (The Sea Furys were mainly employed in a ground attack role)
i have read reports but can not back them up right now where Mig15 pilots were reluctant to chase aircraft over the water for fear of the Sea Furys on the British and Australian Carriers.
Early jets were not as manouverable as piston engined aircraft and in the days of Gun v Gun not missiles, beng able to get into a good shooting position was very important. The throttle response on early jets was not as quick as piston aircraft either. When a jet gets moving it moves quick but in response to needing a power boost instantly they were not as good.
The engines for the ME 262 used some materials that were hard for germany to get (I believe they made do with easier to obtain materials and had to rebuild the engines every 10 hours 'ok checking on some sites average was 12 hours with a really good pilot managing 20 to 25 hours and a design life of 50 hours)
The figure I saw of 1400+ airframes I believe was just that Airframes not completed aircraft, this also covered Fighter, Fighter Bomber, training, Bomber and Nightfighter variants)
A small bit on info from http://www.warbirdalley.com/me262.htm
n its brightest moments, when it was used as intended, the Me 262 was the equivalent of sending the “Three Musketeers” against Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn. In one battle, for instance, 37 of the 262s were scrambled against an Allied raid that consisted of 1,221 bombers and 632 fighter escorts! In their most effective performance, they cost the Allies a one percent loss. does not say how many ME262 were lost though.
Nearest I could find was 150 allied aircraft to 100 ME262 total during the war.
There is already a long topic about the Messer 262:
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4648&highlight=messerschmitt
Threads merged…
Lessons from late war in a collapsing war economy and situation are not really transferable to a more stable mid war period. It was a different situation. For one thing the dilution of the LW pilot flying hours and therefore skills relative to the allies, had not yet begun. Nor had the allies gutted the German fuel industry leading to no fuel to fly. By the end of the war their are reports of squadrons with up to 9 flyable Me-262 , but only fuel to fly two per day.
Me-262 was designed as a interceptor not as a fighter so it would be used to halt USAAF dail light bombing forcing them to the much less effective night bombing.
The Strategic metals situation is a bit of a either or situation, since the bulk of these metals went to competing programmes, mostly the UBoats. This was at a time when the UBoat programme had been derailed by allied ASW efforts and Ultra success aided by Admiral Donitz insistance on combating air patrols with enhanced Flak. That ran counter to the Uboat philosophy and produced disasterous results in 1943, which resulted in the Uboats being withdrawn from the Atlantic and the morale being lost from the UBoat fleet. Hitlers insistance in scrapping the surface fleet didn’t help matters either, infact it only contributed to the collapse of the Uboat morale.
If you want we can try it i will train just one month on Mig-21 and you will train on P-41 we will see who will win . If the jets don’t give you advantage why then the most countries use them today ? Why US give bilions to upgraide it’s jet’s ?
I said EARLY JETS those with no afterburners, at the time they entered service they were not totally superior to Piston engined fighters. They had good points (high top speed) and bad points (slow throttle reaction) to name one of each, but when you start getting into a shooting match even with modern jet aircraft (without the aid of missiles) speed rapidly bleeds off and its the manouverability that counts. Speed counts in a long distance match more than when close up.
I dont know what a P41 is as I have seen everything from a percival proctor to a P51 Mustang called that.
So I will assume you are comparing a 1940 design improved through the war with a mid to late 1950’s 2nd possibly 3rd generation jet fighter.
Modern jets are whole classes away in capability to what was available during WW2 to any side.
Any 262 .vs. any Allied fighter would hing on a number of things.
Now presuming both sides see each other at the same time, and thus no ‘bounce’:
Now the 262 is in a somewhat same position as a P-38 .vs. a A6M. But…
As the speeds progress then the reaction time the pilots have is less. It’s real hard to make deflection shots at 500 IAS, harder than at 300 IAS (as a P-38 might go when doing a few turns with a A6M before getting a deflection shot.)
Yes the 262 has some great advantages in speed but it’s operational ceiling was about the same as any other fighter and it’s range and turning ability quite poor.
If I was a 262 pilot the BZ would be the only real tactic as your speed and climb rate would be higher. That and have a very well hidden airfield handy.
If a Allied fighter, I’d use my range to keep the 262 bases under observation (as they did) and if attacked I’d use an evasive manuver (barrel rolls, split S, Immelmann, Chandelle, skids, negitive G manuvers, etc… just anything to throw off their aim so the have to pass you by, knowing that if the 262 slows down then it’s dead.)
The advantage still lies with a smart 262 pilot, but it’s not a guaranteed kill.
Deaf
The YP-80 was not a very reliable jet until after the war , when most of the problems were ironed out, some with captured data from German jets. Meteor was only able to do 415 mph initially [1944] so it would take another year [mid to late 1945], before they could field enough of the improved version with speeds comparable to Me-262. Allied pilots who flew both German and American jets after the war, concluded they were about equal.
By 1944 the allies had 3000-5000 flyable bombers at any given time allowing them to mount 1000 plane raids at will. But the original poster asked about Me-262 jets in 1942 and back then the USAAF didn’t even have any bombers in Europe until the winter of 1942/43.
The British had 600-800 bombers flyable at this time but these where night bombers only and they had bad problems with accuracy that they were only starting to correct at that time. So what the Germans would need would be night fighters to counter the RAF bombers and that requires long endurance and radar to work. A slimmed down Ju-88 makes more sence as a night fighter interceptor for 1942/44 time period to counter the RAF bomber missions.
In 1943 with the arrival of the USAAF the daily flyable bombers increased to 1200-1800 with 2/3 being night time RAF bombers, so more Ju-88 night fighters are needed plus better radar. But the growing power of USAAF daylight bombers could be shut down by 200-300 daily Me-262 inteceptor sortie.These interceptors would be tasked with ignoring the enemy fighter cover and using their speed to close with the enemy bomber stream and break it up, allowing follow on FW/Me fighters to pick off the stragglers.
So having the Me-262 ready in 1942, could have forced all the allies into much less effective night time bombing sortie by 1943. Which in turn means the shutting down of the German war economy, is going to take a lot longer. Does that mean DDay is put off? Are the allies going to risk letting the Russians over run central Europe and get all the Nazi industry and technology.
No. It would mean the Atom Bomb would have been used on Germany. Simple as that.
Deaf
And what if that doesn’t work? Germany had hundreds of thousands of nerve gas shells and bombs they could rain down on their enemy, that the enemy had no protection against. I gather that both V 1 and V 2 had warheads designed to carry these agents including the newly developed highly toxic sarin nerve gas.
Nothings ever simple in real wars.
The treaties we signed, including Germany, forbid gas but not A bombs.
And we had the same gas to. Only we could produce more A bombs and far more gas than Germany. And our bombers could carry an awful lot more than all the V1s and V2s put together.
Consider what a 1000 bomber raid with mustard gas would do. Mustard does not dissipate. It sticks to the ground. Immediately make the whole city uninhabitable for many days, with the inhabitants undergound unable to get out.
Germany isn’t that big and one city after another (with Berlin first) vaporizing would do the trick. We could vaporize one city one night while gassing another the same night. Would not take all that long till there were no more cities.
That’s total war.
Now aren’t we all glad Germany didn’t hang on?
Deaf
No jets were “reliable” in their development period. It was serious engine problems that plagued the Me262 and delayed its deployment as much as anything else did. The Allies learned little from German jet technology as they were already eclipsing it. There certainly was interest and study, but little that yielded improvements to the P-80. The problem there was the fuel delivery system which was being ironed out towards the end. And most actually conclude that the P-80 would have had a significant advantage in dogfighting…
By 1944 the allies had 3000-5000 flyable bombers at any given time allowing them to mount 1000 plane raids at will. But the original poster asked about Me-262 jets in 1942 and back then the USAAF didn’t even have any bombers in Europe until the winter of 1942/43.
The British had 600-800 bombers flyable at this time but these where night bombers only and they had bad problems with accuracy that they were only starting to correct at that time. So what the Germans would need would be night fighters to counter the RAF bombers and that requires long endurance and radar to work. A slimmed down Ju-88 makes more sence as a night fighter interceptor for 1942/44 time period to counter the RAF bomber missions.
In 1943 with the arrival of the USAAF the daily flyable bombers increased to 1200-1800 with 2/3 being night time RAF bombers, so more Ju-88 night fighters are needed plus better radar. But the growing power of USAAF daylight bombers could be shut down by 200-300 daily Me-262 inteceptor sortie.These interceptors would be tasked with ignoring the enemy fighter cover and using their speed to close with the enemy bomber stream and break it up, allowing follow on FW/Me fighters to pick off the stragglers.
So having the Me-262 ready in 1942, could have forced all the allies into much less effective night time bombing sortie by 1943. Which in turn means the shutting down of the German war economy, is going to take a lot longer. Does that mean DDay is put off? Are the allies going to risk letting the Russians over run central Europe and get all the Nazi industry and technology.
Um, firstly, there was no German “war economy” in 1942. They didn’t go to a full war economy until at least the end of 1943 when Speer brilliantly re-orchestrated the German defense industry away from the cities actually INCREASING production in 1944. Significantly so. We can argue that several ways. But daylight “precision bombing” wasn’t much more effective than night time area bombing as perimeter bombing was found to be more effective at killing the workers and burning their housing than actually attacking factories. And the US efforts at trying to bomb an Achilles’ Heal production facility such as a ball bearings plant were also both done in vain and out of naivete…
And jets in 1942? What about just having more piston engined fighters? a better pilot training program? and a four engined bomber to attack Soviet factories relocated to Siberia? To produce such jets, which could not have been ready much faster than they were anyway in the fractured, anarchic German research and aviation industry --using complex and temperamental early jets engines with a short lifespan-- they would have had to sacrifice something else as there is always a trade-off. Would it be less piston engined aircraft? Less tanks? All are also “what-ifs” and far more plausible than the German aeronautical industry that had already been pushed to its limits to the extent that its first air general in charge of R&D realized the futility very early and killed himself because he realized that nothing he could do would ever be enough. As far as “what-ifs,” we can ask a few others ones, such as: What if the British gov’t had more adequately funded and appreciated the early efforts of Whittle in 1929?
The Germans were actualy pioneeres in Axial Jet engineereng, nick.
The Brits got their more or less realible Centrifugal Jet (Nune )first, but the Centrifugal engines were a deadline of aviation.It was more realible but less effective.
That’s why the Me-262 already in 1944 fly more then 100 Km/h FASTER then Meteor.
The 95% of contemporary Jet engines - are the Axial.
And the “serious engine problem” of GErmans was due to simple fact- they havent’ enough Nickel for turbo blades.It’ has happend accurate in mid 1944 when Red Army forced Finland went out of Axis coalition( the Petsamo Nickel was ONLY the source for Reich) The average resource of Jumo 007 was just about …10 hours.
When Soviets hav built its first Jet engine RD-10 using the Nickel ( it was full copy of Jumo) - the resource reach …150 hours
You don’t need the FW/ME at all if you have the superior jet fighter.
As it was in Korea , the ONLY 20-30 jet fighter might to spoil the bomber raid of entire armade 100-150 B-29 with escort.
Don’t need to hit each bomber- enough to imitate attack , after that all the bombers drop the bomb a miss .
the figter escort is proven to be ineffective against speedy superior Jet fighters.
Having four 30 mm guns , and Rockets RM-4,the Me-262 might be deadly effective against bombers.
I have read the link and it was very educational. I was just wondering if Messerschmitt Me still exist today?
There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane; either you have diarrhea, or you’re anxious to meet people who do.