Best fighter of WW2

General numbers from, say, 44 and 45. Just wondering about real effectiveness- what kind of actual combat performance the 262 achieved. Losses would be interesting, especially if they gave the cause. But victories would be required as well- get both sides. Unfortunatley, it sounds like victory records are missing...

Exactly what I'd imagine on the 262 engine. After all, these were some of the first jet engines used, so one has to expect some trial and error. And combine this with the resource and production problems the germans were encountering... Unreliable engines are not really suprising...

 

swwwwwwwooooooooossssssssshhhhhhh !

well trying to confirm all victories and losses maybe tough for all the Me 262 units involved since not all the units have had personal histories wirtten about them. Classic Publications out of the UK has weritten what maybe the best on the subject of the Me 262 in 4 volumes. but I can tell you there are still voids in the unit histories. Jg 7 has a personal book on the unit but there are gaps, which the author left out on purpose. KG(J)51 will have a book written by the vets out maybe in two years. I don't think there is anything much on the other bomber units flying the a/c as well as the fighter kommando's EJG 1 and 2. Over all on losses, this is from May of 44 to December's end of 44. This is Rough now.......10 Me 262's destroyed by Allied bombing. 3 crashed by engine failure. 7 shot down by Flak, sometimes it was from German AA. 22 shot down by Allied a/c....confirmed ?
Crashed, in training, take offs and landings as well as unknowns / 27 a/c.

confirmed kills by Me 262 units is 77. 3/4ths of them by Ekdo 262 and Kommando Nowotny till November 9, 1944 when Kmdo Nowotny became the basis for JG 7, III./JG 7 then claimed from November 21, 44 till December's end of 44 21 kills.

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Very very rough numbers in "The arrow to the future " claim that in the end the kills by Me 262´s was about the same as the destroyed Me 262`s. This is until May 1945. It doesn´t say but probably means the Me 262´s killed during flight.

There was a period in March 1945 when the me 262´s dropped some 50 bombers and Hitler was convinced again that Me 262 could wih the war for them.This was supposingly the time they started using the planes in masses, well, the time they started to have more Me 262´s as well.

I don´t have the book now but it probably was Galland who said " Give me 200 Me 262´s and I´ll drop 300 bombers any day." With the rockets they would have done that, I think.

 

Kai :

first action with the R4M rockets was on 18 march 1945 and it really shocked the US bomber crews. They had not seen rockets come their way since the early spring of 44 when the heavier single salvos of 210mm rockets were shoved in their direction. Quite different when 1 a/c could let off a storm of 2 salvos of 24 + rockets at a time, and then when you ad another 8/9 jets in the action, you can do the math......mass chaos even if the rockets missed ! Yes they came much to late.
From a couple of claims listing , there are at least 380 additional victories confirmed by Me 262 units from 1-1-45 to May 8, 1945 where Oberleutnant Stehle of 2./JG 7 downs 1 Yak 9.

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Thanx Erich! Great stuff!

Indeed, what I understood was that they could not tell what kill was who´s after they shot their rockets...It was just one huge chaos in the sky of falling parts of B-17´s etc. If the Germans were shocked,then, how about the US pilots...

 

If I was flying a bomber I sure wouldn't want to come across an Me.262. All those rockets!!! I probably wouldn't want to see one even if I had a P-51 covering me. The Me.262 was just to few to late. Imagine if the war had lasted longer...

 

Whoa! The 262 could carry 48 rockets?!?! Damn, I hadn't read that yet.
That is a ridiculous amount of firepower. A whole squadron firing their rockets at once...


That would make one heck of a mess out of any bomber formation.

[ 04 October 2002, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: CrazyD88 ]

 

I think the Me 262 was capable of taking 12+12 rockets but was planned to have twice the amount but the war was over before it was done.Maybe one or two planes had that much rockets in the late war years.
Can you confirm,Erich?

 

Sorry guys, I made the posting much too hasty, yes Kai it was 12 rockets per wooden rack under each wing and then experiments of up to 16 or 18 were done under each wing. They were fired off one wing at a time. My meaning of 2 salvos was for each wing which would be 24 then up to 36 which in itself would be pretty dramatic whether you were a Luftwaffe 262 pilot or on the receiving end in the bomber formations.
A dear friend of mine, a B-24 pilot of the 44th bomb group has tales of at least 3 attacks on 3 seperate occassions, once with the useage of rockets......the last time his whole crew feaked out and started firing wildly and anything that came out of the rear quarter. Don't think they hit anything, but it sure boosted morale. Norm told me the first time they ran up against one, they had come off target and were heading back from the Berlin area and one was seen high and up/rear and the thing dived down and through the formation, that not one gunner of his a/c or the other B-24's of his flight could track it..... " What the H*** was that ?" is all they could say......March 1945

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When did the 262 first start performing operations? If March 1945 was the first time the bomber squadron had seen a 262 then it really didn't have an impact on the war. Especially since not very many were made during the war. They couldn't have gotten to too many squadrons in that short amount of time. Could they?

 

The first battle flights were made on 10th September (by EKdo 262 ) 1944 as recorded, battle group I think.

The first fallen Me 262 was on 14th July 1944 as Pilot Moosbacher fell down on a practice mission over lake Ammer.

The first victory was supposed to be on 26th July a Mosquito ( that landed in Italy however )but the first bomber was on 15th August that EKdo 262 dropped a lonely B-17G by Helmut Lennartz.

There were several lonely planes´ attacks but in March they had masses of planes with rockets so this was the difference with earlier attacks!

 

I'm going to be very basic in my reply as the info is buried somewhere in my files......

Kai is correct, as the Me 262 was used first for anti-mosquito duties and still being tested in the fighter vs fighter role. Strong opposition by der Führer since he wanted the jet for the bombing roles. Build up of pre-bombing units KG 51 and 54 which were supposed to be completly outfitted with the type....didn't happen completely. Kommando Nowotny starts to come in to its own while two other figher units with the jet are doing pilot training. Komdo Nowotny being protected by high cover Fw 190D-9s of III./JG 54 but the Fw 190D-9 pilots cannot keep the P-51's away from Achmer airfield where several Me 262's are shot down on takeing off and landing.
Nowotny is shot down and killed by P-51's at the end of November 44 and the Kommando with his name is disbanded and all personell are split up with most going to be the cadre of the new JG 7. JG 7 uses the rest of the Fall/winter of 44 to build up it's personell ranks and has problems of getting Me 262's to it's airfield. A major bombing raid takes place on November 30, 1944 destroying many of the 262's allocated to the unit. First part of December 44, only 10 Me 262's on hand.
The first major action by JG 7 was the 2nd of December 44 where Lt. Weber claims 3 mosquitos and 1 P-38 on day duties. Büttner claims 1 mossie as well. The 15th A.F. is taken on and 2 P-51's, another P-38 and 1 B-17 are claimed. III./JG 7 is finally formed in an entirety on 1-1-45 with the three staffels at three seperate bases. Small claims are made all through Jaunuary of 45 with the bulk of US a/c claimed as destroyed: P-51's. February 45 is a different story where everything in the air is attacked. B-17's B-24's P-47's and P-51's, and even RAF Lancasters are taken on towards the 27th of March and on the 31st of the month. Me 163 unit JG 400 is basically dissolved and their pilots coming over to JG 7. JG 7 scores heavily the rest of March into April 1945 and also taking severe losses. Finally at the end of April 1945 the unit is moved into Czechslovakia to take part in the last air battles in the East, shooting down Yaks and at least 11 Il-2's plus and unknown amount of Soviet motor transport. The last possible kill by the Luftwaffe may have been by Fritz Stehle that I had mentioned earlier.

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The Me 262´s had a distinct advantage as I read that they would gather the high speed in the low altitude and speed up as they saw a Mosquito or another reconnaissance plane against the sky and would hit them from the ground, something the allied were not used to.Shooting in the belly, to put it frankly.
Anyway, that was just the beginning, but the method was something I was glad to learn.

 

Erich I told you that you're not supposed to make the P-51 look bad!!! Hey, who am I kidding, you're just stating the facts. Anyway, you can't really make the P-51 look bad. It's impossible to make it look bad. If the P-51 hadn't come along with it's long range, high speed, 6 .50's, maneuverability, etc. in order to escort the bombers in 1943 then the war might not have been won. For every 7 planes shot down by a P-51 1 was shot down. Before the P-51 came P-38's and P-47's would escort the bombers and have to stop and refuel. Leaving the bombers unescorted. The P-51 on the other hand, did not have to stop and refeul. Besides, do you really think the U.S.A. could've won with unescorted bombers, P-38's, and P-47's? Think about it...

[ 04 October 2002, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Mustang ]

 

Mustangs accounted for 4,950 of the 10,720 air combat victories claimed by the USAAF in Europe, and 4,131 of the 8,161 ground strafing claims made in the same theatre. Accounting for 48.9% of total losses inflicted on the enemy. They also shot down more than 230 V-1 "buzz-bombs" and even managed to score kills against Luftwaffe jet fighters.

Sources:
www.geocites.com/koala51d/

 

About the rocket thing, this stuff was new technology so you've got to think that the rockets might refuse to fire...

 

Mustang, I am sure there were some jammings but few as the R4M was tested all through the summer of 44 by edo kommando 25 a weapons test unit as well as the Fw 190 equipped JGr 10. Then finally released first to III./JG 7 and then to I./JG 7.

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Thanks Erich. Just wondering about that. Trying to make my point that the P-51 was probably more dependable than the Me.262. Don't you think.....?

 

I'd say so...the jet engines in use by the me262's were very unreliable and a short life span. The P-51 on the other hand...

 

.......was pretty dependable. The P-47 was durable. Most people think that the P-51 wasn't very dependable just because it had a liquid cooled engine. That's a matter of durability. I'd trust my like to a P-51. Which was often the case for pilots in WWII.......