Sorry, no pictures, this is more of a rant on Hitler's stupidity. When Hitler first heard of the Me262, he was not pleased. He did not like the idea of the Me262 as a strictly defensive aircraft to combat Allied bombers, what he wanted was a new bomber so he could bomb the Allies. He was going to halt all research into the program unless the Me262 was to built as a bomber. Of course no one took head to his words, so they continued on researching and building the Me262 as a fighter. Messerschimtt told Goering and Hitler that the Me262 could carry bombs, but he didn't tell them that he had no plans of actually doing that. One day at one of Hitler's hideouts (Eagle's Nest I think?) Hitler asked how the Me262 bomber production was going. General of the Luftwaffe Adolf Galland told Hitler it was being produced strictly as a fighter. Hitler freaked and blamed all of the men in the room for trying to subvert his war efforts and ignoring his qualified orders. Field Marshall Milch responded loud enough for Hitler to hear him say "Any small child can see that this is not a bomber, it is a fighter." He was then promptly stripped of his duties. Of course Milch was right, by adding bombs to the Me it would slow it down considerably, losing the major advantages it was designed for. Hitler ordered that all Me262s from then-on would be fighter-bombers. All previously built Me262s were to be fitted with bomb racks, and sadly, many were destroyed on the ground while being converted into bombers. So, all in all, I just wanted to express my feelings of stupidty over Hitler. To think that the Me262 should be built as a bomber and a bomber only is, well, ludicrous.
well that was just one example of hitlers stupidity if the german general staff led the war there would be a other result
Yeah, there probably wouldn't have been a war at all for a start. From what I've read the Generals didn't want to attack the west or east, it it was up to them Germany would have probably stayed in their own borders.
Hi zhukov ,as many ideas of mr Hitler it was a great idea in need of a reality check , quite a few fighters could carry bombs as part of their missions and you end up in the nowhere land with the typhoon , supposedly a fighter ! who could throw anything and the kitchen sink , the stupid thing was not ,to fit bombs on the ME262 , the stupid thing was not to understand production line or the benefit of standardisation , P.S. the ME262 was probably a bit too fast for ground bombing anyway.
The Me262 was unreliable and consumed fuel the Germans no longer had. Standardization and the production of more planes would not have helped them because by the end of the war hundreds of planes were already just standing around on the ground; there were no pilots and there was no fuel to fly them.
Because mass production of the fighter version started too late. Had they been mass produced in 1943, when there was still fuel and experienced pilots for them (and far less Allied fighter opposition), things might have been different. We'll never know for sure, of course.
